Full spectrum: (From left) Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher. Photo: Anton Corbijn

Andy Fletcher, the quiet member of Depeche Mode alongside darkly brooding singer Dave Gahan and frowning pianist and guitarist Martin Gore, gets a little twitchy as he realises his cigarette break has been delayed for another interview.

The three band members are scattered in different parts of the hotel in Austin, Texas, and with the announcement of a world tour to come soon after the release of their 13th album, Delta Machine, there's barely any time for indulgence ahead of this evening's stomping, rapturously received show.

So how long could the man seemingly universally known as Fletch go without a smoke?

''I could go forever if I had to, but I might have palpitations,'' he says, ruefully.

Right then, we had better get down to core Depeche Mode territory, which, to judge by Delta Machine, is still rocking like the mid-1990s but with a fair bit of redemption and pain, guilt and recovery and unexpected happiness. ''That's our usual stuff,'' Fletch agrees with a laugh.

And the usual stuff of the blues, too. It often comes as a surprise to people when that side of the band members - who began as synth-pop kids but took on rock and doom as comfortably as they took on hair dye and heroin - comes back into focus. It is strange people would still be surprised this band is quite comfortable working in the blues idiom, even if their work is covered with electronica. ''It comes from our past, really,'' is Fletcher's explanation for the double-take by the public.

''In some ways [it's] from the town we come from [which is the commuter-belt suburb of Basildon, in south-east England] and our early albums, which were whiter than white, you could say.

''We were lucky as a band that we were able to mature. We were on a small record label and were allowed to go in the direction we wanted to go.''

Are there any parts of the past he is less comfortable with these days? ''Not really,'' Fletcher says. ''There are certain songs we don't like playing. People Are People, one of our biggest hits, it gets on our nerves a bit now. Martin, who wrote it, doesn't particularly like it as a song.''

Actually, he will admit to some regrets, confessing ''lots of things in the early '80s'' are somewhat embarrassing, in particular the videos. But there are some excuses. ''That's when video first started and we were like guinea pigs,'' Fletcher says. ''But you know, we were only kids then. We were literally straight out of school. We never went to stage school or had singing lessons or guitar lessons or keyboard lessons - we did what felt natural. But … we were lucky to be allowed to mature in a natural way rather than in a forced way.''

Getting a little wistful, he goes on with his memories: ''It was a great period for English pop, or British pop music. There was a time in '82-'83 when eight of the top 10 in the US were British - it was a glorious period. And it was a glorious period because all the bands sounded different and looked different. Today that's just not the case any more.''

But it's been a long while since anyone could comfortably describe Depeche Mode as British-sounding.

''Well, certainly not now. Perhaps never,'' Fletcher admits. ''We always considered ourselves European and we recorded a lot of our albums in Europe and North America. It's a weird thing but one of the countries where we're least popular - apart from Australia - is Britain. That's not to say we don't have a lot of fans in Britain, because we do, but we're much bigger in Europe and America than we are in our own country.''

In a sense, although they came from different ends of the country, there is something Depeche Mode have in common with a band such as Simple Minds, who took a lot of their electronic inspiration, as well as their open-highway vistas, from Europe first, before discovering the US and its own grand scale. Not to mention its own blues and rock'n'roll, and the massive audiences that come with it.

That brings to mind something Gore said recently: ''When we are performing, we become a reflection of our audience.'' What does Fletcher think Gore meant by that? ''I don't know,'' he says after a long pause. ''In some ways, with Depeche Mode we are everyone's little secret and when you get 10,000 people coming together with us being everyone's little secret, you get this weird reaction. It makes every concert a sort of celebration.'' Secrets, celebrations and now, thankfully, a cigarette.