Always a fixture on the flashback lunch hours on the radio stations of my childhood, the promise of a ‘best of’ Depeche Mode compilation – only cool if it includes the songs you like and in the order you want – is pretty awesome. Who among us doesn’t like a little “Enjoy The Silence”, “Just Can’t Get Enough” or “People Are People”?
Most of it works - the grouping of “Just Can’t Get Enough”, “Everything Counts”, “Enjoy The Silence”, “Shake The Disease” (The Silversun Pickups must be fans – just listen to the intro of “Dream At Tempo 119”) and “See You” (who’s adorable? A young Wham! dancing Dave Gahan is, that’s who) play nicely together. As does the middle section of the eighteen tracks of The Best Of Depeche Mode – Volume 1: “Strangelove”, Grammy nominated “Suffer Well” (the first DM song in twenty-six years written by Dave Gahan), “Dream On”, “People Are People”, The requisite ‘best of’ One New Song - a strategically placed Reznoresque-She-Wants-Revenge-snapshot-of-2005, “Martyr”, and from Songs Of Faith And Devotion “Walking In My Shoes” and “I Feel You” - Gahan never sounded so much like Priscilla Presley’s “Personal Jesus”.
At first it’s a tad jarring, (but later funny after numerous listens, kind of like the Annuals musical performance on Conan O’Brien), to open with Depeche Mode’s Brandon Flowers-style one raised eyebrow 1989 song “Personal Jesus” as a lead into one of their lightest works, 1982’s “Just Can’t Get Enough”. Gahan’s voice not yet deepened to its full baritone, it almost doesn’t sound like the same singer, but a quarter of a century will do that to a sensitive soul. “Just Can’t Get Enough” was the last song written by Depeche Mode’s primary songwriter at the time, Vince Clarke as he left the band in’81, making room for a foppish puck Martin Gore to take over as the bands scribe (and piccolo player on “Everything Counts” – see video, it never gets old). Later “Precious” – a sentimental synth waver Gore wrote for his daughters and son after his divorce from their mother leads into “Master And Servant”. Alas, another poor choice in song placement. I just want to feel clean again.
The first album after Gahan’s suicide attempt and subsequent rehab, Alan Wilder’s departure from the band, and Martin Gore’s recurrent seizing, Ultra went to number one and the Anton Corbijn directed video for the first single, “Barrel Of A Gun” ensured people wouldn’t forget why they love a glam-unbalanced Gahan (they didn’t call it Depressed Mode for nothing.) From Ultra “It’s No Good” is included, but “Barrel Of A Gun” - a song that encapsulates that time in the bands history better, is not. Some Great Reward’s “Blasphemous Rumours” is another song that’s noticeably absent.
After Depeche Mode brings it like das Melotron try to, and throws down a before and after portrait of heroine addiction (“See You” leads into “It’s No Good”, this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?) The Best Of Depeche Mode – Volume 1 closes the same way many of their 1988 Music For The Masses live shows (and Documentary “101”) did – with Gore’s Leopold-Loeb themed “Never Let Me Down Again” (“I'm taking a ride with my best friend/I hope he never lets me down again/He knows where he's taking me/Promises me I'm safe as houses/As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers/Never let me down”.) |