Basildon Bondage
[NME, date unknown, 1987. Words: Jane Solanas. Artwork: Uncredited.]
DEPECHE MODE
Music For The Masses (Mute)
Personally I couldn’t care less whether The Pet Shop Boys are gay or not. What I want to know is, are Depeche Mode perves?
Here they are, six years on and with six albums under their studded belts, and they still look about nine years old! But their minds – well, their minds are veritable sewers. Leastways, songwriter Martin Gore’s is, and the rest of the Modes appear to encourage him, happily singing and playing his bizarre songs.
Martin Gore is the Depeche Mode with the fluffy blonde hair and the penchant for wearing leather mini-skirts. Nothing wrong with that. After all, isn’t that what rock’n’roll is all about – a man in a leather mini? Gene Vincent camped it up in leather and a leg brace, Martin Gore camps it up in lipstick, dangly earrings and a leather skirt. Depeche Mode are unashamed pop entertainers, and this has been the key to their long success and the reason why Martin Gore has been able to develop his strange carnal visions and keep the Depeche Mode audience happy.
Depeche Mode have never lost sight of the debt to pure pop which original songwriter Vince Clarke left them with. The lyrical content, in Gore’s hands, may have got progressively more weird since “New Life” and “Just Can’t Get Enough”, but the music is as sharp and accessible as it ever was. Depeche Mode plugged into the enormous potential of electronic pop and stuck with it while other synth bands who rode that ’81 crest with them floundered.
There are not so many bands who have the ability to score a hit single with an S&M song, “Master & Servant”. Having the teenies and their big sisters dance around their handbags shrieking, “Let’s play / master and servant…” was Martin Gore’s finest hour. Mind you, he and the Modes nearly came a cropper when they pushed it a bit further and released a single titled, “Shake The Disease”. Not much air-time for that one. A shame, because it was one of their best singles. Gore then toned it down slightly by writing a single called, “Stripped” and making the lyrics some hash about getting back to nature rather than simply just getting the collective knickers off. But even so, eyebrows were still raised by the puritanical powers that be.
In Britain, Depeche Mode will probably always be seen as nine year olds from Basildon who make pretty tunes on pop keyboards. The critical respect and mass adulation they command in Europe, the Far East, and parts of America escapes them here. But they should worry…
I’m pleased to see that on “Music For The Masses” Gore is at his obsessive best. Every single track is steeped in sin of one sort or another. For me, the recent single, “Never Let Me Down Again” is still an intriguing masterpiece, combining homo-eroticism with drug euphoria. Get that line: “Promises me I’m as safe as houses / As long as I remember who’s wearing the trousers…” Jeezus! Other high points are the closing track, “Pimpf”, which sounds suspiciously like the soundtrack to the camp vampire film, Daughters Of Darkness; and the two tracks where Gore takes the lead vocal, “The Things You Said” and “I Want You Now”. His angelic tones fair send shivers up a female spine.
If you still think Depeche Mode are beneath adult consideration, consider this: their music has been turned into tape-loops by experimental underground Soviet groups and hi-jacked as backing tracks by Chicago House producers.
[NME, date unknown, 1987. Words: Jane Solanas. Artwork: Uncredited.]
While warm and positive, this intended review of Music For The Masses does somewhat lose its way. The author begins by discussing how Depeche Mode have darkened and dirtied by 1987, and forgets to stop. Still a pleasant brief appraisal of the band, just not the album review you were expecting.
DEPECHE MODE
Music For The Masses (Mute)
Personally I couldn’t care less whether The Pet Shop Boys are gay or not. What I want to know is, are Depeche Mode perves?
Here they are, six years on and with six albums under their studded belts, and they still look about nine years old! But their minds – well, their minds are veritable sewers. Leastways, songwriter Martin Gore’s is, and the rest of the Modes appear to encourage him, happily singing and playing his bizarre songs.
Martin Gore is the Depeche Mode with the fluffy blonde hair and the penchant for wearing leather mini-skirts. Nothing wrong with that. After all, isn’t that what rock’n’roll is all about – a man in a leather mini? Gene Vincent camped it up in leather and a leg brace, Martin Gore camps it up in lipstick, dangly earrings and a leather skirt. Depeche Mode are unashamed pop entertainers, and this has been the key to their long success and the reason why Martin Gore has been able to develop his strange carnal visions and keep the Depeche Mode audience happy.
Depeche Mode have never lost sight of the debt to pure pop which original songwriter Vince Clarke left them with. The lyrical content, in Gore’s hands, may have got progressively more weird since “New Life” and “Just Can’t Get Enough”, but the music is as sharp and accessible as it ever was. Depeche Mode plugged into the enormous potential of electronic pop and stuck with it while other synth bands who rode that ’81 crest with them floundered.
There are not so many bands who have the ability to score a hit single with an S&M song, “Master & Servant”. Having the teenies and their big sisters dance around their handbags shrieking, “Let’s play / master and servant…” was Martin Gore’s finest hour. Mind you, he and the Modes nearly came a cropper when they pushed it a bit further and released a single titled, “Shake The Disease”. Not much air-time for that one. A shame, because it was one of their best singles. Gore then toned it down slightly by writing a single called, “Stripped” and making the lyrics some hash about getting back to nature rather than simply just getting the collective knickers off. But even so, eyebrows were still raised by the puritanical powers that be.
In Britain, Depeche Mode will probably always be seen as nine year olds from Basildon who make pretty tunes on pop keyboards. The critical respect and mass adulation they command in Europe, the Far East, and parts of America escapes them here. But they should worry…
I’m pleased to see that on “Music For The Masses” Gore is at his obsessive best. Every single track is steeped in sin of one sort or another. For me, the recent single, “Never Let Me Down Again” is still an intriguing masterpiece, combining homo-eroticism with drug euphoria. Get that line: “Promises me I’m as safe as houses / As long as I remember who’s wearing the trousers…” Jeezus! Other high points are the closing track, “Pimpf”, which sounds suspiciously like the soundtrack to the camp vampire film, Daughters Of Darkness; and the two tracks where Gore takes the lead vocal, “The Things You Said” and “I Want You Now”. His angelic tones fair send shivers up a female spine.
If you still think Depeche Mode are beneath adult consideration, consider this: their music has been turned into tape-loops by experimental underground Soviet groups and hi-jacked as backing tracks by Chicago House producers.