“Blasphemous Rumours,” “Everything Counts,” “Get the Balance Right,” “Love, in Itself,” “A Question of Time,” “Never Let Me Down Again” and others have all been issued on 12-inch and CD with non-LP bonus tracks, many of them live.)ĭepeche Mode had tackled many different lyrical concerns in making their albums, but none are as consistently downcast as Black Celebration. The American release has most of the same tracks (excluding those already compiled on People Are People), but includes “Fly on the Windscreen” (also on Black Celebration) and “Flexible.” Complicated enough? (Actually, the quartet’s discography is far more involved, thanks to numerous EPs. The former, issued in the UK, is a fine collection of thirteen familiar items the cassette and CD add two more. Some Great Reward is Depeche Mode’s best record, containing everything from the bitter religious doubt of “Blasphemous Rumours” to the socio-sexual role playing of “Master and Servant” and the egalitarian “People Are People.” Seamlessly blending unsettling concrŠte sounds - like synthesized factory din and clanking chains - into the music, the group achieves a masterful music/life mix few of the same mind have approached.Īs Depeche Mode’s international stature grew to awesome proportions, two compilation albums - The Singles and Catching Up - were released. Not a cohesive album, it does contain prime material blending synth-rock with real-life and industrial noises to make truly modern pop music. People Are People (not released in the UK) is a compilation of post-Clarke tunes, drawing five of its tracks from the two preceding LPs and the rest from singles. (The Construction Time Again CD adds a bonus cut.) Other tunes (“Pipeline,” “More Than a Party”) are less probing, although the former has interestingly industrialized music and chanted vocals. “Everything Counts” offers a bitter denunciation of the (presumably music) business world and “Shame” is a heartfelt confrontation with responsibility. The rest of the album varies to a small degree from prior dancemania without abandoning it - a characteristic midpoint between experimentation and repetition.Įxpanding back to a quartet, with Martin Gore continuing as the main songwriter, Construction Time Again exposes a mature outlook, dropping the simplistic pop tunes for a more intellectual, challenging approach. David Gahan’s vocals are stronger, and while funk forms the rhythmic base of “My Secret Garden,” a Japanese tinge is given to “Monument,” and “Satellite” centers around a ska beat. The best songs on Speak and Spell were UK hits: “New Life,” “Dreaming of Me” and the smash “Just Can’t Get Enough.” Oblivious to innovation or deep thinking, the album is simply a good, catchy collection of modern dance tunes.ĭespite the dire predictions that followed songwriter Vince Clarke’s departure to form Yazoo (and later Erasure), Depeche Mode pressed on, essentially unhampered, as a trio to make A Broken Frame, which has similar virtues, tempered with some deviation from course. Over the years, the increasingly successful group has grown pompous and gloomy, embracing heavier and denser sounds (as well as non-electronic instrumentation). What set them apart at the outset (how times change) was their complete reliance on synthesizers, offering post-modernistic gloss to comfortably familiar (but new) material.
0 kommentar(er)
