That didn't mean the music was emotionless (the standard accusation of the synthphobic rocker), but that the emotions were bleak: isolation, urban anomie, feeling cold and hollow inside, paranoia.
Soothing fireside chats and the powerful auspices of the presidential podium have given way before the specter of a churlish, disagreeable, ape-like humanoid whose weak attempts at parroting sincere emotion leave us bleak and colder than before.
Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose sometimes bleak but graceful work explores themes of isolation, emotion and identity while remaining rooted in the commonplace, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
The lives and situations he recorded were bleak, but his pictures exuded a glow of emotion that somehow left you feeling like things were going to be OK.
And the political prospects for federal gun legislation remain bleak, analysts said, even with the national outpouring of emotion that typically follows mass killings.
For much of its short length, this is a stew of imagery and emotion, not a million miles away from the bleak richness of Cormac McCarthy.
Nothing really changes as far as what happens, but it allows real emotion to infuse the story, rather than the bleak lack of nuance found in the original book.
Invest all that emotion and lose, and things are going to look pretty bleak.
It's beautiful but bleak, the closest it comes to a climax being a welling of emotion brought on by a flute-playing session.
A tone of bleak desperation casts a dark cloud over the proceedings, obliterating any other emotion as cascading catastrophes send the pair further into abjection.
But emotions too are magnified, with desolate moments appearing more bleak and hopeful passages more poignant.
