Pop: Depeche Mode - MEN Arena, Manchester
[The Guardian, 3rd April 2006, Words: Dave Simpson. Picture: Uncredited.]
When former electro-pop stars Depeche Mode began experimenting with much darker music in the 1980s, their efforts were slightly undermined by frontman David Gahan, possibly the squeakiest-looking Basildon boy ever to don leather trousers. Thus, Gahan got to work. There were tattoos, there were mind-boggling quantities of drugs, and there was a heart-stopping six minutes in 1996 when Gahan was clinically dead in an ambulance. [1]
These days, the recovered frontman is probably where he wanted to be all along. At 44, he’s still youthful enough to don an Italian jacket and Cuban heels and look ridiculously dapper, but can now sing lines like “I’ll never be a saint” with a certain added gravitas. The band’s first UK appearance in five years is packed with such dark edges. A Sputnik-like craft on stage beams out messages like “terror” and “regret”. Drawing heavily on 1990’s classic Violator and the recent album Playing The Angel, the set is surprisingly contemplative. Songs of degradation and dependency are paraded with a sinister, knowing undercurrent that suggests redemption from either is never entirely cut and dried.
Whatever forms his breakfast these days, Gahan is still a devil (literally, according to superfan Marilyn Manson) of a frontman, drawing gasps when he goes topless and sending female (and some male) hormones racing by simply touching his belt in a certain manner. The still flamboyant keyboardist-guitarist Martin Gore wears a pair of black angel’s wings which tremble appropriately during a wonderfully sacrilegious Personal Jesus. With a live drummer giving everything a bigger pulse, even the hits seem to glory in the black heart of their catalogue. Never Let Me Down Again is pounding and haunting; Enjoy The Silence simmers with evil. However, it is ironic wit not gravitas that fuels an encore of an early poppy anthem titled (ahem) Just Can’t Get Enough.
[The Guardian, 3rd April 2006, Words: Dave Simpson. Picture: Uncredited.]
When former electro-pop stars Depeche Mode began experimenting with much darker music in the 1980s, their efforts were slightly undermined by frontman David Gahan, possibly the squeakiest-looking Basildon boy ever to don leather trousers. Thus, Gahan got to work. There were tattoos, there were mind-boggling quantities of drugs, and there was a heart-stopping six minutes in 1996 when Gahan was clinically dead in an ambulance. [1]
These days, the recovered frontman is probably where he wanted to be all along. At 44, he’s still youthful enough to don an Italian jacket and Cuban heels and look ridiculously dapper, but can now sing lines like “I’ll never be a saint” with a certain added gravitas. The band’s first UK appearance in five years is packed with such dark edges. A Sputnik-like craft on stage beams out messages like “terror” and “regret”. Drawing heavily on 1990’s classic Violator and the recent album Playing The Angel, the set is surprisingly contemplative. Songs of degradation and dependency are paraded with a sinister, knowing undercurrent that suggests redemption from either is never entirely cut and dried.
Whatever forms his breakfast these days, Gahan is still a devil (literally, according to superfan Marilyn Manson) of a frontman, drawing gasps when he goes topless and sending female (and some male) hormones racing by simply touching his belt in a certain manner. The still flamboyant keyboardist-guitarist Martin Gore wears a pair of black angel’s wings which tremble appropriately during a wonderfully sacrilegious Personal Jesus. With a live drummer giving everything a bigger pulse, even the hits seem to glory in the black heart of their catalogue. Never Let Me Down Again is pounding and haunting; Enjoy The Silence simmers with evil. However, it is ironic wit not gravitas that fuels an encore of an early poppy anthem titled (ahem) Just Can’t Get Enough.