"Reach Out, Touch Mode - The History"
[Melody Maker, 3rd April 1993. Words: Simon Price.]
PEOPLE LAUGH AT DEPECHE MODE, DON’T THEY?
IN BRITAIN, at least, they’re still perceived as, well, a bit naff. This sneering derision is partly the legacy of a very old battle: the stand-off, in the late Seventies / early Eighties, between lovers of “real” music (think: Elvis Costello, Stiff Records powerpop, the Musician’s Union “Keep Music Live” campaign) and the new, synthetic New Romantic / Futurist movement (think: frilly shirts, “pretentious” lyrics, music made on instruments with unfamiliar names like Moog, Roland and Fairlight). The fiercest wrath was reserved for these five silicon teens from Basildon, Essex. Perhaps it was their unfashionably suburban background. Perhaps it was the lipstick and blouses. More likely it was the irrepressible, saccharine up-fulness of their first couple of hits, “New Life” and “Just Can’t Get Enough”. The Mode’s 1981 debut album, “SPEAK AND SPELL” (written entirely by Vince Clarke, except for Martin Gore’s bustling instrumental “Big Muff”) [1], is optimistic to the point of inanity, and, the occasional gauche, blatant stab at homoerotic overtones (“Boys meet boys, get together”, “Hey, you’re such a pretty boy”) aside, touches none of the daring subject matters associated with their later work. One can’t imagine Messrs Gahan, Gore, Fletcher and Wilder spending too many fond hours in 1993 re-listening to “Speak And Spell”.
By 1982, Vince Clarke had left (to form Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure), and ill-wishers gleefully anticipated Depeche Mode’s demise. Instead, Clarke’s departure marked the real beginning. With Martin Gore in charge, “A BROKEN FRAME” (1982) revealed an unimaginable new depth, both musically and lyrically. From the mournful plainsong which opens “Leave In Silence” onwards, the atmosphere is one of almost unremitting gothic melancholy. [2] It also, however, contains the first instances of the black irony which goes through Mode like letters through rock: “See You” (one of the classic singles of the synthesizer age) interrupts its mood of poignant remorse with a chorus / middle eight which parodies Beach Boys surfpop, and they have the wit and audacity to draw the whole album to a close with a Beatlesesque harmonised seventh.
“CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN” (1983), as its title suggests, was the album where Depeche Mode pretty much invented what we now know as “industrial” rock. “Pipeline” is a fine piece of symphonic metal-bashing, like Einsturzende Neubaten or SPK deigning to actually write a pop tune. The Mode were writing paranoid critiques of big business power-politics (“Everything Counts”) and flirting with totalitarian chic (“And Then…”) years before NIN and Nitzer Ebb were twinkles in their creators’ PVC lederhosen.
In 1984, when contemporaries like Spandau Ballet were blanding out into their Big Soul Ballad phase, The Mode never lost sight of the futurist aesthetic which first fired them. “SOME GREAT REWARD” (a typically cynical title juxtaposed with a sleeve image of a newly-wed couple) veers between treading old water and breaking new ground. We could live without anodyne love songs like “It Doesn’t Matter” and “Somebody” [3], and “People Are People” undeniably sees Martin Gore’s lyrical muse hitting rock-bottom, but listen to the opening 30 seconds: it sounds like a factory coming to life after dark and breakdancing. “Master and Servant” is a 1,000-volt, physical-as-f*** deconstruction of S&M sex [4], while “Blasphemous Rumours”, a truly astonishing refutation of Christianity’s “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” philosophy in the face of teenage suicide, is The Mode at their bleakest.
On “BLACK CELEBRATION” (1986), Dave Gahan sounds as though he’s actually relishing the plight of the victims in the songs (check the suppressed pleasure in the compulsively danceable “Question Of Time” – which adds paedophilia to the regular Mode diet of power, corruption, sex, religion and lies – with which he sings “It won’t be long before you do exactly what they want you to”). “New Dress” is the perfect instance of DM’s talent for stating the obvious through obvious means (“Sex jibe husband murders wife / Bomb blast victim fights for life / Girl, thirteen attached with knife… Princess Di’s got a new dress”) and getting away with it.
“MUSIC FOR THE MASSES” (1987) is more of the same: “Strangelove” and “Behind The Wheel” are yet more coy explorations of kinky sexual submission and domination. The superbly understated electric throb of “Never Let Me Down Again” manages to be sinister for reasons which can never quite be pinpointed. The wheezing respirator noises which form the backing track to “I Want You Now” are deeply unnerving.
By 1990, there were enough people who didn’t find The Mode naff to fill stadia the world over. The million-selling “VIOLATOR” put DM in the big league – the U2 league – with barely a trace of compromise. “Personal Jesus” may not be the first, or last, song to deal with TV evangelism, but it’s certainly the best, working in a neat prostitution metaphor over its brilliant, bump’n’grinding backbeat. After this achievement, they deserved to allow themselves one straightforward pop love song, and the Brit-winning “Enjoy The Silence” did the job with grace and class.
So it’s 1993, and the rest of the world has finally caught up with Depeche Mode, so what do they do? Cash in with a stereoptypical electro-beat album to remind us who started it all? No way. In typically perverse style, “SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION” is a radical volte-face, abandoning synthesizers altogether [5] in favour of gospel-tinged confessionals with confusingly un-ironic, born-again, religious overtimes.
The cynics who call it DM’s “Achtung Baby” are wrong – mostly – but, the sinfully catchy single, “I Feel You”, aside, there’s nothing that’ll pack dancefloors. But as Martin Gore is keen to point out, Depeche Mode have frequently used “trad” instruments in the past, and almost every album has a couple of sepulchral, piano-and-vocals laments. This time round, they’re taking it to the max.
So who are you calling naff?
RESPECT.
[Melody Maker, 3rd April 1993. Words: Simon Price.]
PEOPLE LAUGH AT DEPECHE MODE, DON’T THEY?
IN BRITAIN, at least, they’re still perceived as, well, a bit naff. This sneering derision is partly the legacy of a very old battle: the stand-off, in the late Seventies / early Eighties, between lovers of “real” music (think: Elvis Costello, Stiff Records powerpop, the Musician’s Union “Keep Music Live” campaign) and the new, synthetic New Romantic / Futurist movement (think: frilly shirts, “pretentious” lyrics, music made on instruments with unfamiliar names like Moog, Roland and Fairlight). The fiercest wrath was reserved for these five silicon teens from Basildon, Essex. Perhaps it was their unfashionably suburban background. Perhaps it was the lipstick and blouses. More likely it was the irrepressible, saccharine up-fulness of their first couple of hits, “New Life” and “Just Can’t Get Enough”. The Mode’s 1981 debut album, “SPEAK AND SPELL” (written entirely by Vince Clarke, except for Martin Gore’s bustling instrumental “Big Muff”) [1], is optimistic to the point of inanity, and, the occasional gauche, blatant stab at homoerotic overtones (“Boys meet boys, get together”, “Hey, you’re such a pretty boy”) aside, touches none of the daring subject matters associated with their later work. One can’t imagine Messrs Gahan, Gore, Fletcher and Wilder spending too many fond hours in 1993 re-listening to “Speak And Spell”.
By 1982, Vince Clarke had left (to form Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure), and ill-wishers gleefully anticipated Depeche Mode’s demise. Instead, Clarke’s departure marked the real beginning. With Martin Gore in charge, “A BROKEN FRAME” (1982) revealed an unimaginable new depth, both musically and lyrically. From the mournful plainsong which opens “Leave In Silence” onwards, the atmosphere is one of almost unremitting gothic melancholy. [2] It also, however, contains the first instances of the black irony which goes through Mode like letters through rock: “See You” (one of the classic singles of the synthesizer age) interrupts its mood of poignant remorse with a chorus / middle eight which parodies Beach Boys surfpop, and they have the wit and audacity to draw the whole album to a close with a Beatlesesque harmonised seventh.
“CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN” (1983), as its title suggests, was the album where Depeche Mode pretty much invented what we now know as “industrial” rock. “Pipeline” is a fine piece of symphonic metal-bashing, like Einsturzende Neubaten or SPK deigning to actually write a pop tune. The Mode were writing paranoid critiques of big business power-politics (“Everything Counts”) and flirting with totalitarian chic (“And Then…”) years before NIN and Nitzer Ebb were twinkles in their creators’ PVC lederhosen.
In 1984, when contemporaries like Spandau Ballet were blanding out into their Big Soul Ballad phase, The Mode never lost sight of the futurist aesthetic which first fired them. “SOME GREAT REWARD” (a typically cynical title juxtaposed with a sleeve image of a newly-wed couple) veers between treading old water and breaking new ground. We could live without anodyne love songs like “It Doesn’t Matter” and “Somebody” [3], and “People Are People” undeniably sees Martin Gore’s lyrical muse hitting rock-bottom, but listen to the opening 30 seconds: it sounds like a factory coming to life after dark and breakdancing. “Master and Servant” is a 1,000-volt, physical-as-f*** deconstruction of S&M sex [4], while “Blasphemous Rumours”, a truly astonishing refutation of Christianity’s “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” philosophy in the face of teenage suicide, is The Mode at their bleakest.
On “BLACK CELEBRATION” (1986), Dave Gahan sounds as though he’s actually relishing the plight of the victims in the songs (check the suppressed pleasure in the compulsively danceable “Question Of Time” – which adds paedophilia to the regular Mode diet of power, corruption, sex, religion and lies – with which he sings “It won’t be long before you do exactly what they want you to”). “New Dress” is the perfect instance of DM’s talent for stating the obvious through obvious means (“Sex jibe husband murders wife / Bomb blast victim fights for life / Girl, thirteen attached with knife… Princess Di’s got a new dress”) and getting away with it.
“MUSIC FOR THE MASSES” (1987) is more of the same: “Strangelove” and “Behind The Wheel” are yet more coy explorations of kinky sexual submission and domination. The superbly understated electric throb of “Never Let Me Down Again” manages to be sinister for reasons which can never quite be pinpointed. The wheezing respirator noises which form the backing track to “I Want You Now” are deeply unnerving.
By 1990, there were enough people who didn’t find The Mode naff to fill stadia the world over. The million-selling “VIOLATOR” put DM in the big league – the U2 league – with barely a trace of compromise. “Personal Jesus” may not be the first, or last, song to deal with TV evangelism, but it’s certainly the best, working in a neat prostitution metaphor over its brilliant, bump’n’grinding backbeat. After this achievement, they deserved to allow themselves one straightforward pop love song, and the Brit-winning “Enjoy The Silence” did the job with grace and class.
So it’s 1993, and the rest of the world has finally caught up with Depeche Mode, so what do they do? Cash in with a stereoptypical electro-beat album to remind us who started it all? No way. In typically perverse style, “SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION” is a radical volte-face, abandoning synthesizers altogether [5] in favour of gospel-tinged confessionals with confusingly un-ironic, born-again, religious overtimes.
The cynics who call it DM’s “Achtung Baby” are wrong – mostly – but, the sinfully catchy single, “I Feel You”, aside, there’s nothing that’ll pack dancefloors. But as Martin Gore is keen to point out, Depeche Mode have frequently used “trad” instruments in the past, and almost every album has a couple of sepulchral, piano-and-vocals laments. This time round, they’re taking it to the max.
So who are you calling naff?
RESPECT.