DEPECHE MODE at Molson Amphitheatre, Sunday, September 1. Rating: NNNN
Depeche Mode’s whole scheme to reinvent themselves as something like a stadium rock band come off a bit weird.
I mean, imagine being a rock musician in the late 70s, early 80s, when the sort of electronic synthpop Depeche Mode ply was ascending. Imagine the anxiety of thinking that this is the way music is going: that there would be no guitars, no drums, no analog anything save for the gloomy croons of well-dressed singers with floppy haircuts. Like remember when Neil Young made Trans because he believed that this was the case? That electric guitars were a thing of the past? It was a weird moment in the history of popular music. (Or must have been. I was too busy not being born yet to know for sure.)
The squealing urgency of 80s punk music was a reaction against the hegemony of electronic music, against Depeche Mode. So seeing the band, 30 years later, playing with a live drummer, and projecting video of foppish songwriter Martin Gore strumming a box guitar on Pain That I’m Used to like he’s friggin’ Jack White, well, it can scan as a bit…annoying. It develops a sense that the band doesn’t really believe in what they are, i.e. that they don’t think being an electro bands that cranks their music (their incredible, sad, beautiful, truthful music) out of keyboards and drum machines is a worthwhile thing to be. So why should we believe them?
Anyway it’s about the music, right? And there’s no point getting too wrapped up in the mercurial self-images of millionaire pop stars. This probably holds true even if the pop songs these millionaires write are so goddamn good that you want very badly to call them “art” if only to kickstart some debate about what the word even means, about what qualifies as art, and if there’s even a thing called “art” and if there is then why can’t art be Black Celebration of Policy Of Truth (two of the best songs ever written, both played last night, one after the other: incredible). Maybe it’s more about ego than with Depeche Mode feeling uncomfortable in their own shimmering skin. They want to be not just the world’s greatest electronic band, but the world’s greatest rock band.
The band made a pretty convincing run at the title at last night’s Molson Ampitheatre show, playing a lengthy, carefully curated set to the sold out, slightly rain-slicked crowd. (Sadly, the sky didn’t break until after a stripped down, vocals-only version of But Not Tonight, with its celebrant verses of “Oh god it’s raining/ And I’m not containing/ My pleasure at being…so wet.”) Songs plucked from this year’s totally OK record Delta Machine (Welcome To My World, the prowling, Nick Cave-y, Angel) opened a show which mined the band’s back catalogue for hits and rearrangements, like the barebones But Not Tonight or a similarly peeled-back version of Personal Jesus that had the full band kicking in to join singers Dave Gahan and Martin Gore part way through.
Plenty of space was afforded for Gore to sing solo. It seemed to punish an audience that came to dance around in the mud, not hear the band’s semi-tragic second-fiddle assert that, yes, he’s the real genius of Depeche Mode, despite Dave Gahan’s more robust vocal range and writhing club kid dance moves (for a while Gahan was just spinning around with his hands above his head, like a flesh-dreidel caked in clotted mascara).
Gore’s solo efforts always seem to test a band’s ability to suffer its own maudlin shtick. A song like Policy Of Truth is brilliant because it nests its withering message – life, and especially relationships, wouldn’t be so difficult if people would learn to lie to each other you’re not getting points for hurting people with your selfish honesty – inside of a banging club dance track. That real emotion, nasty and dark, bleeds through the ostensibly inhuman beeps and boops is precisely what makes Depeche Mode a great band. It’s why people like them. Uncouple the lyrics from the complex, hypnotic instrumentation and Gore’s verses play in places like bad Morrissey.
Otherwise, the move between new material, standards and live remixes was welcome, proving the band’s unparalleled ability to deliver a crowd-pleasing show while still fucking with that crowd’s expectations. Even the egotistic indulgence and experimentation works. They’re Depeche Mode. They can do whatever the hell they want. And get away with most of it.
