Music For The Pop Charts
[Melody Maker, date unknown, 1987. Words: Damon Wise. Picture: Uncredited.]
DEPECHE MODE “Music For The Masses” (MUTE STUMM 47/CD) ****
Depeche Mode: you shouldn’t be paranoid. People really do hate you.
Depeche Mode: the original prole art threat, the Basildon boys who dressed their electric dreams in furtive black leather and prayed that no one would see the join. Depeche Mode, the boys who missed the post-modernist bandwagon by that much, consoling themselves with subcultural ephemera to paper the cracks – the skirt, the lipstick, the S&M efficacy that bought your kid sister. And they only wanted to be loved. Strike that. They only wanted to be taken seriously…
And here they are, raising the corporate red megaphone on this their sixth – yes, sixth – album, a token nod to chainstore totalitarianism with which they hope to sledgehammer the Euro-market and presumably enslave a public hitherto inaccessible to them.
A pipe-dream, of course. Depeche Mode lack the will or the wit to push for the kind of dramatic intensity that even Freddie Mercury can rustle up. Depeche Mode are caught in limbo, too busy exploiting their product as a cultural gimmick to realise what’s at stake here. Because it’s simply too easy to take the route they’ve chosen, too cheap to peddle your wares with such a cynical disclaimer. You can’t have it both ways…
Which is where Depeche Mode fall. Mightily. Always have done, touting their immaculate pop sensibility whilst raising a protective screen of artistic integrity a little dirt behind their fingernails, shall we say.
“Music For The Masses” is a missive from the designer doldrums, which nonetheless betrays the broadest clues so far given of the Depeche Mode predicament, the schizophrenia that sees high-art pretensions chafe commercial considerations. Which sees the chartbound sounds of “Strangelove” and “Never Let Me Down Again” rub shoulders with the primitive, Germanic waltz of “Little 15” and the John Barryesque “Behind The Wheel”.
But there’s a heart beating here: “They know my weaknesses / I never tried to hide them”, sings Dave Gahan on the stunning “Things You Said” [1], a world away from the laconic wind-up of Neil Tennant’s deadpan whine, the voice that brought us the ultimate post-punk statement: “I love you, you pay my rent”.
Depeche Mode: the disco in discord, the rhyme that pays.
Depeche Mode: great pop, bad art. Get the balance right.
[Melody Maker, date unknown, 1987. Words: Damon Wise. Picture: Uncredited.]
A very perceptive review of Music For The Masses, seeing Depeche Mode as caught midway between artistic pretensions and a knack for pop appeal, and not certain which they prefer. Not only does the author get the intentional pun of the title, he manages to pick out the future singles. Very astute.
DEPECHE MODE “Music For The Masses” (MUTE STUMM 47/CD) ****
Depeche Mode: you shouldn’t be paranoid. People really do hate you.
Depeche Mode: the original prole art threat, the Basildon boys who dressed their electric dreams in furtive black leather and prayed that no one would see the join. Depeche Mode, the boys who missed the post-modernist bandwagon by that much, consoling themselves with subcultural ephemera to paper the cracks – the skirt, the lipstick, the S&M efficacy that bought your kid sister. And they only wanted to be loved. Strike that. They only wanted to be taken seriously…
And here they are, raising the corporate red megaphone on this their sixth – yes, sixth – album, a token nod to chainstore totalitarianism with which they hope to sledgehammer the Euro-market and presumably enslave a public hitherto inaccessible to them.
A pipe-dream, of course. Depeche Mode lack the will or the wit to push for the kind of dramatic intensity that even Freddie Mercury can rustle up. Depeche Mode are caught in limbo, too busy exploiting their product as a cultural gimmick to realise what’s at stake here. Because it’s simply too easy to take the route they’ve chosen, too cheap to peddle your wares with such a cynical disclaimer. You can’t have it both ways…
Which is where Depeche Mode fall. Mightily. Always have done, touting their immaculate pop sensibility whilst raising a protective screen of artistic integrity a little dirt behind their fingernails, shall we say.
“Music For The Masses” is a missive from the designer doldrums, which nonetheless betrays the broadest clues so far given of the Depeche Mode predicament, the schizophrenia that sees high-art pretensions chafe commercial considerations. Which sees the chartbound sounds of “Strangelove” and “Never Let Me Down Again” rub shoulders with the primitive, Germanic waltz of “Little 15” and the John Barryesque “Behind The Wheel”.
But there’s a heart beating here: “They know my weaknesses / I never tried to hide them”, sings Dave Gahan on the stunning “Things You Said” [1], a world away from the laconic wind-up of Neil Tennant’s deadpan whine, the voice that brought us the ultimate post-punk statement: “I love you, you pay my rent”.
Depeche Mode: the disco in discord, the rhyme that pays.
Depeche Mode: great pop, bad art. Get the balance right.