Hot Cakes

About the Band

Depeche Mode are an English electronic band formed in 1980, in Basildon, Essex, England. The group’s orignal member on the time of formation were Dave Gahan (lead vocals), Martin Gore (keyboards, guitar, vocals, chief songwriter after 1981), Andrew Fletcher (keyboards) and Vince Clarke (keyboards, chief songwriter 1980–81). Right after the release of their debut album in 1981 Vince Clarke left the band and his place was filled by, Alan Wilder (lead keyboards, production 1982–1995) with Gore taking over songwriting. Since Wilder’s departure, Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher have continued as a trio.

According to wikipedia,
Depeche Mode are one of the longest-lived, most successful and influential bands to have emerged from the early 80s. They have had forty-five songs in the UK Singles Chart, as well as #1 albums in UK, US and throughout countries in Europe. According to EMI, Depeche Mode have sold over 75 million albums worldwide, as part of total worldwide record sales (including singles) in excess of 100 million.

Band’s Discography

The discography of Depeche Mode consists of twelve studio albums, three live albums, eight compilation albums, forty-nine singles, and eight box sets on Mute Records, Sire Records and Reprise Records, as well as fifty-seven music videos (not including remixed and edited versions), ten music VHS/DVDs (not including re-releases), and six DVD singles.

Studio Albums

• Speak & Spell (1981)
• A Broken Frame (1982)
• Construction Time Again (1983)
• Some Great Reward (1984)
• Black Celebration (1986)
• Music for the Masses (1987)
• Violator (1990)
• Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993)
• Ultra (1997)
• Exciter (2001)
• Playing the Angel (2005)
• Sounds of the Universe (2009)

Compilation Albums

• People Are People
• The Singles 81>85
• Catching Up with Depeche Mode
• Greatest Hits
• The Singles 86>98
• Remixes 81 - 04
• The Best Of, Volume 1
• The Complete Depeche Mode

Live albums

• 101
• Songs of Faith and Devotion Live
• Recording the Angel
• Recording the Universe

Singles

• Dreaming of Me
• New Life
• Just Can’t Get Enough
• See You
• The Meaning of Love
• Leave in Silence
• Get the Balance Right!
• Everything Counts
• Love, in Itself
• People Are People
• Master and Servant
• Blasphemous Rumours / Somebody
• Shake the Disease
• It’s Called a Heart
• Stripped / But Not Tonight
• A Question of Lust
• A Question of Time
• Strangelove
• Never Let Me Down Again
• Behind the Wheel
• Little 15
• Strangelove ‘88
• Everything Counts (Live)
• Personal Jesus
• Dangerous
• Enjoy the Silence
• Policy of Truth
• Halo
• World in My Eyes
• I Feel You
• Walking in My Shoes
• Condemnation
• In Your Room
• Barrel of a Gun
• It’s No Good
• Home
• Useless
• Only When I Lose Myself
• Dream On
• I Feel Loved
• Freelove
• Goodnight Lovers
• Enjoy the Silence ‘04
• Remixes 04
• Precious
• A Pain that I’m Used To
• Suffer Well
• John the Revelator / Lilian
• Martyr
• Wrong
• Peace (to be released June 15 2009)

Album Review

Sounds of the Universe is the twelfth full-length album by Depeche Mode, released in Europe on 20 April, 2009, and on 21 April, 2009, in the US and Canada. Sounds of the Universe is a 13 track album with a length of 60:51, produced by Ben Hillier, under the label Mute, EMI, Capitol, Virgin Records.

Sounds of the Universe was released in Europe on 20 April, 2009, and on 21 April, 2009, in the US and Canada. The album generes are Synthpop, Electronica, Alternative Dance.

For their new album, Depeche Mode said they were using analog synthesizers and other vintage gear to “conjure up images of the universe and space travel.” But the result sounds like a time machine back to the Eighties. The pulsing single “Wrong” oozes classic synth-pop angst, but with Commodore 64-style beats and laser-tag keyboards, ballads like “Peace” are comically New Romantic, and the dour “Spacewalker” sounds like the score to Star Trek rewritten by a deeply bummed-out robot. Depeche Mode should be poised for a comeback, but it’s too soon to unpack those black turtlenecks.

Recording

As with the previous album, Playing the Angel, Dave Gahan has once again written three songs with Christian Eigner and Andrew Phillpott: “Hole to Feed”, “Come Back” and “Miles Away / The Truth Is”. “Spacewalker” and the B-Side “Esque” are instrumentals. Martin Gore sings the lead of “Jezebel” and the B-side “The Sun and the Moon and the Stars”. The B-side “Oh Well” is the first track ever to be co-written by Gore and Gahan. The album ends with a short hidden instrumental track after “Corrupt”, possibly called Interlude #5, which can be seen as “Wrong (reprise)”.

Reception

Initial critical response to Sounds of the Universe was generally positive. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 70, based on 28 reviews. Entertainment Weekly stated that on Sounds of the Universe, Depeche Mode “still sound genuinely inspired” and Allmusic gave the album a 4 out of 5, concluding: “Sounds of the Universe is a grower, relying on a few listens to fully take effect, but when it does, it shows Depeche Mode are still able to combine pop-hook accessibility and their own take on “roots” music for an electronic age with sonic experimentation and recombination.” Awarding the album five stars in the The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick concluded that the album showed “the imaginative constraints of most guitar-based rock.”

A minority of reviewers were more negative, however. Rolling Stone magazine, historically unfriendly to Depeche Mode albums, gave the album a 2.5 out of 5. PopMatters gave the album a 5 out of 10, saying Depeche Mode “… tempt us with a strong first half and then dump us in a collection of tossed off b-sides.”

Despite the first single “Wrong” only charting at #24 and spending only one week in the UK Singles Chart, Sounds of the Universe reached #2 in the UK Album Chart, the band’s highest position since 1997’s chart-topping Ultra, and reached #3 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., selling 80,000 units in its first week of release. However the album only spent one week in UK and US top ten, and (like its predecessor Playing The Angel) only spent 4 weeks on the UK album chart altogether.

Tracklisting

All songs written by Martin Gore unless otherwise noted:

1. “In Chains” – 6:53
2. “Hole to Feed” – 3:59 (Dave Gahan, Christian Eigner, Andrew Phillpott)
3. “Wrong” – 3:13
4. “Fragile Tension” – 4:09
5. “Little Soul” – 3:31
6. “In Sympathy” – 4:54
7. “Peace” – 4:29
8. “Come Back” – 5:15 (Gahan, Eigner, Phillpott)
9. “Spacewalker” – 1:53
10. “Perfect” – 4:33
11. “Miles Away/The Truth Is” – 4:14 (Gahan, Eigner, Phillpott)
12. “Jezebel” – 4:41
13. “Corrupt” – 5:04 (8:58)
    “Interlude #5″ – 0:42 (hidden song starting at 8:17)

Songs Details

‘In Chains’

Depeche Mode’s twelfth album opens with a tone of such a high frequency that maybe some of their older fans may at first struggle to make it out. One can imagine men of a certain age, with a penchant for black 501s, black leather jackets and white vests being asked to sit in a booth and raise one finger when they thing they can discern the sound. It is joined by a burbling, clicking, analogue and insectile burr, which slowly becomes an orchestra of ancient and angry sounding synth tones. For a few disorientating seconds this sounds spookily like the Anglia TV ident from the 70s, before building into THX proportions. But this doesn’t signify a “stunning return to X”, or “their most uncompromising album since Y” or a “hauntological take on Z”. Instead this fanfare, reminiscent of the work of the Radiophonic Workshop, is more a warning to the listener which says: “brace yourself, we have invested in a lot of vintage synthesizers, creaking drum machines and dusty sequencers, and we are not going to shy away from using them.” If anything this slightly disturbing intro is misleading because it ushers in what is arguably the 29-year-old band’s most mellow and mature album to date. The actual track ‘In Chains’ is the kind of bluesy cyber spiritual that the band made their own between ‘Personal Jesus’ in 1989 and ‘John The Revelator’ in 2005. Dave Gahan’s smooth croon is set off by the feverish efflorescence of Martin Gore’s guitar.

‘Hole To Feed’

This is one of Dave Gahan’s three contributions as a songwriter to the main album, worked on with his writing partners Christian Eigner (DM’s regular drummer) and Andrew Phillpott. The construction of Playing The Angel was marred by jockeying for position between the singer and Martin Gore but this has given way to an almost Socialist division of labour. Instead of Gahan insisting on having a certain amount of space on the album before agreeing to even set foot in the studio now both parties (i.e. Gore and Gahan. Andy Fletcher doesn’t write the music or play any instruments) write according to their abilities and the group as a whole receives according to its needs. This is as it should be. Gore remains the primary songwriter and Gahan is the front man and secondary song writer, while Fletch, perhaps more crucially is a facilitator. He stops the other two from killing each other and acts as a necessary intermediary for Gore. This is minimal acid blues and concerns the singer’s addictive nature, and its minimalism is emphasized by the use of old equipment and a prominent, primitive rock guitar.

‘Wrong’

The first single is classic Mode with Gore casting Gahan in the role of corrupt preacher, like a character from Flannery O’Connor’s southern gothic novel Wise Blood, railing against his almost apocalyptic bad luck. His slightly mad ravings elevate the scenario to the scale of black comedy: “I was born in the wrong house / with the wrong sign / in the wrong ascendency. / I took the wrong road / that led to / the wrong tendencies. / I was in the wrong place / at the wrong time / for the wrong reasons / on the wrong night / of the wrong day / on the wrong week. / I used the wrong method / with the wrong technique”. Buzzing MOOGs are the ideal accompaniment to the stentorian backing vocals that admonish the singer for all his bad choices/lack of choice, like an over-zealous, slightly gothic Greek chorus.

‘Fragile Tension’

This song, like ‘Jezebel’, harks back to ‘Lillian’ from Playing The Angel and appears to be a bit of an eco-ballad or an elegy to the not-yet disappeared beauty of planet earth. However the melancholia of the synth and the sentiment aren’t reflected in Gore’s almost raucous guitar playing.

‘Little Soul’

Many of these songs are built around a pop, proto industrial skeleton like material you’d find on Some Great Reward or Black Celebration but these tunes themselves are, necessarily, much more mature in tone and content. Abrasive metallic textures underlie this gentle meditation on death and (possibly) rebirth or continuation through children. There has been some talk of retro-futurism influencing this album and it’s certainly clear on this track, with Gore’s surf guitar calling to mind the exotica of the 50s and 60s mixed with the electronic tones of the space race era.

‘In Sympathy’

How have Depeche Mode not already recorded a song called ‘In Sympathy’? Anyway, there was a time that when the band were never far from singing about teenagers and being extremely creepy (’Behind The Wheel’, ‘Question of Time’ etc) but nowadays they seem to be presenting enthusiastic and motivating songs to various children and young relatives. This isn’t a bad song by any stretch but there’s something ever so slightly prissy about the arrangement of it. There’s no point in having loads of really cool old synth gear and then drowning it out with big washes of simplistic guitar.

‘Peace’

This is much better, starting a bit like OMD’s excellent ‘Messages’ before revving up the spiritual vibes again. Rather than being Gahan singing soulfully with Gore handling angelic backing vox, this is a straight duet between the two which can be read as the self-determination of recovering alcoholics and drug users who are now clean or a song declaring the end to inter-band arguing. The song has unashamedly massive Beatles-y melodies and stadium sized positivity. The necessary grit is provided by atonal squawks of noise and electro rushes. An album highlight.

‘Come Back’

Gahan’s finest songwriting moment on the album and possibly to date. This is a real piece of drugged up shoegaze, with warm opiate/amniotic fuzz pop guitars that calls to mind the Jesus and Mary Chain, Ultra Vivid Scene and Spiritualized. The lyrical conceit is one that Jason Spaceman from Spiritualized would be familiar with at least - the analogy between a relationship with a lover and a drug. In the background Steiner Parker synths create random misfires of noise and tune. Sumptuous.

‘Spacewalker’

The Eastern synth pop style of this instrumental, made me initially think of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yellow Magic Orchestra but Martin Gore insists it makes him think of Martin Denny. So let’s say that it sounds a little like YMO’s cover of Denny’s ‘Firecracker’ and an interesting piece of retro exotica and leave it at that.

‘Perfect’

Overall Ben Hillier (Doves, Blur, Elbow) has done a grand job on Sounds Of The Universe. He has grasped the overall concept of finding spirituality in science and physics – a kind of religious atheism – and how our expectations of technology have changed over the years by marshalling a combination of bleeding edge technology and anarchic vintage equipment. Trouble is in this instance that this track sounds very much like one or two other tracks elsewhere on the album. The synth chord changes on the verse put this reviewer in mind of Genesis or Peter Gabriel in the early 80s - but in a good way.

‘Jezebel’

More from Martin Gore’s fascination with exotica. It’s easy to imagine the youthful, bleach blond, rubber dress wearing Gore of yore singing this in the manner of a wistful but asexual torch singer. But this almost cabaret number is dedicated to a young woman who (presumably) has a bracing line in the kind of clothing that wouldn’t go down too well in Saudi Arabia.

‘Corrupt’

This opens like a track from Violator complete with Gahan’s lizard croon: “I could corrupt you/it would be easy. / Watching you suffer / girl, it would be easy.” It seems that despite maturity and all, the Mode can still be slightly creepy if they want. Who knows who the ‘intended victim’ of the song is and what she’s done to upset the Basildon boys but this is perhaps a reminder that no matter how old they get physically, we don’t want them to mature too much.

Thnx for reading please do leave a comment.