Basildon Boys Show New Life
[The Observer, 8th August 1993. Words: Sam Taylor. Picture: Uncredited.]
“Whoa, we’re home!” hollers Depeche Mode’s singer, Dave Gahan, his accent midway between the band’s home town of Basildon and his adopted city of Los Angeles. Dressed in a silver lame jacket and skin-tight black jeans, his hair grown to shoulder-length and minus the bleached highlights of his youth, Gahan is the local boy who returns from a long trip changed beyond all recognition. He left as a teen pop singer, and returns as a grungy, tattooed rock god.
The band’s other three members – Andrew Fletcher, Alan Wilder and songwriter Martin Gore – have been less affected by international superstardom, maintaining their melancholic demeanour; and the stage set at last Saturday’s Crystal Palace show makes fun of this divide.
The first song is played behind huge grey curtains, which drop to reveal a two-tiered stage; Gahan prowling theatrically below, while the others stand still and flick switches on their synthesisers, separated from the singer by a 30-foot bank of video screens.
Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but the divide is a neat expression of Depeche Mode’s contradictions. Back in the early Eighties, they were one of many pretty-boy synth groups; which seemed destined for obscurity when songwriter Vince Clarke left to form Yazoo. Clarke is still churning out Top 10 hits with Erasure, but his shoes have been filled by Martin Gore, whose ludicrous hairstyle concealed a songwriting brain.
Depeche Mode developed slowly, moving through simplistic politics (“People Are People”), metal-beating and S&M (“Master And Servant”), and Gothic obsessions with darkness (“Black Celebration”, “Leave In Silence”), to their current fascination with sin and religion. The watershed album was 1990’s Violator, which confirmed them as bona fide world stars (in Europe and America, their popularity is on a par with U2), and introduced a rockier element.
The current album, Songs Of Faith And Devotion, is both pompous and impressive, bolstering the band’s electronic sound-base with live drums, electric guitar, gospel singers and even a string quartet; all of which, surprisingly, translates effortlessly to live performance.
Visually and musically, the dynamics of the show are carefully controlled, introducing new elements (backing singers, arty video images, a full-scale mobile light-show) gradually. It is very much in the style of Talking Heads’ famous Stop Making Sense shows.
Indeed, the only incongruity is Gahan himself, twirling his microphone stand and thrusting his pelvis in a display of rapaciousness which makes sense on guitar-toting, sexual rockers like “I Feel You” and “Personal Jesus”, but seems bizarre on the confessional “Halo” or the coolly sublime “Enjoy The Silence”. The latter, ironically, is marred by Gahan bellowing “Make some noise!” at a crowd already singing along.
The fans are a homogenous bunch: male and female in equal numbers, but almost all in their early twenties and clothed in black; a fact only partly explained by the support band Sisters Of Mercy, Goths in extremis. Depeche Mode are a supremely depressing group, albeit one fronted by an old-fashioned rock egomaniac.
Gahan has a strong voice, but it is at times rather cold and monotonous, and one of the night’s high points occurs on “One Caress”, when Martin Gore takes over on vocals. He is accompanied by a string quartet who seem genuinely excited to be there, waving at the audience. Gore’s voice is endearingly vulnerable, and transfixes a stadium full of hyped-up kids into a reverential silence.
Although the set is culled mostly from their last two albums, the band’s dual nature is clear. Their English electro-pop roots are obvious in “Policy Of Truth” and “World In My Eyes”, but some of the new songs seem based on a different musical heritage. “Condemnation” sounds like a slave song, all gospel backing vocals and bluesy piano, while “Judas” is almost hymnal.
This new-found soulfulness and eclecticism has its down-side: the dance beats are increasingly non-existent or buried under a mass of instrumentalisation, and Gahan’s posturing is often wildly inappropriate. But ultimately it is the show’s salvation, injecting some fun and hope into the prevailing gloom.
[The Observer, 8th August 1993. Words: Sam Taylor. Picture: Uncredited.]
“Whoa, we’re home!” hollers Depeche Mode’s singer, Dave Gahan, his accent midway between the band’s home town of Basildon and his adopted city of Los Angeles. Dressed in a silver lame jacket and skin-tight black jeans, his hair grown to shoulder-length and minus the bleached highlights of his youth, Gahan is the local boy who returns from a long trip changed beyond all recognition. He left as a teen pop singer, and returns as a grungy, tattooed rock god.
The band’s other three members – Andrew Fletcher, Alan Wilder and songwriter Martin Gore – have been less affected by international superstardom, maintaining their melancholic demeanour; and the stage set at last Saturday’s Crystal Palace show makes fun of this divide.
The first song is played behind huge grey curtains, which drop to reveal a two-tiered stage; Gahan prowling theatrically below, while the others stand still and flick switches on their synthesisers, separated from the singer by a 30-foot bank of video screens.
Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but the divide is a neat expression of Depeche Mode’s contradictions. Back in the early Eighties, they were one of many pretty-boy synth groups; which seemed destined for obscurity when songwriter Vince Clarke left to form Yazoo. Clarke is still churning out Top 10 hits with Erasure, but his shoes have been filled by Martin Gore, whose ludicrous hairstyle concealed a songwriting brain.
Depeche Mode developed slowly, moving through simplistic politics (“People Are People”), metal-beating and S&M (“Master And Servant”), and Gothic obsessions with darkness (“Black Celebration”, “Leave In Silence”), to their current fascination with sin and religion. The watershed album was 1990’s Violator, which confirmed them as bona fide world stars (in Europe and America, their popularity is on a par with U2), and introduced a rockier element.
The current album, Songs Of Faith And Devotion, is both pompous and impressive, bolstering the band’s electronic sound-base with live drums, electric guitar, gospel singers and even a string quartet; all of which, surprisingly, translates effortlessly to live performance.
Visually and musically, the dynamics of the show are carefully controlled, introducing new elements (backing singers, arty video images, a full-scale mobile light-show) gradually. It is very much in the style of Talking Heads’ famous Stop Making Sense shows.
Indeed, the only incongruity is Gahan himself, twirling his microphone stand and thrusting his pelvis in a display of rapaciousness which makes sense on guitar-toting, sexual rockers like “I Feel You” and “Personal Jesus”, but seems bizarre on the confessional “Halo” or the coolly sublime “Enjoy The Silence”. The latter, ironically, is marred by Gahan bellowing “Make some noise!” at a crowd already singing along.
The fans are a homogenous bunch: male and female in equal numbers, but almost all in their early twenties and clothed in black; a fact only partly explained by the support band Sisters Of Mercy, Goths in extremis. Depeche Mode are a supremely depressing group, albeit one fronted by an old-fashioned rock egomaniac.
Gahan has a strong voice, but it is at times rather cold and monotonous, and one of the night’s high points occurs on “One Caress”, when Martin Gore takes over on vocals. He is accompanied by a string quartet who seem genuinely excited to be there, waving at the audience. Gore’s voice is endearingly vulnerable, and transfixes a stadium full of hyped-up kids into a reverential silence.
Although the set is culled mostly from their last two albums, the band’s dual nature is clear. Their English electro-pop roots are obvious in “Policy Of Truth” and “World In My Eyes”, but some of the new songs seem based on a different musical heritage. “Condemnation” sounds like a slave song, all gospel backing vocals and bluesy piano, while “Judas” is almost hymnal.
This new-found soulfulness and eclecticism has its down-side: the dance beats are increasingly non-existent or buried under a mass of instrumentalisation, and Gahan’s posturing is often wildly inappropriate. But ultimately it is the show’s salvation, injecting some fun and hope into the prevailing gloom.