Depeche Mode - The blasphemous noises of synth-pop

What do you see when I say "rock"? Each of us associates that word with images that marked us in our youth, and anyone who was a teenager watching Videomusic in 1993 probably has one: the Luciferian face of Dave Gahan against the backdrop of a gloomy castle, flanked by creatures straight out of Cranach and Bosch, in the video for "Walking In My Shoes", directed by Anton Corbijn.

Anyone wanting to retrace the road to hell that led Depeche Mode and their singer to that nightmare would stumble upon a photo album that's at times downright embarrassing. Videos like the one for "Just Can't Get Enough" are, in fact, not unlike those adolescent home movies we're too ashamed to watch again once we've come of age. And yet it's from an innocence like that one can arrive at songs of experience like "Walking In My Shoes": songs of faith and devotion.

Depeche Mode, from Basildon in Essex, near London, were indeed leading exponents of electropop, but their career also saw an evolution from a breezy, soft sound to dark, anguished atmospheres, with the turning point coming in the early '90s.

The story of one of the key bands of British synth-pop begins in 1977, when Andrew Fletcher and Vince Clarke meet Martin Gore and together found Composition Of Sound, a name they would (thankfully) change a few months later, when the three felt the need for a frontman, found in a young man trying his hand, in a local venue, at a cover of "Heroes" by Bowie. Dave Gahan's warm voice joins the group, which decides to abandon acoustic instruments for good to devote itself full-time to synthesizers and electronic music. The main reference point for early Depeche Mode is decidedly Kraftwerk, and the success they enjoy during their first live shows prompts the band to look for a label that can release their early work.

When he sees them perform in a venue with synths propped up on makeshift stands, Daniel Miller of Mute is struck by the quality of the first song, but expects that, as in so many other cases, it's just the classic knockout opener from a band with only one card to play. But when a second song follows, and then others, all at the same level, the deal is sealed: thus is born a partnership without which the history of Depeche Mode would not be what we know today.

In 1981 the first single, "Dreaming Of Me", produced by Miller himself, is released. After the release of the second single, "New Life", Depeche Mode realize that their rise to success is becoming real. They therefore quit their jobs, after performing on the famous BBC show "Top of the Pops". It's the third single that gives Mode their definitive push, with "Just Can't Get Enough" reaching number eight on the English chart. The song is the band's first classic, with a very simple, catchy melody (it would also become one of the main anthems of early-'80s gay discos). Their official album debut follows in October 1981.

Speak And Spell (1981) is a collection of shameless, irresistible electronic pop songs. From the chanted hooks of "Boys Say Go!" and "Puppets" to the more measured "No Disco" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!", it's a parade of rubbery, danceable rhythms and synths gleaming like neon lights, a distillation of pure pop melody with no pretension or intellectual trappings: pure fun, and that's nothing to apologize for.

The absolute peak is the majestic disco vertigo of "Photographic", destined to stay stuck in many listeners' ears, including the Bluvertigo of "Altre forme di vita".

After the tour, a split occurs between Vince Clarke (who goes on to found Yazoo) and the rest of the band: with the group's fate uncertain, Martin Gore (already the author of two songs on the debut album) decides to take on the role of main songwriter.

The result of this leap into the unknown is a little gem like A Broken Frame, from 1982. The first side is the more striking of the two, opening with the slow beat and solemn, romantic atmosphere of "Leave In Silence", then moving through a dense autumnal melancholy all the way to the misty haze of the single "See You". This track too, catchy as it is, is steeped in a taste for nocturnal moods that had only been hinted at before, transfiguring its simple teenage lyrics into something far more intriguing. Above all, Gahan's voice, already deeper and more baritone here, fits perfectly with these new sonic surroundings: this is the birth of Depeche Mode as we know them.

The most innovative part of the album, though, lies in the hard-edged sounds and pulsing rhythms of "Monument" and "My Secret Garden", as well as the romantic nocturnal rush of the instrumental "Nothing To Fear". The second side leans closer to the "lighter" Depeche Mode of the debut, as in "The Meaning Of Love", but is destined to close with another anthem of teenage spleen, the sweet sonata of "The Sun and the Rainfall": the warmth of Gahan's voice against the chill of the electronics, romantic love dressed in plastic and latex, exactly as the Eighties demanded.

The suspended melancholy of this album won't be repeated, because the band, amid an almost unbroken run of hits (including the shamelessly crowd-pleasing "Get The Balance Right"), would go on to chart a path of constant evolution on albums like Construction Time Again in '83 and Some Great Reward the following year. One of the key traits of this process is the steadily sharpening rhythmic element, with the addition of pounding drum machines and disorienting metallic textures. These elements stem from a taste for "found" sounds and a proto-sampling practice borrowed from industrial music. Crucial to this shift was the arrival of Alan Wilder as arranger and sonic architect of the band (as well as writer of some of the songs).

Tracks like "Everything Counts" and "Master And Servant" manage to carry these innovations into the realm of the dancefloor single, producing that sense of estrangement which is the hallmark of the best pop music: sonic experimentation paired with choruses made for singing along. The irresistible melodicism of their early days is never betrayed or called into question — if anything, it's enhanced by sounds that are fuller, darker, sexier. A golden formula for a band that would manage to make commercial success and artistic quality coexist, much to the annoyance of detractors and rock-classicism purists alike.

Construction Time Again is undoubtedly a pivotal moment, as is clear from the opening "Love In Itself" which, despite being a single, boasts a more physical sound, a more complex sonic construction, and a darker atmosphere than anything the band had done before. Pop is distorted and complicated by murky post-punk moods, especially on the slower, more atmospheric tracks. Among these is "Pipeline", a kind of futuristic work song sung by Gore over a slow, martial rhythmic backing, and "The Landscape Is Changing", which is destined to open out into an evocatively dark coda.

"Everything Counts", the album's centerpiece, is instead a pop masterpiece: a sociological essay on the Eighties propelled by an unstoppable synth bassline and a disorienting array of bagpipes, flutes and assorted percussion. Dave Gahan is by now a true showman, and live the song would turn into a collective frenzy: unforgettable is the scene in the "101" video (from 1987) showing the vast crowd at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena raising their arms in unison, led by the singer, chanting the most cynical chorus in history: "The grabbing hands grab all they can/ everything counts in large amounts…".

Some Great Reward shows these changes now fully absorbed, with a band ready to make the leap. "Something To Do" immediately brings in a lush arrangement built from layer upon layer of detail, the complete opposite of the simplicity of the albums made before Wilder's arrival. This stylistic choice proves to be a point of no return, shaping the whole album. Instantly catchy melodies like those of "People Are People" and "Master And Servant" are thus steeped in a cornucopia of effects of every kind, at times downright bizarre, evidence of the sense of freedom felt by a band venturing into uncharted technological territory with no map to follow.

The gamble pays off, and the doors to success open even in the US. At opposite ends of the band's now-broad spectrum sit two other key tracks: the soulful romanticism of the piano ballad "Somebody", performed solo by Gore, and the percussive nightmare of "Blasphemous Rumours", pitch-black right up until the chorus brings a glimmer of light: “I don’t wanna start any blasphemous rumours/ but I think that God ‘s/ got a sick sense of humour/ and when I die/ I expect to find Him laughing”.

In the Nineties, the era of the first four albums underwent a kind of "historical revisionism" at the hands of Gore, who was willing to declare that "the real story of Depeche Mode begins with 'Black Celebration'" and to drop the old songs from live setlists. Now that electronics has become the dominant sound in pop music, there's no longer any reason to take those words at face value, and all that's left is to view these early works as part of what was actually a fairly gradual stylistic evolution.

Yet it's undeniable that Black Celebration, in 1986, marked a decisive turning point in Depeche Mode's music. Gahan's voice grows darker, while retaining the charm it had already shown in a few moments on previous albums. The sound is decidedly more mature, with Gore having learned to deploy the keyboards so as to create dreamlike atmospheres (the title track, "Stripped"), without giving up aggressive riffs ("A Question Of Time") or moments of tenderness ("Sometimes" and "A Question Of Lust").

From the epic crescendo of "Black Celebration" to the desolation of "New Dress", the album offers a dense, layered sound that by now has little to do with electropop and much more, in attitude and sound, with stadium rock. It hardly matters whether guitars are present or not: a track like "Flies On The Windscreen", with its macabre backing of panting vocal sighs, is a genuine negative anthem, the perfect soundtrack for nights out devoted to decadence.

The heart of the album is the solemn liturgy of "Stripped", where walls of church-like keyboards wrap around the most macho, sexy Gahan voice ever heard: sacred and profane, just like in the blues, continuing the line drawn by "Blasphemous Rumours".

The band's "dark" phase continues with Music For The Masses (1987), which contains two of the finest songs of the "rock" incarnation of Depeche Mode: "Never Let Me Down Again" and "Behind The Wheel".

The record has a less pictorial sound than its predecessor, and a decidedly more sculptural one: the basslines seem carved out of marble, while the dense layering of electronic keyboards continues unabated. "Never Let Me Down Again" is a rock anthem made for driving at full speed, soaring every time the pianistic refrain builds over that dense wall of sound. "Behind The Wheel" brings this dark, fatalistic sound back to the dancefloor, while the more measured "Strangelove" offers up a Gahan now damned to surrender to the excesses and sins of the night.

Depeche Mode had by now made their own that fusion of desolate soundscapes and danceable rhythms that had already powered certain productions by Moroder or "Blue Monday" by New Order, but they were determined to turn electronic music into arena-rock spectacle. The peak of their populist ambition would be reached at the epic Rose Bowl concert in Pasadena, immortalized by D.A. Pennebaker in the video "101".

With this latest record, Mode also begin the era of black-and-white videos shot by Anton Corbijn (future director of the film "Control" about Ian Curtis), strikingly evocative and steeped in dark inspiration. Martin Gore sets the synths aside somewhat to focus on electric guitar, while drums assert themselves forcefully on the new albums.

Depeche Mode are a band that thrives on contrasts and dualisms, one of which is entirely internal to Martin Gore. He's the one who writes all those lyrics full of surrender to sin ("I give in to sin again and again") and purifying impulses ("I'm a firm believer"), caught between sacred love (rather scarce, in fact) and profane passions (in abundance). The other dualism, by contrast, is external: that between Gore the lyricist and Gahan the singer, but also between the former's boyish voice (just listen to "Somebody") and the latter's more "manly" one — innocence and experience coexist in their music, as they do in every human soul.

Not everything is rosy, however: Gahan is in fact struggling seriously with depression and drugs, and the atmosphere among the band's four members is quite tense. All of this feeds into Violator (1990), which nonetheless turns out to be a magnificent record, charged with emotion and packed with hits that would bring Depeche Mode their greatest critical success. We're talking of course about "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy The Silence", but "Policy Of Truth" and "World In My Eyes" also give backbone to a record many consider the band's absolute peak.

Here it's Flood's production that dominates, finally able to steer the band out of the airless rooms of electropop and into a widescreen, Cinemascope-like sound, where played instruments and electronics, warmth and chill, coexist in symbiosis. A prime example is the straightforward arc of "Enjoy The Silence", carried by a simple guitar riff and a light percussive accompaniment, within a warm, elegiac setting that is perhaps Depeche Mode's finest creation. Equally memorable is "Personal Jesus", which opens with a driving bluesy guitar refrain and eventually broadens into electronic textures, while still keeping its tribal, sulfurous pulse: it would even be covered by Johnny Cash. Amid so many grand, booming anthems, though, what truly strikes is the intimate ambient pulse of "Waiting For The Night", where Gore takes center stage.

The English band's golden run continues with another record that's cult status among fans, Songs Of Faith And Devotion (1993), and it's clear, the moment "I Feel You" explodes into violence, that we are now light years away from the band behind "Just Can't Get Enough". The record plays entirely on a fierce dichotomy: on one side, hard-edged tracks where dark electronics and razor-sharp guitars conspire to create suffocating, diabolical atmospheres ("In Your Room", "Rush"); on the other, acts of contrition in which they sing of the desire for redemption through the light of gospel.

What has changed, even more than a sound updated to the harshest trends of the '90s (My Bloody Valentine did not go unnoticed) is the band's attitude, which now seems to live firsthand the dramas and regrets it sings about, in a game where rock's grim mask seems to turn into raw reality.

The most unsettling doubt is that Gahan's descent into the cliché of rock's damned persona stems from a suspicion he harbors about himself: that of being a fake. After all, he is a voice singing someone else's words and songs, a red-blooded rock singer fronting an electronic band built on reproducing real instruments through machines. This would say a great deal about the psychological dynamics that can arise within a pop group, but also about the difficulty — even for its own creators — of accepting electronic music as an authentic, physical form of expression, when set against a rock tradition that had already received its intellectual justification back in the Seventies.

The idea that many of the band's problems stemmed from a psychological issue would seem confirmed by the fact that, after the debacle of Ultra, the balance Depeche Mode achieved in the new millennium was built on the greater confidence of a Gahan who proved capable of writing his own songs, both for albums under his own name (the, not coincidentally, rock-leaning Paper Monsters) and for the band (on Playing The Angel).

What is certain is that the self-destructive pathos of Songs Of Faith And Devotion brings to a close the most interesting creative phase in the band's history.

In '93, Gahan's psychological state, left utterly drained by the mammoth "Devotional Tour", literally shattered as he fell into the grip of heroin. In the summer of 1996, Mode's frontman attempted suicide by slitting his wrists in a Los Angeles hotel. He survived by sheer miracle, but the strain was evident in the rest of the band too, whose breakup was feared — with good reason.

All of this is reflected in Alan Wilder's departure, but Depeche Mode decide to carry on their adventure even as a trio, releasing Ultra in 1997. Unexpectedly, the record is not as faceless as one might expect after the abyss the band had fallen into. On the contrary, Gore's lyrics pair with a mature sound, far removed from the carefree pop of their early days, embracing a range of musical influences, dance included. A case in point is "Useless", whose aggressive riff managed to slot into dancefloors the world over. Other noteworthy tracks include "Barrel Of A Gun", "It's No Good" (also remixed by Paul Oakenfold) and the extremely delicate "Home".

Gahan's personal troubles seem to have faded away, and the band gets the chance to catch its breath, releasing their second singles compilation, covering 1986 to '98.

Depeche Mode are indestructible, and once again ride the crest of the wave with Exciter (2001), an album that by this point has little new to add to Mode's signature sound, yet still achieves international success, driven by "I Feel Loved" and "Dream On", but above all by the sweet "Freelove".

The tour proved that, after twenty years in the business, Mode are still consummate stage animals, a fact further documented by the double DVD "One Night in Paris", capturing a wonderful evening filmed by their friend, director Anton Corbijn.

Between 2001 and 2004, rumours piled up about whether the band would carry on, gaining weight after the release of Gahan's debut solo album, Paper Monsters, and Gore's second solo record, Counterfeit #2 (a follow-up to his first solo effort of the same title, from 1989).

2004 brought Remixes 81-04, a collection of classics from the Basildon band reworked at the decks by several illustrious international names, including Air, Underworld, Goldfrapp, Timo Maas, Portishead, Kruder & Dorfmeister. The result isn't entirely satisfying, not least because the sheer bulk of material (a triple CD) invites dispersion, though something of value survives. In any case, it's the album that brought Depeche Mode back into the public eye, winning over new generations of young fans with a rockier, more aggressive version of the immortal "Enjoy The Silence", featuring Linkin Park's DJ Mike Shinoda. Air aside, Remixes 81-04 mostly feels like a superfluous entry in the trio's career, one seemingly spent after giving so much across two decades.

The surprise, instead, comes with Playing The Angel (2005), a well-crafted, remarkably cohesive album where Depeche Mode once again manage to pull out a handful of high-potential singles that, as expected, climb straight to the top of the charts. New stimuli and genuinely fresh ideas mean that the Basildon band's eleventh studio album once again reveals their knack for marrying commercial success with artistic quality. Memorable moments include the delicate "Precious", which plays like a new elegy to "Enjoy The Silence", the electronic blues of "John The Revelator", and "Pain That I'm Used To", where minimal electronics are ravaged by bursts of cacophonous distortion. Presiding over it all is a mature, commanding Gahan, able to lend meaning even to the album's weaker tracks.

Fuelling the hype building around the English trio were a massive tour and a video, "Martyr" (the single that followed the album), which retraces their quarter-century-long career.

2007 saw the release of Gahan's second solo album, Hourglass, which only confirmed how irreplaceable the singer's voice is, while the sonic formula of the absent Gore and Wilder is cloned down to the smallest detail. The songwriting yields good results on tracks like "Saw Something", "Kingdom" and "Use You", all more or less harking back to the band's golden period, while a track like "Endless" wouldn't look out of place on a Depeche Mode record, even sonically.

More than twenty years after their debut, Depeche Mode's style still sounds full of vitality, despite the many troubles Gore & co. have faced along the way. The English band has managed to keep a steady presence in the charts, pairing musical evolution with enormous commercial success. The blending of genres, together with the preservation of an unmistakable sound, is one of the band's greatest achievements, and reasonably places them among the most important acts straddling the late Eighties and early Nineties.

Depeche Mode repeatedly risked becoming relics of a past remembered with little fondness, but while they stood firm album after album, the pop world gradually fell in line with their vision — so much so that today, after the success of records like those of Daft Punk (the Tarantinos of pop?), no critic would dream of holding any prejudice against their brand of electronic pop. After the money, then, came the one thing that had always truly eluded them: intellectual approval.

It's a shame, though, that on Sounds Of The Universe (2009) Gore and Gahan shift their focus. The new album's core idea is to pay tribute to 70s/80s futurism: synths and vintage gear, "spacey" sounds, a sense of infinity. Launched by the single "Wrong" — a short, blunt, radio-friendly nihilist anthem — the record chases atmosphere above all else. The retro, robotic flavour of the synths unfolds across airy midtempo tracks like "Fragile Tension", "In Sympathy" or "Come Back", where melody is merely a vehicle to let the sonic structures stretch out. What's missing, however, are the flashes of genius, the craftsman's touch, that once made Depeche Mode such fine interpreters of their era. What's left is a form devoid of vitality, ultimately hollow. So it feels pointless to pile up organ, beats, guitars and keyboards in the initiation chant "In Chains", or to drift through an astronaut's past in the bland instrumental "Spacewalker".

The better tracks turn out to be the more distant ones: "Hole To Feed", with its more jagged gait, or the ballad "Jezebel", a gloomy Sixties-style romanticism penned by Gahan. A couple of obvious b-sides ("Little Soul"), a misfired single (the overwrought "Peace") and little else round out an album undone by misplaced ambition, among the worst in the English band's discography.

Preceded by the single "Heaven", an intense ballad with rock undertones, 2013 brought the new album, Delta Machine. Not even the already well-worn electro-blues sounds of the sensual "Slow" and the closing "Goodbye" are enough, though, to stop listeners realising that Depeche Mode are still far, too close stylistically to their more recent work. Here Dave Gahan steps in, describing the album as the closing chapter of a trilogy made with producer Ben Hillier, begun with the acclaimed Playing The Angel and continued with the Sounds Of The Universe that had instead left pretty much everyone disappointed.

Even this time the result, while an improvement, is far too cerebral and too little driven by instinct. Gore's bow seems to lack the stadium-anthem grandeur of old (lush orchestration alone isn't enough to give backbone to "Welcome To World", a rather flat opener, in truth), the right dose of pathos (smothered in an "Alone" whose potential goes largely untapped, and only hinted at in the timid "The Child Inside", almost a torch-song beamed in from space), and genuinely complete, liberating melodies to offset such an industrial, claustrophobic backdrop. If the previous album's debacle is nonetheless avoided, it's mostly thanks to the drive and aggression of tracks like the possessed invective of "Angel", the urgent "Soft Touch/Raw Nerve" and the new single "Soothe My Soul" — this one, indeed, cadenced like "Personal Jesus" but in a more synthetic guise, and let down by its unfortunate placement near the end of the tracklist.

Curiously, the blow to the blond songwriter comes from Dave Gahan's own pen: as has become a recent tradition, three tracks bear his signature, and this time, though none are outstanding, they risk being the best of the bunch: the nervy "Secret To The End", with its fine interplay of choruses, among the most hook-laden moments on the album; "Broken", which, without slavishly recycling any one specific old track, is paradoxically the sonic quintessence of Depeche Mode; and "Should Be Higher", which finally shows a bit of heart beneath the steel armour.

The group's two minds, in short, are starting to complement each other again, as is only fitting after all these years, and one has to wonder why Gore and Gahan never try writing their songs together. Along with the choice of a new producer, that could be the spark needed to help Depeche Mode rediscover a melodic freshness that, all too often these days, they seem willing to set aside in favour of a sonic framework so perfect and so cumbersome that it inevitably comes across as beautiful, yet soulless.

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