LIVE REVIEWS

The Forum, Los Angeles - November 21, 1993
The Devotional Tour - Canada, USA and Mexico leg

"Representing the utmost in musical artificial intelligence, Depeche Mode brings its largely artificial music to the Forum for five nights, capping the U.S. leg of an 18-month world tour.

Sunday’s show was, unfortunately, mediocre, yet at times strangely interesting.

An imposing stage set, which perched the group’s three keyboardists high above singer David Gahan, made Gahan look like a solo artist. His suggestive dancing and crotch grabbing were the highlight of the show, judging from the reaction of the screaming girls in the far-from-capacity crowd.

The concept of capacity may be another mystery regarding this band’s popularity.

All of the concerts are labeled a sell-out, but the hundreds of empty seats Sunday left us wondering: Is the term sell-out being attached arbitrarily to concerts simply for promotional hype?

The show began dramatically enough, with the four musicians silhouetted against sheer curtains that hid them from the crowd as the sounds of their synthetic music pulsed through the PA system. Eventually, they showed their faces and bedazzled the audience with the bizarre video imagery that accompanied many of their songs.

"Walking In My Shoes" featured a woman in a strange bird-like costume, while "Condemnation" started a trilogy of religious-themed videos/songs during which the band was joined by two gospel-tinged background singers.

Keyboardist Martin Gore also played guitar and handled lead vocals on a couple of songs. Towards the end of the show, a drum kit was set up, and group member Alan Wilder provided real percussion, adding energy to the otherwise bland sound.

"I Feel You," from the group’s latest album, "Songs of Faith and Devotion", benefitted from this arrangement."

Adam St. James
L.A. Life, 23rd November, 1993

The following two items review Depeche Mode's Birmingham, N.E.C. gig on December 14, 1993. The concert was performed on the UK leg of the Devotional Tour.

"Thirty seconds in, the shit-fool clapalong is underway. A Basildon lager lad steps out from behind the curtains, begins an awkward, nerdish strut.

"Wooh! Yeah! One time!"

He moves to the front of the stage, spreads his arms into a crucifixion pose. From the stands comes a long, loud, many-throated scream. Here’s something to chew on. Depeche Mode are taken seriously.

"Good evening BirmingHAM!" With a toss of the hair, he slides off his jacket and gobs. More screams. Hands thrown in the air, he starts moving his midriff around, like maybe he’s got lumbago, you know, trying to straighten his spine out. Louder screams.

Oh. It’s supposed to be sexy. Ah.

David Gahan grins the thick, beery grin of a lad who’s just broken wind in the pub.

Martin Gore (the Mode’s creative powerhouse: a poor man’s Julian Clary who rhymes "houses" with "trousers") takes the spotlight; behind him, two video screens. One shows a giant heart, the other a giant crucifix. Oh, ummm, I get it.

Let’s chew on. Berlin. Leather. Jesus. Bondage. HOW MANY MORE TIMES?

There are interesting possibilities buried in the fleshy rolls of "Stripped", "I Feel You", "Condemnation" – the misted shiver of German railway stations, big European chemical conglomerates (Hoechst rock, BASF boogie). The flipside of alienation being a certain brushed artificiality (think of Eno’s plastic tones turning "Heroes" Bowie into the exemplar of tasty, stylish psychosis), and the Mode being from Basildon (in its way a perfect breeding ground for alienation, yet hardly as authentic as East Berlin), these boys are perfectly positioned to exploit that distance, create a blank, PVC ambience that would in theory be unbearably poignant – think of Suede’s saving grace, the acknowledgement of the vacuum that surrounds them, the obsolescence of trying to mean it, maaan. It would be cute, it would not be hackneyed. But, Jesus, they’re trying to do this for real.

Worse: what they’re peddling is alienation chic, the oldest, easiest pose in the book. And they can’t even do THAT properly. The emptiness that pours from the stage of the NEC tonight has nothing to do with alienation, just vacancy; it’s not that they’re tortured by their inability to express themselves, rather that they have nothing to express. As Dave – sorry, David Gahan waddles over to my side of the stage, I squint into the gloom, look deep into his eyes – and hear the wind whistling through his ears.

But nothing can stop the screams – I hate to sound a snob (f*** that, if self-respect equals snobbery then count me in), but when the Mode titled an album "Music For The Masses", they were spot on – these are, in every sense, the masses. They clap their hands above their head and give me evil looks for not joining in, leave muttering "yeah, that was pretty good".

"Pretty good"?! – for all their pomposity, their BIG iconography, what Depeche deal in is simple mediocrity.

"I’ll show no repentance", bellows Gahan, "I’ll suffer with pride…"

The song shudders to a stop. "Alwoight? Aah ya doin’, BirmingHAM?"

Yeah. Enjoy the f***ing silence."

Taylor Parkes
Melody Maker, December 1993

 
Click to enlarge original review

""Mah soouuul’s on fire blah blah blah burnin desiyerr blah blah blah take me higher and higher blah blah blah… GOOD EVENING BIRMINGHAM! Let me see those hands in the air! How y’all feelin’ out there? Alright? I can’t hear ya (cocked ear) Alright?!?!"

Not particularly. After 13 years, Depeche Mode have finally embraced ROCK, and got it WRONG. They haven’t taken individualism, or invention, or drama or emotion: they’ve taken cliché, pretension, pomp, melodrama and bullshit, and flogged its carcass once more.

The Spinal Tap ghosts are threatening to descend from the moment Dave Gahan bellows the first notes from behind a huge opaque curtain intended to show just his huge iconic shadow. But we can see him, through an unfortunate gap in the curtain, preening and strutting in a lime green jacket like a clockwork liquorice allsort. Nevertheless, out he bursts, eventually; down come the curtains, and he and his mic go for a mince up the catwalk. The man once cruelly dubbed ‘The Ugliest Man in Pop’ by Smash Hits is now a stadium sex fuhrer of doom rock. He must be, because he rubs his crotch, wiggles his bum and gropes his nipples a lot.

Reservations of a different kind creep in when the other three are revealed, up on high podiums with cornflake-packet futurist silver trimmings, mooging away like your mates in a fifth-form talent contest. At first it resembles a goth Des O’Connor backed by Ronnie Hazelhurst’s avant-garde orchestra, but then Dave discards his jacket to reveal a black bushy dress shirt and boogies badly on the catwalk. He is Marti Pellow’s evil twin and I claim my £20 entrance fee back.

But several thousand don’t. A strange bunch, Depeche fans – chunky lads in jeans, trainers and £23 Mode T-shirts, mostly from the engineering and insurance clerk classes, too square to be indie or dance fans, too cool to unself-consciously embrace pop music. They are cultural anomalies – like the band they’re watching – of a kind that only Britain could create. Everywhere else in the world, Depeche Mode are ‘alternative’ through and through, but here most people are too cynical to forget the simple pop charms of ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ et al, and too sussed to swallow the kind of witless stadium rock pseudery the Mode have now bought into.

Martin Gore is the only one with a hint of style, in admirably camp silver shorts; but he’s effortlessly upstaged by the stage décor – he resembles Tin Tin lost on the set of Flash Gordon – and, more importantly, by Dave (interesting point: what sort of rock icon is called ‘Dave’?). Our perv-beard hero finally gets down to just his sweatbeast vest, and we are momentarily distracted from any games of spot-the-arm-kebabs by the rest of the band adopting drums, guitar and piano for the only fully effective dark stomps of the night: ‘Personal Jesus’ and ‘I Feel You’. The backdrop has wannabe icon silhouettes of Dave in ‘Man at C&A meets Christ’ pose, and two authentically robed black backing singers come on as a last stab for rock cred, and we can just about accept it by now because the music has come good.

And, of course, that’s one thing you can’t deny about Depeche Mode. They’ve never lost the ability to pen a brooding, stirring tune. ‘Everything Counts’ finishes off the evening, reminding us that they can also write a pithy lyric to accompany them occasionally. But it’s a cruel world, and even those talents are not enough to override the misguided avant-garde pretensions, pomp, shabby cultural baggage, confusion, cliché and bullshit this band are wallowing in. An unholy mess, frankly."

Johnny Cigarettes
New Musical Express, 25th December, 1993