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Dec. 27, 2023 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
56:20
Depeche Mode: Sounds of the Universe

Richard Spencer and Andrew Jensen review Depeche Mode’s 12th studio album, Sounds of the Universe (2009). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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I know you know what you're doing to me So this was a curious album.
It's almost like their Obama album of 2009.
Explain? Well, how I would say it is that, first off, it came out in the first year of his term.
There was a...
Conscious effort, and Ben Hillier also produced this album.
And there was a conscious effort to bring in analog sounds.
And I think that probably came about along with the kind of 80s revival.
I mean, people always loved the 80s and to dress up like the 80s and etc.
But it was...
I think, in a way, Depeche Mode was conscious of itself and it was self-consciously trying to re-enter its glory days and not create new music or new sounds like they did with Exciter,
to be honest, which Maybe isn't the greatest album, but is trying...
It's going down a different path, let's say.
And it's also an Obama-era album to the degree that some of the lyrics are a bit...
How shall I say this?
Martin Gore thinks that his lyrics are a little edgier, more shocking than they are.
It's a little safe while playing with danger.
And I'm thinking about Jezebel in particular with this critical comment.
And I think even Sounds of the Universe expresses something about the Obama era.
Now granted, it came on the heels of a stock market crash and there was a lot of doom and gloom.
But there was also a...
The repudiation of the Bush era of hyper-conservatism, the Iraq War, etc., at least in theory.
At least that was the ideal or overall message, etc., was that we're going down a different path and we've elected someone named Barack Hussein Obama.
Isn't that good?
And so I think there is a...
I mean, it's a very Depeche Mode album.
It's analog.
It has an analog feel to some of the sounds, I should say.
Because in many ways, that analog quality is false.
It's not actually an analog album.
That would have been interesting and daring and maybe successful or unsuccessful.
Who knows?
But it's trying to evoke something.
Going for a little bit of that hopeful globalism vibe of 2009.
These are my overall impressions.
I don't dislike this album.
When we started to talk about it, you were like, well, let's make this quick.
Because this is not one of their best.
That's fair.
I do think the album sounds a lot like Depeche Mode all the time.
I mean, I think a lot of the songs are listenable and a lot of the songs are really good and memorable.
I think some of them are kind of deep cut classics, I guess you could say.
But I don't think the album in itself is as interesting as some of the other ventures.
And it's noteworthy that in...
Subsequent albums, they'll go away from, let's try to get an analog sound or something like that, and they'll go to, let's try to get a truly analog sound in the sense of a guitar, or let's go for a blues,
let's go for some Americana, which gels really well with Depeche Mode.
You see that in Music for the Masses or Pleasure, Little Treasure, where they're evoking...
You know, Elvis and Bad to the Bone and all that kind of stuff.
And it's interesting that they left this era of music behind.
When they started to look backwards and not try to find a new path, but were self-consciously going backwards, so to speak, as in spirit.
That they're going to go back to a blues American sound.
And I think this was a somewhat successful, somewhat meh album of rekindling the 80s.
These are my opening thoughts.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I mean, with the opening track in Chains, with the synthesizers starting up, Basically, tuning themselves or whatever.
I definitely get that impression that it's kind of looking back almost to speak and spell, not in the lyrical content necessarily, but certainly insofar as using those old analog sounds.
It just...
The one thing I will give Ben Hillier credit for is on this album and Bling the Angel and Delta Machine.
All three of the albums that he produced, he's steering them in a...
It's not synth pop so much as it is synth rock, I guess.
There is kind of an edge there.
There's some loud guitar and some kind of bended notes, a little bit out of tune.
Even with the guitar.
Yeah, distorted notes, yeah.
But you know what this album's lacking?
I just feel like it doesn't sound fun.
You can say A Broken Frame is their worst album, but it still sounds fun.
I don't know if that's a you thing, that very well might be, but this album just doesn't really sound that fun to me.
What do you think about that?
No, I think that's a totally apt criticism.
It's not a fun album.
I don't know if they've done fun albums.
Yeah, but I'm saying it almost sounds like a job in some ways.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, well, I would like to have that job.
As 9 to 5s go.
Fragile Tension is a great song.
It may not last forever, but always, let's fall away.
Many people don't like wrong because it almost is like a rap or hip-hop song or something.
Like, I was born in the wrong, I was born with the wrong sign, in the wrong house, with the wrong ascendancy.
I led to the wrong ascendancy.
I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason, and the wrong mind, on the wrong day, on the wrong week.
He's the wrong man with the wrong technique.
Wrong. Mom!
The only thing I would say is that I like almost every song on the album.
I even like Jezebel.
I like Corrupt.
Perfect. I get it.
That's what I said before.
It's like an album of classic deep cuts.
There's no...
I mean, even Wrong, which was the initial single, is...
And as one of their more kind of poppy songs that they produced in at least a decade, even that I don't really think is a classic.
It's kind of like a B-side or a deep cut or whatever.
But, you know, there's some...
I don't know.
There's some really good things on this album.
Fragile tension, they went analog in the sense that in the opening bars of that, I could hear bells being, it's like they were striking a cowbell or some kind of percussion instrument.
Lines Is going to shine Shine out so bright
I'll just go delve into my snobbery again listening to it on vinyl getting close to the speakers really getting kind of overwhelmed by the sound you hear these things that when I'm just listening to it with my you know junky kind of airpod headphones while at the gym you know you just don't listen to the detail and there's some interesting details that come out of that analog Ethic that they're putting forward.
And I guess also, even with something like Fragile Tension, it's a great song.
It's cool.
I like this just weird chord that they go to.
Oh, no, no, excuse me.
I'm thinking of Little Soul.
This weird chord that they read.
I might have been thinking about Little Soul.
When you're talking about the bells, yes.
Maybe that's kind of telling that I'm...
mixing up the songs my little soul will leave a footprint I'm
sharing the universe that's focusing itself inside of me the singularity
I'm channeling the universe that's focusing itself inside of me.
A singularity.
And it does this like...
I don't know exactly what chord it's doing, but it's really reminding me of Everything Counts or some other things where it...
Just totally changes key.
It goes from C-sharp minor, and then it throws in a C-major chord.
Just this wild...
Not technically a key change, but just a really unusual chord.
And I like it.
It's all very...
It's all listenable.
It's all classic Depeche Mode.
But then there's nothing...
There's nothing as kind of...
Edgy and in-your-face as, say, master and servant.
There's nothing as iconic as Enjoy the Silence or People are People or any of that kind of stuff.
And I think a lot of the times the lyrics are, you know, good, but maybe really lacking something.
Lacking just that kind of turn or something you're expecting.
Like, Jezebel is an example where, you know, again, they're evoking biblical themes, which is very Martin Gore.
Although, here, the Jezebel is just kind of like a, you know, as they said in 2016 or in the 2017 Women's March, like a nasty woman, you know.
They call you Jezebel whenever we walk in.
You're going straight to hell for wanton acts of sin, they say, and that I'll have to pay, but I need you just this way.
So it's a girl who's maybe a little dangerous, a little loose, maybe a little bitchy, maybe unstable, maybe suffering from borderline personality disorder.
We don't know, but she's not really the Jezebel of the Bible.
And then you get to the chorus and it's open their eyes to the beauty.
Open their hearts to the fun.
That's clangy.
open their minds to the idea that you don't own someone.
They call you Jezebel for what you like to wear.
You're morally unwell.
They say you'll never care for me.
But what they fail to see, is that your games, Father King?
Open their eyes to the I
mean... I would respect this song if Martin Gore was actually talking about owning someone, in fact, because that is a dark, possessive, obsessive thought that's actually interesting.
And the thought of not owning this sexy girl with a dragon tattoo and borderline personality disorder...
That's not that interesting.
And that's not pushing...
That's not resisting anything.
It's not pushing up against anything circa 2009.
And so it's just kind of...
You know?
Yeah, totally.
I think it definitely could be a pro-feminist song with that open their minds to the idea that you don't own someone.
Yeah. But he also says Jezebel is morally unwell.
And then he's still...
They say.
They say.
Yeah, so they say.
Yeah, he's challenging the male-subject-female-object dichotomy, but he's saying that he'll have to pay not just for his sins, but literally he might just have to pay for sex with Jezebel,
who I assume is a prostitute.
But the paying for the sex never really escapes the male-subject-female-object dichotomy.
By the way, I think this song is the best song on the album, and I think that the chords are the best, most interesting on here.
They do that typical Martin Gore.
I found out, actually, the term for this, the chromatic median.
So what he does, that I've said before, is going from the one minor to the major or minor minor.
For example, in this song, it's G-sharp minor 9 to B minor major 7. And those definitely clang...
Not clang in a bad way, I'm sorry.
They definitely have this dissonance that Martin is definitely known for in his chord structures.
But overall, yeah.
I think when you mentioned the Obama optimism, the Obama-era optimism, I think that's actually correct.
And I think...
That's part of the problem with this album.
I don't think Depeche Mode is good as an optimistic band.
I think there's more optimism to Dave and Dave songs than Martin's overall, but I don't think that they particularly flourish with this 2009 optimism.
What's funny, though, is that this album is kind of more so the tour is kind of cursed in a way because Dave gets diagnosed with cancer during the tour, gets gastroenteritis during the tour, Fletch's dad dies during the tour,
and they at least miss, have to cancel, six shows.
I mean, one in Athens of them describing how they're leaving people entering the stadium and how heartbreaking it was for them to have to leave the stadium because Dave...
He was basically about to pass out from his gastroenteritis.
But yeah, I don't really care.
There's a few gems, I'll say, overall.
Jezebel, Fragile Tension, and My Little Soul, which to me is rather reminiscent of Little 15 because there's that hypnotic kind of chord sequence back and forth.
her forget The world outside You're not part of it yet And
My little soul would leave a footprint.
I mean, it's...
And that's about...
That's sung by Martin and it's written by Martin.
That's about himself.
Both grandiose and belittling, literally, at the same time.
I think it's kind of perfect Martin Gore because he's been one of the most successful musicians of the 20th and 21st century.
But then you can also always see a certain shyness and boyishness.
I mean, even in his 60s, he seems a little boyish and shy and unsure of himself and weird.
So I think it's kind of a perfect song for him.
But it's kind of a little song as well.
Yeah, it's definitely not single material.
What I think would have been better from this album is if it was just made into an EP.
I'm really trying to be fair.
This is, like I said before, one of my top five favorite bands of all time.
So I'm definitely sympathetic.
They did set the bar extremely high, and I don't say any of this stuff too personally.
I guess it's all in good faith.
But a song like Peace, that just sounds like a really bad hymn that I would have sung in Sunday school.
That just...
Well, that's kind of what they're going for, though.
Yeah, but that's not the Christian inspiration that I necessarily enjoy.
It's too optimistic.
Yeah. I
like songs that Dave wrote, like Come Back.
I do like that, but the lyrics are a little Come Back, Come Back to Me, I'll Be Waiting Patiently.
I feel like I've heard that line in multiple songs before.
It's a little too easy.
Like you've said before, there's some telling not showing in the lyrics, I think.
Do you know what would have been interesting?
I don't know if this was...
I don't know if they were in a way copying a mode of songwriting or they inherently went to this mode on their own.
But one of the things that you notice with Speak and Spell and a Broken Frame...
And with Construction Time again as well, but then they're starting to break out of it, and then by the next album we review Some Great Reward, they've totally broken out of it.
But it's this objectivity.
And I mean that in a very literal sense.
Light switch, man switch.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
Yeah. Light switch, man switch, film was broken only then.
All the night, news tomorrow, dancing with a destined friend.
Filming.
These are the lyrics for Das Modell from Kroffwerk.
So, eins, zwei, drei, vier.
Sie ist ein Model und sie sieht gut aus.
Ich nehme sie heute gerne mit zu mir nach Haus.
Sie wirkt so cool und sie kommt niemand ran.
Doch vor der Kamera, da zeigt sie was sie kann.
So, there's a...
English translation that's pretty rough.
She's a model and she's looking good.
Looking good, right?
Ba-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. It is my model and she's looking
good. I'll take her today.
Seven
It's very simple.
It's 5-1.
It's like they've reduced music because they're taking on a new instrument in a Moog synthesizer and similar things.
They've reduced music down to a kind of basic thing, and there's something...
By being that basic and simplistic, there's almost a kind of arty or ironic quality to it.
But she's a model and she's looking good.
I'd like to take her home.
That's understood.
That's not quite the translation, but I guess they need to make it rhyme in English.
She plays hard to get.
She smiles from time to time.
It only takes a camera to change her mind.
Sie trinkt in night-nachtclubs.
Immer sagt korrekt.
Und hat hier alle Männer abgeschickt.
She drinks only champagne.
Correct. So what I was saying, it's like a hard description of a model.
And there's a kind of wry irony going along with it.
But you don't quite know what to make of it.
So
The white house, the white room, the program of today.
Light on, switch on, your eyes are far away.
The map represents you and the tape is your voice.
Follow... The map represents you and the tape is your voice.
Follow all along until you recognize the choice.
Now, I don't quite even know what that means.
The map represents you and the tape is your voice.
I think that's actually a kind of interesting sentiment.
Kind of a, you know, simulation, similar acronym sentiment.
But bright light, bright light, dark room, bright light, dark room.
And it's describing photographic and there's this, again, this kind of like distance objectivity in the sense of a literal description of an object in a certain kind of irony, maybe even a little bit of an obsession.
Like when you hear a song like Das Modell or Das Model, I guess they might say, it seems almost like someone in the crowd looking at this woman.
And obsessing about her, but not having her.
And describing her.
It's scientific detail.
Almost kind of creepy or stalker-ish.
But I mean that in a good way.
That gives the lyrics a little edge to them.
So they're not childlike simplicity.
It's not like a child on a xylophone saying, she is a model and she's looked...
That would be, in a way, stupid.
But when they're doing it in the way that Crawford does it, it becomes arty and distanced and poetic, even.
And I think Depeche Mode achieved some of that quality.
But with this album, they don't go back to that.
I mean, that would be interesting.
I think you almost have to go all in if you're going to do something.
Back to the 80s stuff, you have to go really far back to the 80s and kind of try to figure out what made you as a band instead of kind of bringing in a lot of stuff about Depeche Mode that's good and cool,
but that we've heard before.
Bringing in some, you know, bringing in a little personal Jesus guitar now and again, singing about Jezebel, but...
Basically doing it as a feminist anthem of some kind to the degree that they can be feminist.
And I almost wish if they were going to go down this road and they kept that opening line to end chains where they're tuning the synthesizers to a note.
it's like a 440 or whatever it is *music*
That they would have just gone all the way and not programmed some things, gone super simplistic, wrote lyrics that were similar to Vince Clark's lyrics?
I think that would have been more daring and interesting, and instead we get an album that's kind of a solid B. Maybe a C+.
B. B-.
You know what I'm referring to.
It's just not great.
I would give them a C +, but there's just too many clunkers.
This might be actually their worst album, but before we get to that.
So with all this talk of their objectivity, why the name Sounds of the Universe then?
Is that not one of the most objective titles for an album?
And is it a throwaway?
Is it a throwaway title?
I don't think it would be.
Martin said before about Violator that Violator was, oh yeah, we just wanted something that would sound like heavy metal.
I actually can believe that.
I can buy that.
But with Sounds of the Universe, I feel like you have to sound like Spacey or at the very least.
I think they do.
And I think that's at least what they're going for.
So there's a hidden track after Corrupt.
Where they do the kind of backing of wrong and it's like...
Something like that.
You know, this is what I think they're going for.
you
It's very funny to watch a movie like 2001, because you see what people in 1968 thought that the future would look like, and in fact, we're 20, 25 years past it.
We don't actually go to space stations on a regular basis.
We don't have that cold, detached, but kind of heavy...
Civilized demeanor of a lot of those figures.
A kind of 1950s company man, but in space.
And so it's weird.
It's a past future.
I haven't seen 2001, full disclosure, but I think what you're getting at is that it's like a Jetson-y, correct?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, I can definitely understand that.
I'll get to...
Watching 2001, eventually.
Okay, so with Corrupt, one of the things I noticed, actually, is that it's got an identical, almost identical vocal melody to Where's the Revolution?
So in Corrupt, it goes, I could corrupt you, it would be ugly, they could sedate you, but what good would drugs be?
And this...
And then exploding like higher the second time around.
It's very similar to in Where's the Revolution?
Your government, your country, you patriotic junkie.
It's like that, you know, forgive my singing there, but really, I mean, I didn't notice that until re-listening to this.
I probably like the third or fourth listen.
I was like, wait a sec.
I've heard that vocal melody before.
I could corrupt you.
It would be easy.
Watching you suffer.
Girl, it would please me.
I would touch you with my little finger.
I know it would crush you.
My memory would linger.
You'd be crushed.
You've been lied to.
You've been fed truth.
Who's making your decisions?
You are your religion.
countries. Your patriotic junkies.
Where's the revolution?
Come on, people, you're letting me down.
government, your
Yeah, I don't like that song, Corrupt, that much.
I think the Ben Hillier trilogy, for me, is their low point, just overall.
I'm not even saying it has everything to do with Ben Hillier.
Like I said, I already gave him praise for trying to steer their sound into a synth rock.
It's almost like a new genre.
But yeah, I'm not just the era in general.
I think there were some ones that could have been trashed.
Yeah. So, just to reiterate something, just in case I didn't hammer the nail home.
So, because this song, Corrupt You, it has that kind of spacey music as a hidden track.
You have to let the record play a little bit longer than it comes out.
Much like this is a back-to-the-80s album, it's almost a back-to-the-60s in terms of the analog synth.
If you could only imagine what it would be like to hear a Moog synthesizer in the 60s, it's something else.
What is it?
Wendy Carlos, I believe, who did the music for Kubrick's films.
I say she.
He, at the time, became a woman.
So it's now Wendy.
And he, at the time, she now did these, you know, the first album was hooked on Bach or plugged into Bach or something like that.
He was using a massive synthesizer and basically going back to the classical music catalog.
With Kubrick movies, there's this kind of eerie, weird look at some music that just once you hear it, it evokes A Clockwork Orange.
Might even evoke Barry Lyndon to some, the 70s Kubrick kind of thing.
But there was something just totally alien about it.
And they're actually dealing with a sound wave itself and kind of molding it.
And you could visualize the sound wave in many cases.
I'll patch this up here into one of my output modules.
And I'll try and show you how, with these primitive sounds, we start to get some very musical sounding things.
First of all, here's a sawtooth wave that's coming out of an oscillator, going into a mixer, coming up into what's called a filter.
Which is going to remove parts of the sound, either the top or the bottom part, much like bass and treble controls do on your high fidelity system.
And by hitting a note on the keyboard now, I'm connected up, so I'll hear that one sound.
It's a very low sound.
It's very bright.
If I manually turn this knob, you'll listen to the sound get considerably duller.
Here, it gets very dull down here.
It's very bright here.
Instead of doing this manually, I can do it automatically with what's called an envelope generator.
It generates the envelope, the envelope being this type of motion that I'm...
It's actually fascinating stuff, and it's stuff we've now forgotten.
I mean, when I grew up in the...
When I was a kid in the 80s, when I was like 10, I just had a synthesizer that was...
I don't know, you know, my dad might have purchased for 200 bucks or something, and it just kind of did everything you could...
Play classical music, you play strings, you play poppy rock sounds, like speak and spell sounds, and so on.
But I think they're going for that future past tense.
They're going for what space sounded like in the 1960s.
And I think that's interesting.
I'll give them that.
For corrupt, I think this is written from the perspective of the devil, wouldn't you say?
I could corrupt you in a heartbeat.
You think you're so special, think you're so sweet.
And then you'll be calling out my name when you need someone to blame.
kind of misstep the melody there, but you get the point.
could corrupt you in a heartbeat.
You think you're so special, think you're so sweet.
What are you trying?
Don't even tempt me.
You'd be crying.
I wish you'd dreamt me.
You'd be calling out my name.
*music* When you need someone to name.
*music* I think that's interesting.
*music* I think that's interesting.
This is very Martin Gore.
It's very Depeche Mode Christian.
But then it doesn't really go beyond that basic sense of I'm going to corrupt you.
There's nothing you can do to stop me.
And also you'll be calling out my name.
That is the devil.
And that's all fine and good.
But again, it doesn't really bring me...
Somewhere where I haven't been before.
It doesn't tell me something I don't already know.
Yeah, it is kind of similar to Jezebel in the sense that when I listened to it, I thought it was about a pimp turning out a girl into a prostitute or something.
That's the feeling that I got from it.
But yeah, you're probably right with the devil explanation.
But, yeah, I mean, it doesn't go lyrically or musically to the places that I needed it to go.
Yeah. And, like, hold a feed.
I just can't get over that very terrible music video.
We share something.
I'm sure that you mean the world to me.
When you get what you need, there's no way of loving.
What you have is another home.
We are here, we can love, we share something.
I'm sure that you mean the world to me.
When you get what you need, there's no way of knowing that what you'll have is another hole to feed.
It seems to kind of indicate that we're two human beings, let's fuck.
But also...
It's a story of pregnancy and having a child.
Another hole to feed.
That's exactly what I was thinking as well.
He says on the Wikipedia for this, he says that it's about him trying to fill a hole in his soul.
That's not what I got from listening to it so much as Basically, having a kid out of wedlock, thinking at first that it's a curse, and then kind of later appreciating it as a blessing, or like a burden,
maybe not a curse.
That's the way that I took it.
But with that song, it's just not that good.
It's not single material.
No, and they actually released that as a single as well.
It was kind of like the second single or something.
Yeah. And Wrong is not single-worthy.
I like Wrong.
This was before, I guess, Dave had his health issues.
And I saw them in New York City.
And Wrong played live was just rocking.
And it was better live.
Yeah. It very well could be that, I mean, a lot of songs are better live, I don't doubt that, and they're obviously really good live, but with the actual song on the album, you know what vibes I got was, you know, when he,
the introduction, he goes, wrong, that kind of reverse reverb coming in, the wrong, I got a Phil Collins, I remember, kind of vibes.
And I was just like, this has been done before.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I can't be, I don't think, because...
I kind of like the just variation on a theme of self-deprecation.
Basically, you know, I was born with the wrong sign in the wrong house, with the wrong ascendancy.
I took the wrong road that led me to the wrong tendencies.
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme on the wrong day of the wrong week.
Use the wrong method with the wrong technique.
Wrong. Yeah, I mean, I kind of like it.
I think it's actually kind of catchy.
It just...
The whole kind of, like, wrong, wrong one note.
I mean, it's...
Yeah. I get that.
I totally get that.
But, you know, in that song, something that I appreciate about the lyrics is there's something wrong with me inherently.
Or... And then that's also in Fragile Tension when he's sort of talking about there's something mystical in our genes.
I think this was...
So this was, as far as I understand, the first album that Martin had made sober.
From what I understand, after playing the Angel, he had gotten sober.
And I kind of think that...
Always a mistake.
Sure. I think that...
Well, I mean, kind of seriously.
I've... I've reduced my drinking by at least 50%, if not 70%.
I try to have a glass, a couple ounces of whiskey now and again.
I definitely don't drink every day, and I feel healthier and better.
But if you're a rock star, do you want to live that healthy lifestyle, I ask you?
Don't you owe it to us to go down the wrong path towards self-destruction?
Yeah. I think there was a joke one time.
I remember talking to someone.
It's funny I thought of this anecdote because I was living in New York City at the time this album came out and when I saw them in concert.
I think it was at MSG?
I forgot.
Someone was saying that they saw Billy Idol live, and he just came on stage.
And granted, it was fun, a worthwhile concert, but it just wasn't much of anything.
And he was sober and not cool and badass and sneering and all this kind of stuff.
And I was joking that there was this...
They would meet backstage, and they would talk to Billy Idol, and they'd be like...
Billy, what's going on with you?
It used to be about the drugs and the whores and the heavy drinking, and now you're obsessed with this music!
I think that's true, actually.
If you're going to be a rock star, you've got to be a rock star.
Yeah, and there's something uninspiring about Talking about your...
Obviously, there's something uninspiring talking about how your genes are fucked up and you're wrong inherently, but it just sounds like, oh, I've been reading about my alcoholism and maybe I just have the right genes for this kind of thing.
I think that played into his writing.
I mean, those are two lines on wrong and fragile tension.
I'm not saying he's going to full HPD, but he's talking about his genes and his behavior.
I just was like, did he go to a 12-step program and think that someone told him there at the 12-step program that he's got the genes for this and that's why he does what he does?
I don't know.
I just didn't really care for it.
It was too obvious, too not inspiring.
I might like this better than you, and I wouldn't go down the road you just went down, but maybe it's just because I can remember hearing it live and it just rocking.
I just wish there was a chorus that wasn't just kind of one note, just singing wrong.
But yeah, I mean, maybe that was kind of the point.
Let's make something really monotonous and maybe
simple. It's hypnotizing.
It's hypnotizing.
I know I crumble when you are around.
Sutter, mumble, a beautiful sound Stagger, stumble, shackled and bound In chains In chains
In chains I'm in chains
What are we giving this overall?
You said a C+.
Just because I'm so generous, I'll give it kind of a B-.
Definitely, you know, I almost think we need multiple rankings because there's like, what do I really want to listen to?
And then also, what's important in the overall development?
I think this is a very unimportant album.
In fact, I think it's entirely dispensable.
That is, this album could vanish into thin air due to some weird physical quality of the universe or something.
It just vanishes.
And history would be the same.
Nothing would change.
Depeche Mode would be the same.
Whereas this album is dispensable in the sense that they didn't need to make it, but it might be a slightly better album.
To some than a broken frame, but a broken frame, they needed to, they had to make that.
Exactly. They would have been done.
Yeah. And is it worse than Delta Machine?
It's close.
I have them both near the bottom, actually.
I have...
I'll be honest, I was listening to Playing the Angel just because I wanted to compare this album to the previous album.
I listened to it once all the way through, and it's a front-heavy album.
In other words, the first five, six songs are good, and then the rest I could do without.
We'll get there, of course.
What I heard about Martin was that...
There were very, very, very few songs that he made that he didn't release.
And I think that he should have not released some of these on Delta Machine and Sounds of the Universe.
I don't know if that's true, but in an interview with the New York Times, he said, oh, he's like, I think there's only one that we never really released that I wrote.
Wrong! *music*
Wrong! Wrong!
Wrong. Wrong.
I was born with the wrong side, in the wrong house,'cause the wrong instead of cheese.
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