In praise of...Music for the Masses by Depeche Mode

Seriously, that was a plummy spew of love, and I don't say that lightly.

Still, I prefer Black Celebration--it has that goth Liza Minelli thing you just can't find enough of these days.

"pimpf" really is a pretty silly song, though.

I always thought Little 15 was about a mother and daughter, with the mother wanting to recapture her youth through her teenaged girl.

er, francs euros, i meant. jesus, i'm a twat sometimes.

PEEEEEMPF

HOOOOO

PEEEEEEEEEEPMF

HOOOOOOO

PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMPF

really? how so? it sounds fine to me.

Violator
Music For the Masses
Ultra
Black Celebration
Speak and Spell
Songs of Faith and Devotion
Some Great Reward
Construction Time Again
Exciter
A Broken Frame

hey now, this may be true Ned, but if i'm remembering rightly this album was the first real use on DM records of any "guitar parts" full stop? and Martin was actually still learning to play i think, so it may have been basic as much from ability as intention. can't argue with the end result in any case though.

but, ah this just reminded me of some friends back in the day who always sang pimpf as "more..... beeer". brain surgeons, them.

Martin learned how to play guitar when he was ten or so. ;-)

By all accounts Martin composes most of his songs on acoustic or electric guitar, and he's well known for apparently always having a guitar with him or nearby, so it's not like he's afraid of the darn things. ;-) So in ways that's why I'm impressed with him as a guitarist -- he aims for the killer hook first and foremost, which in large part is why Depeche songs with guitar feature just that hook and nothing more, in that nothing more is needed. "Enjoy the Silence" is the almost paradigmatic example...

yes. absolutely.

I really really dislike those first two albums

i have a soft spot for "speak and spell", although i think the non-album tracks that were later included on the CD (ice machine, shout, the instrumental any second now) are better than anything on the album proper. but there's an oddly beguiling mix of innocence and homo-eroticism about the whole affair that makes it more than the sum of its parts.

and "puppets" is quite simply ace.

i have "a broken frame" on cassette and "some great reward" on badly scratched vinyl, so those are the two i listen to the least (ie haven't listened to in years). the fact i've never bothered to get them on any other format says a lot; that said, my tastes have changed hugely since my early mode-buying days (14 years ago, mostly) so i know i should revisit them. IIRC there was one song towards the end of "broken frame" with an absolutely killer melody; and, as i think i said somewhere else, "precious" reminds me of it slightly.

i still don't own "ultra" and haven't heard it in its entirety. my bad.

You should totally give Some Great Reward another spin, especially for "Lie To Me", "If You Want" and "Stories Of Old".

Strictly speaking I love all the Depeche albums YES THAT INCLUDES THE FIRST TWO but there are those that are clearly a cut above. Ultra is one, Playing the Angel is another.

Still, the good stuff on it is *fucking great* (the singles, THE BOTTOM LINE, Insight ...) so I love it despite its many flaws.

"Freestate" takes forever to get where it's going, but once it gets there, it's great. They could have chopped a minute or so out of "Home", as well.

That's the one vocal on the album which was recorded when he was still in his smack hell. It's edited together from about thirty takes!

I think the only one that annoys me even slightly is "Freestate" because I don't really like it when Gore's recent tendency to become positive 'n' preachy - but even then it's only because it feels like it prepares the way for "Freelove", and yeah, the last half is killer. "Barrell of a Gun" occasionally annoys me because it seems a bit try-hard, but then at other times I love the very same thing about it.

"Insight" is awesome, "Sister of Night" is probably better for that huge synth riff than for the singing, but best of all the album tracks is "The Bottom Line" for me.

No, you couldn't. "The Love Thieves" is the best track on the entire album.

Love the video for the album mix of Strangelove. They look so fucking bored in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yurcWr84s5I&feature=related

Also I love that they're projecting this big heart shape on everything but stretched out it's like they're illuminated by a big nutsack.

Party time is here again!

https://c1.staticflickr.com/2/1560/24707332820_3da1b89669_n.jpg

So, happily borrowing some wording from my first post up there (but it's mostly all new):

http://thequietus.com/articles/23166-depeche-mode-music-for-the-masses-review-anniversary

Awesome piece, Ned.

I too was in Los Angeles at this time, too young to attend anything but old enouogh to have already be absolutely in love with music, and missing the Rose Bowl show was devestating to me at the time. Instead I sat on the backyard patio of my parent's house and listened to the KROQ broadcast of the event. I was bummed but I still felt part of something that was happening.

I don't know about other cities in the world in 1988 but it's hard to understate just how massive Depeche Mode were in Los Angeles at that time. It was Beatlemania when they'd show up somewhere. Even though I'd already become educated in and deeply affected by the entire New Order/Factory/Saville mythos by the time and was mostly consumed by that stuff, Depeche Mode still felt very much a part of everything that was important to me as I was becoming obsessed with music and this album is the sound of that time. In contrast, it took a long time for me to get into 'Violator' because of how minimal, angular, and cold most of it sounded to me in comparison.

Yeah I definitely take the point on Violator's 'cooler' feel -- which may seem strange given "Personal Jesus" and its massive stomp, but I think that also serves the album pretty well in comparison. When I first heard it on the day of release, I remember thinking from the get-go how sharp it sounded at points.

I don't find Violator an angular or cold record at all. There was a bit of a trend of synthpop acts returning to analogue synths in the early '90s. Behaviour and Chorus being a couple of other examples of this.

Well, you're wrong. :-D (I am busy and can't get into this further right now.)

Heh! I agree that the record feels minimal by comparison... Black Celebration and Music for the Masses are quite layered records and there's quite a fair bit going on under the surface, whereas Violator is simpler - not that this is a bad thing.

whereas Violator is simpler - not that this is a bad thing.

This said, I still prefer the many layered and huge sounding approach of Masses over everything else.

I don't agree with the characterization of Violator as "stripped down". It only really describes "Waiting for the Night" and mmmmmmmaybe "Blue Dress". The other 8 songs build and layer in much the same way the songs on Music for the Masses do.

The big difference for me is that Violator is a lot crisper, whereas the previous two albums (and some before) are very reverb-y. Violator is still quite layered though

Violator is still quite layered in places but I think yesca is kinda OTM and that it is much less symphonic and a simpler record than the two albums before it.

Take something like 'Fly on the Windscreen - Final' for example, the mix on that is so dense and there's a lot going on that's buried in there, whereas something like 'World In My Eyes' gets by with a bass synth, percussion and a string synth that either provides the chords but just as often just provides these sustained single notes. Of course, there's things that pop up here and there as the track moves along - the backwards sound going into the chorus or the dink-dink dink-dink's in the chorus itself but bass synth, string synth and drum programming is the core of that track.

Well this is cool -- first time Martin's sung "The Things You Said" in thirty years. In fact, quite literally the first time since the 101 show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLM8BpG-AyY

The newly updated only-3-songs-from-the-new-album idea, is a winner. I got a glum text from a pretty big fan who was at the London show; “Half an hour in, nothing pre-Ultra..” so its good to see there’s been a bit of a shake up.

Great to hear The Things You Said again, easily in my
Top 10.

I think the 101 show is still the last time they did 'People are People', too... their biggest hit thst they don't play.

*that

And for a long time 101 was the last lap for Just Can’t Get Enough too but then they started doing it as an encore in the ‘98 ‘Singles’ tour era. That 101 show was really the end of .. something.

Yeah, it's strange... like, 101 must have felt like the band were at their absolute peak at the time, but after Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion and all the success since then, in the rearview mirror that whole period feels weirdly transitional.

As I muttered in my Quietus piece. :-)