Album Review

For quite a few years of my life I was a die-hard Depeche Mode fan, discovering them at the Leave in Silence and Everything Counts stage, then again at the (admittedly few years later) Enjoy the Silence stages. It was at this later stage when I started filling-in the gaps (chasms) in my DM collection, and bought all of the albums from the beginning up until that point over the ensuing years.

What I discovered was that Depeche Mode were not (in my opinion) an album band until around 1987 when they released the superb Music for the Masses, an album with not a filler track in site. It was around this time that they cracked America, spawning the massive 101 tour. The prior four albums prove to be at best sketchy, but every album had at least one killer track. The debut album Speak and Spell featured the sublime keyboard work of Vince Clarke (Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure) with beautifully crafted lines of Just Cant get Enough and New Life. Vince departed, forming Yazoo with Alison Moyet and the killer synth lines remained but thats another story. Enter Alan Wilder to fill Vinces shoes and it appears as if DM have a monopoly on inventive keyboard players, as he does a grand job. His debut comes on A Broken Flame which features the excellent Leave in Silence and My Secret Garden.

A number of hits ensue, with the excellent Everything Counts helping to expand their audience, followed by the successful People are People and kinky Master and Servant. Music for the Masses followed a few years later, then the live 101 album which was later to be followed with the career-defining Violator, featuring Personal Jesus, World in my Eyes, policy of Truth and the sublime Enjoy the Silence - which was released in 4 different 12 versions at the time all of which I have, but still prefer the original!

Songs of Faith and Devotion was the last DM album to feature the keyboard work of Alan Wilder, and marked a more guitar-based sound from the band. It was around this time that lead singer David Gahan lost the plot and the rockn roll lifestyle and excesses proved too much he was later checked into rehab.

1997 saw the release of Ultra, which I do not have a good word for interestingly, it only contributes one track to this 18 track album. Exciter followed in 2001, but it felt like (to me at least) that we had seen the best of DM.

I was happily proved wrong with the release last year of Playing the Angel, which spawned the great single Precious and is a very good album, with its Violator-esque moments, and all of a sudden its fashionable to like DM again. They are being cited as influential to many current bands (including the Killers and Placebo), as well as being exceptionally reviewed for this years European tour, even making an appearance on a few Festival CDs this summer and receiving the Best band award at the recent MTV Europe music awards.

This compilation takes in most of these moments in Depeche Modes development, from electro-pop, through electro-cool to a more guitar-based sound and includes the just-released single Martyr.

Its hard to pick my top tracks, as there are so many, but if pushed it would be: Enjoy the Silence, Everything Counts, Shake the Disease and Never let me Down Again.

Despite the number of hits on this CD, which spans 25 years (!) it looks like theres still space for Volume 2 to include: Leave in Silence, World in my Eyes, Higher Love, Halo, Behind the Wheel, Nothing, A Question of Time, Black Celebration amongst others so something else to look forward to!

It should also be mentioned that DM have been with the same record label, the iconic Mute all the way through their existence - which is pretty amazing in the polygamous music world!