Depeche Mode Bleak Celebration (Vox, 1997)

[demoderus]

Bleak Celebration (Vox, 1997)​

Ultra review, Vox, May 1997

 

[demoderus]

Big caption: BLEAK CELEBRATION (ho! ho! ho!)

DEPECHE MODE​

Ultra​

(Mute)

It's almost impossible to ruminate on Depeche Mode without taking into account Dave Gahan's drug overdose and near-death experience. It's always sad when an artist's lurid personal life spills over and clouds the music, but what do you expect when you encourage a cult of personality?

Depeche Mode's 12th album finds them with nowhere left to go but inside their own heads, in introspection. They've been around the world enough times, lounged by swimming pools in the LA chemical sunset, played stadium-sized concerts to bright-eyed young things, been on first-name terms with stimulants, and yet, what keeps them in the public eye is still the music - of which this collection of melancholy songs, attempts at modernity, and lyrical grandstanding is a fine example.

The trouble here, in a modest kind of way, is that Gore's penchant for snappy tunes seems to have deserted him. The Mode's career has seen them metamorphose from a synth group into what some might unkindly call a cut-price U2, but one constant has been the tunes. Perhaps sensing which way the prevailing musical winds are blowing in Britain, the band have roped in Tim Simenon (of Bomb the Bass) to add a faux hip-hop sheen to their songs, which means, for a large part, that melodies have been sacrificed - except in terms of Gahan's voice, which seems croonsome, relaxed and contented.

The beats are great, though - that is, when they surface among the sound experiments, ambient interludes and - no kidding - a jazz pastiche. Although most songs proceed at mid-tempo, no expense has been spared for crunchy beats topped up with drifting keyboard wibbles and - what would formerly have been sacrilege - weirdly toned '80s-style guitar parts. 'Useless' is the perfect example - a navel-gazing look at a star trapped in a padded cell, set to a tune that's locked to rock. On a more sombre note, 'The Bottom Line' muses on destiny to an electronic approximation of country music, while Martin Gore emotes, and inadvertently links the past Mode to the present with choirboy vocals (the backing vocal loop brings a definite sense of deja vu).

'Sister of Night' takes a more sinister route and deals with the power of addiction. Some might see it as a cryptic lovesong to a deadly drug, but it could just as well be sung to a person. As, indeed, could the propulsive 'Barrel of a Gun', complete with its distorted vocal, or the plaintive, naked and (an exception!) very tuneful 'It's No Good', even though it carries a decidedly serrated edge that feels like obsession. For sure, 'Ultra' wouldn't be complete without drawing from the stress of touring - a typical get-out clause when mega-bands have to write songs to a deadline - and 'Freestate' is suitably agonised. Yet Depeche Mode's main achievement this time around is an intimacy, of sorts. The listener doesn't feel like they're stuck in a stadium hearing lofty pronouncements made at a great distance
Score: 7/10
Reviewer: Dele Fadele (honest!)

Vox, May 1997
Thanks to David McKain