Pulling Off the Shrink-Wrap

“Let’s have a black celebration,” crooned Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on Tuesday at Staples Center, as the veteran English synth-pop group wound down the first of four Southern California concerts.

For the assembled faithful, the two-hour show commemorated the 21-year-old band’s enduring way of twisting romantic pleasure and pain into one shivery, dark vibe. Without going all the way back, the group mixed older favorites with about half of its new album, “Exciter.” By eschewing such classics as the can’t-we-all-get-along anthem “People Are People” for such far cleverer past achievements as the wry “Personal Jesus,” DM underscored its longevity and continuing appeal while avoiding some embarrassing moments.

Despite that, for the less enthralled, the endless digital drone of electronic bleats and pulses soon obscured any fleeting hooks or momentary warmth, sparking only a desire to escape the cold prison created by the music’s mechanical underpinnings.

Indeed, the blank white screen on which numerous mood-enhancing backgrounds were projected behind Gahan, songwriter and guitarist-keyboardist Martin Gore, keyboardist Andrew Fletcher and four additional musicians provided an apt metaphor to explain the band’s persistent appeal.

Its brooding songs have a familiar torchiness drawn from soul and blues, but they are shrink-wrapped behind a plastic sheen that renders the emotions safely one-dimensional. The bleak yet vague imagery of shame, redemption, isolation and defying inevitable fate appeals to the wannabe freak inside many listeners without requiring actual freakishness.

The set was also a reminder that although some proponents would like to think otherwise, electronica is hardly a new flavor in pop. Indeed, rather than being satisfied occupying an obscure niche or selling its tunes to the makers of automobile commercials, Depeche Mode aimed straight for the charts in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Thanks to massive KROQ-FM (106.7) airplay, Southern California was particularly hot for the group’s techno-disco, so it’s no surprise that DM still packs ‘em in here. But the band also provided broader inspiration for less personality-infused dance music, as well as a blueprint of sorts for such ‘90s rock-electronica hybrids as Garbage, with its darkly uplifting drama.

There was plenty of that on Tuesday, in Mode classics such as “Walking in My Shoes” as well as new songs such as the hit “Dream On,” its skittering beats and acoustic guitar licks forming an earthy-ethereal backdrop for Gahan’s ruminations about karma’s death grip on us all (or whatever).

The energetic singer spent most of the evening jubilantly shirtless, leaping about and twirling with his microphone stand like some postmodern dervish. Dressed in white, Gore cut his own eccentric figure with a foppish spray of feathers over his right shoulder and made his vocal mark with such numbers as the lilting new “Breathe.”

But not even the intimate moments they provided individually and together, sharing vocals on the liquidly dreamy “Waiting for the Night,” completely countered the enervating sameness of it all.

A by-turns cathartic, furious and vulnerable 35-minute set by singer-songwriter Poe provided a proper prelude with its blackly propulsive urgency. Highlighting songs from her current album, “Haunted,” the L.A. resident mixed rock, hip-hop, metal, folk and pop to dizzying effect. Her forceful singing and often intriguing compositions hinted that once she settles on a persona, she could be a compelling force.

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Depeche Mode, with Poe, plays Saturday and Sunday at the Arrowhead Pond, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim, 8 p.m. $57, Saturday; $42 and $57, Sunday. (714) 704-2500.