Depeche Mode

By the mid-Eighties, pop music seemed to have reached a hyperbolic crossroads. The directions naturally reflected the timeless divide between conservatism and the nagging urge to change something. Electropop music (though "synth-pop" would be the more fitting term) seemed to oscillate between the icy Teutonic melodies of Kraftwerk and the genuine, knowing moods of acts like Soft Cell, Yazoo and Human League.

In this ever-shifting scene, marked by an immediate, irrepressible, wonderful creative disorder, Depeche Mode were going through a pivotal moment in their music. In 1985, a year on from "Some Great Reward" and its accompanying tour, Martin Lee Gore was starting to glimpse the end of the synthesizer era and of much of what had, until then, been indispensable to the band's world. The release of their first singles compilation, the logical conclusion of an era, provided the ideal pretext for the Mode's turning point, one summed up in "Black Celebration," rightly regarded by many as the emblem of the Basildon boys' artistic maturity, and their second point of departure. In truth, the electropop phase would carry on in new guises across the following two albums (right up to the surprising rock of 1993's "Songs Of Faith And Devotion"), yet the break with the first four records looks irreversible.

"Black Celebration," the true keystone of the English band's entire output, sits in the dark interlude that would soon ferry the Mode toward more unsettling, melancholic territory. It's hard to believe these are the same authors of songs like "Boys Say Go!," "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Get The Balance Right." The brazen carefree spirit of their early days was giving way to that pessimistic, fatalistic view of the world that would reach its peak in the early Nineties.

The album's troubled making (Gore would later reveal the intense tensions and the barely concealed wish to break up the band during the exhausting sessions) was further undermined by pressure from the record label (which, clashing with the band, preferred "But Not Tonight" over "Stripped" as the first single for the States), and by Gore and Alan Wilder's stubborn quest for a sound that was "always different" (as Andrew Fletcher would explain), exemplified by the three weeks spent perfecting "Stripped" itself. Caught up in the first of several crises that would mark the years to come (the stress brought on by the mammoth 1993 "Devotional Tour," Alan Wilder's departure in June 1995 "due to unsatisfactory working conditions," Dave Gahan's drug problems culminating in his 1996 suicide attempt), Depeche Mode managed to deliver "Black Celebration" to co-producers Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones in January 1986, over four months behind schedule. Even so, it would take another two months - during which, it's said, Gore even considered starting all over again - before the official release.

With such a laborious birth (one that would be echoed by an equally skeptical climate in 1997 on the eve of "Ultra"), few, in fact, were betting on the quality of an album that Gahan himself considered "almost cursed." In reality, though, as music history teaches us, the ingredients for a masterpiece (hints of a nervous breakdown, disunity of vision, an attempt to disown the past, a sudden shift in identity, experimentation) were all present in abundance, and then some.

That something had changed in Depeche Mode's music, in their very soul, was quick to show. The title track that opens the album's dark chambers (the only case in the band's discography of a title also lending its name to the record) somehow foreshadows the murky themes that would dominate their rock period, sketching out the manifesto for the Mode's imminent new era. A grim electronic mood, tinged with Mephistophelian sneers in the background, is the sonic carpet over which Gahan summons the onlookers to a black celebration, drawing on two-channel synthesizers like the ARP 2600 for the bass lines, plus the Oberheim and the Roland Jupiter 8. Within the record's first two minutes (where Daniel Miller drops in a sample of Winston Churchill's famous line "a brief period of rejoicing"), the cardinal points are already meticulously laid out: murky atmospheres, synth-pop reshaped in a darker key, a preference for analogue sound over digital, ascetic predestination, nostalgic or impossible loves, total distrust in humanity's future, the structural decay of every hope.

Demonic whispers also usher in the second track, "Fly On The Windscreen." Another defeatist opening line ("death is everywhere"), a similar setting and, above all, a grim genetic makeup make the song a kind of theoretical companion piece to "Black Celebration." Chance, fate, the possibility of being torn apart as soon as tomorrow by immanent forces chase each other between the desire of the moment (like a nursery rhyme, the chorus obsessively intones "touch me") and the chance that it could all end in an instant, like a fly hitting a windscreen. The song would enjoy a second youth during the live performances of the 1993 "Devotional Tour."

Closing out the preliminary trilogy (the three songs are indeed linked to one another) is the first track sung by Gore, "A Question Of Lust," the episode which, alongside "Here Is The House," forms the most explicit link to the band's recent past. An intense, cinematic ballad, paced by synthetic chimes and carried by another aching lyric. Alongside the sonic evolution, in fact, the record reveals a side of Gore's songwriting entirely different from previous efforts. Against the youthful, lightweight lyrics of "Puppets," "My Secret Garden" or "Pipeline," the writer manages, on "Black Celebration," to set those universal bitternesses that would lay the groundwork for "Violator" and "Songs Of Faith And Devotion." The Eighties legacy is further underlined by Clive Richardson's video for the track.

The brief "Sometimes" (under two minutes) is an anti-climax with a vaguely festive flavor, its lyrics picking up the themes of "A Question Of Lust." An intimate moment (later echoed by songs like "Judas" and "Sister Of Night"), with Gore still on vocals and Wilder on piano. The obsessive, almost pastoral chorus of "It Doesn't Matter Two" leads down twilight slopes paved with bitter resignation ("Though it fell good now/I know it's only for now").

1986 is also the year Depeche Mode met Anton Corbijn, the photographer and director who would soon become a central figure in the band's work. The nervy pop of "A Question Of Time," a genuine classic in the band's catalogue, gave Corbijn the chance to plant the seeds of the visual imagery he intended to build with the group. The song echoes the light and shade of the early synth-pop period, but through diametrically opposite tones. Gahan's powerful, charismatic voice (a notable step up from the uneven performances on "A Broken Frame") reveals the singer's pseudo-rock attitude. Alan Wilder, at ease in his new role as sound engineer alongside Gareth Jones, crafts singular, powerful moods that thrive on a strange, shadowy symbiosis.

The famous "Stripped," track number seven, confirms the extraordinary nature of an album written with extreme perfectionism. "Stripped" could well feature in the textbook of the perfect pop song, thanks to its majestic crescendo and its foolproof chorus. For the Mode, the Eighties truly seem to be already over. Save for a few exceptions (various songs on the following "Music For The Masses"), the band's sound would from here on tilt toward dark, dusky landscapes. A car engine starting up over an almost industrial mechanical loop is the opening of one of the Mode's many immortal tracks, a band that would go on repeating its gift for building fabulous sonic machines in the near future ("Enjoy The Silence," "World In My Eyes," "Walking In My Shoes," "It's No Good").

The band's versatility, and the toll taken by the historical period in which "Black Celebration" came to life, are summed up in "Here Is The House", a track heavily influenced by the sound of Duran Duran. For a moment, Gore's frosty pessimism finds reason to soften around the domestic hearth (a theme the songwriter would revisit in 1997's "Home"). Yet it's nothing more than an illusion, as the following "World Full Of Nothing" and "Dressed In Black" dutifully file those dreams back in their drawers.

The epilogue, "New Dress", seems to foreshadow the dusty rhythms of "Personal Jesus". Closing out the album (on the compact disc version) are a remix of "Stripped" ("Breathing in Fumes"), an alternate version of "But Not Tonight" (a track included on the soundtrack of an obscure American film, "Modern Girl") and the gorgeous "Black Day".

The creative idyll between Gore and his bandmates, kicked off precisely with "Black Celebration", would magically (and painfully) carry on for a long time to come. After the album's huge critical and commercial success, Mode returned the following year with "Music For The Masses", which wouldn't stray too far from its predecessor, and then, at the dawn of the Nineties, with another masterpiece, "Violator". The turmoil of the decade just ended would raise the band's internal tensions to the power of three, pushing events onto a far graver plane (Dave Gahan's self-destruction above all). Still, no amount of outside speculation can strip "Black Celebration" of its credit for having made a rather decisive contribution to the evolution of pop music.

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29/10/2006