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THE
GUARDIAN, 3rd APRIL 2006
[Words:
Dave Simpson. Picture: Uncredited.]
"
Songs
of degradation and dependency are paraded with a sinister, knowing undercurrent
that suggests redemption from either is never entirely cut and dried.
"
Summary:
A brief but unstintingly rave review of the first show at Wembley Arena.
[304 words]
With thanks to Nicole Wevers for kindly supplying a scan of the article.
View pages: page 1
Try
also: "We Still Can't Get Enough" [London
Evening Standard, 3rd April 2006]
"Dave Gahan @ Manchester
Apollo" [Manchester Evening News, 28th October 2003]
When former electro-pop stars Depeche Mode began experimenting with much darker
music in the 1980s, their efforts were slightly undermined by frontman David
Gahan, possibly the squeakiest-looking Basildon boy ever to don leather
trousers. Thus, Gahan got to work. There were tattoos, there were mind-boggling
quantities of drugs, and there was a heart-stopping six minutes in 1996 when
Gahan was clinically dead in an ambulance. [1]
These days, the recovered frontman is probably where he
wanted to be all along. At 44, he’s still youthful enough to don an Italian
jacket and Cuban heels and look ridiculously dapper, but can now sing lines like
“I’ll never be a saint” with a certain added gravitas. The band’s first
UK appearance in five years is packed with such dark edges. A Sputnik-like craft
on stage beams out messages like “terror” and “regret”. Drawing heavily
on 1990’s classic Violator and the recent album Playing The Angel, the set is
surprisingly contemplative. Songs of degradation and dependency are paraded with
a sinister, knowing undercurrent that suggests redemption from either is never
entirely cut and dried.
Whatever forms his breakfast these days, Gahan is still a
devil (literally, according to superfan Marilyn Manson) of a frontman, drawing
gasps when he goes topless and sending female (and some male) hormones racing by
simply touching his belt in a certain manner. The still flamboyant
keyboardist-guitarist Martin Gore wears a pair of black angel’s wings which
tremble appropriately during a wonderfully sacrilegious Personal Jesus. With a
live drummer giving everything a bigger pulse, even the hits seem to glory in
the black heart of their catalogue. Never Let Me Down Again is pounding and
haunting; Enjoy The Silence simmers with evil. However, it is ironic wit not
gravitas that fuels an encore of an early poppy anthem titled (ahem) Just
Can’t Get Enough.
[1] -
It was actually (as if it really makes any difference) only two minutes - once
we got a few years down the line from the event, certain music magazines started
bringing out articles where the time started slowly to creep up. If it really
was six, he'd be seriously brain damaged. [continue]