Richard Spencer and Andrew Jensen review Depeche Mode’s seventh studio album, Violator (1990).Sound ReferencesDepeche Mode, “World in my Eyes,” Violator (1990)Martin Gore, “Enjoy the Silence (Demo),” 1989DM, “Enjoy the Silence,” VMTV News with Kurt Loder, 1990DM, “Memphisto,” VMG, “Sweetest Perfection (Demo),” 1989DM, “Sweetest Perfection,” VRobert Tilton, Take It Back Telecast, 1990DM, “Personal Jesus,” VJonny Cash, “Personal Jesus,” American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)DM, "Personal Jesus (Live),” World Violation Tour, Lost Angeles, 1990DM, “Halo,” VDM, “Halo (Live),” WVTTangerine Dream, “Cottage,” Legend (1985) DM, “Waiting for the Night,” V Richard Wagner, “Prelude,” Tristan und Isolde (1865)Mike Shinoda, “Enjoy the Silence (reinterpreted),” Remixes 18-04, 2002DM, “Policy of Truth,” VDM, “Get the Balance Right,” 1983Derrick May, “Dreams of Dreamers,” Innovator, 1996DM, “Blue Dress,” VDM, “Clean,” VDM, “Clean,” Exotic Tour, 1995 DM, “Dangerous,” Enjoy the Silence, 1990DM, “Halo,” WVT, 1990 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
Violator, where were you when you bought the album?
Were you alive?
I was not alive.
I was negative two.
Okay. You weren't a glimmer in your father's eye when this was released.
Well, I remember being a young person purchasing it at a CD store in Dallas, Texas.
I've actually seen some Local news coverage that's been reproduced on YouTube.
We expected 5,000 people at this record store for a guest appearance and 17,000 showed up or something.
That was in Los Angeles, the United States.
After the live album 101, after Music for the Masses, Depeche Mode had broken into the United States.
Avid, obsessed fan base.
And I think the 101 film is kind of limited as that is.
It does express that.
I would say that this is a classic album.
I'm probably a...
Depeche Mode connoisseur would say that Black Celebration is their favorite, if only to be a bit of a contrarian or something.
Depeche Mode's at the top of their game with this album.
It's hard to really beat it.
It's right at that point where the 80s are over.
We don't know what the 90s are going to be.
Depeche Mode band members are reaching their late 20s.
It reminds me a lot, actually, of Octoon Baby, where you two, you know, what are we going to do?
We're getting married.
We're getting divorced.
Should we continue to be a band?
Is it a joke that we're living the rock and roll lifestyle while we're in our early 30s, etc.?
And then they produced this amazing album in Hansa Studios.
I think this is similar as well.
There's confidence.
Willingness to go in new directions.
Willingness to craft the ultimate pop song in Enjoy the Silence.
That's very Depeche Mode and very interesting.
We can talk about that.
Willingness to look to the blues, look to Elvis in particular.
Something you saw in Music for the Masses, but is...
You know, the nail is hammered home here with this album.
And also a kind of eagerness to get creepy and even vicious in a way.
And that's not new for Martin Gore, but if you really look into these songs, World in My Eyes, Halo, Sweetest Perfection, even Waiting for...
The Night to Fall, which could be about a number of things, but it might very well be about suicide.
They continue to have the black-on-black, nihilistic, hard, tough quality to their music, and they've perfected it into an album that was highly successful.
Nothing, at least in the United States, nothing here went number one.
At the same time, Personal Jesus was one of these best-selling singles that it was charting for over a year and so on.
It had that slow burn of a hardcore and expanding fanbase.
I don't have a whole lot to say about the album because I think it speaks for itself.
It is classic, probably considered the best by most.
Has the two most famous Depeche Mode songs outside of Just Get Enough, which is almost like an 80s, you know, fun chestnut party song.
These are the real Depeche Mode songs.
I don't have anything to say until we start diving into the tracks.
On a more detailed level, because I don't think anything more could be said about this.
It's an amazing album.
It's a great album.
It's one of the classic rock albums of all time.
I think there's also a certain confidence expressed by the title itself, Violator.
You know, Fletch mentioned that he thought they were going for a kind of heavy metal album.
Violator, it sounds like rape.
It sounds like the...
The title of a hardcore pornography movie or something.
I mean, or a horror film.
I mean, it can be all of those things.
It's also not a heavy metal album anyways.
But just the confidence to do something like that demonstrates that this really is peak Depeche Mode.
They're mature.
They know what their sound is.
They're branching out, but they're really kind of refining a lot of...
Tendencies that were going on before this album.
So I don't even want to talk more than that because, you know, it's just so obvious this is a great album.
Meant a lot to me when I was a teenager and, you know, means a lot to the band.
I think if you wanted to put one album in a time capsule to capture Debeshma, it probably would be this one.
I'll take you to the highest mountain To the depths of the deepnessy Everyone need a map, believe
me Now let my body to the movie Now let my hands be soothing Let me show you the world in my
eyes That's all there is Nothing more than you can feel now
That's all there is
Yeah, when I listen to it, I just think, like, what a way to enter the 90s.
Now they've reached, like, basically Beatle status.
Well, at least, you could say in America, but at least in Los Angeles.
I mean, yeah.
Like, you were talking about that in-store that they did at this place called The Warehouse in Los Angeles.
Like, with all these girls just, like, attacking them and waiting outside for, like, a day and a half before.
To possibly get an autograph, like, there was just something that they just finally blew up in America.
Hi, I'm Kurt Loder with MTV News.
British synth-pop stars Depeche Mode have a new LP out this week called Violator.
To celebrate its release, the group turned up in Los Angeles for the first time in nearly two years on Tuesday night to autograph some albums for fans at a local warehouse record store.
Sounds like a pretty genteel event, but it turned out to be anything but.
Take a look.
It started out as a fairly standard promotional event.
Depeche Mode was in Los Angeles to autograph some albums for the group's fans, of which L.A. boasts an extraordinarily large number.
Since we've been touring here since 82 or whatever, you know, we've gradually built up this sort of quite hardcore following that just come and see us whenever, and particularly in this area.
The band was launching a new album called Violator with an album signing session at a warehouse record store on La Cienega Boulevard.
And the group knew going in that there'd be a big turnout.
You say, you know, it's a bit daunting, in fact, really, more than anything, you know, and to sign so many autographs.
I mean, we've done some big...
But no one realized quite how big.
By the time Depeche Mode arrived on the scene, more than 5,000 fans were on hand, surrounding the store and forming a line that stretched for 15 blocks.
They spilled out into the street, jammed up against barriers, and crowded up onto the decks of a nearby parking garage.
How long have you been here?
Since Sunday morning!
The signing session got underway at 9 p.m. and was due to last till midnight.
But the security on hand was inadequate to deal with the unexpectedly large crowd.
And after one hour and seven fan injuries, police cleared the area and asked the band to leave.
So very few people actually got to meet Depeche Mode on Tuesday night, but the group will be back before long on a U.S. tour.
It's like this is the album where all the stars align, you know, and where everything gels.
Like, Martin's songs are almost every single song on the album.
Some B-sides are worth a single.
And the production was just perfected with Alan and Flood together.
And I think, yeah, everything is just in perfect harmony.
They're all getting along and each person knows their role and just fits into it perfectly.
And I think that I would put this album up there with the classics of...
Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper's Abbey Road.
All these classic albums that when people talk about music, the police's synchronicity, you name it.
This is up there.
And it's kind of the beginning of the end.
There's a drug theme throughout this album, which is interesting.
Foreshadowing. Yeah, and stripped the...
Chronicle of Depeche Mode, I reread the chapters, you know, around this album.
And they reported that, you know, some say Dave was using heroin, but we weren't sure or something.
That might be true, or that might be a little bit of euphemism.
I mean, a song like Clean, which is about overcoming, I mean, at least at first glance, it's about overcoming drug use.
The sweetest perfection as well.
They're expressing what's going to eventually almost lead to Dave Gahan's death.
Or his death and resurrection, I guess you could say.
And it really was this tour.
What happened in this tour?
He got divorced.
He abandoned his family.
He'll get remarried later on in the 90s.
You know, I don't think it should be sugar-coated.
This is Alan Wilder is talking.
There was a lot of ecstasy around, but I couldn't say that anybody was adversely affected by that.
Apparently, Dave was using heroin, but this wasn't obvious in his performances.
And there was the usual amount of drinking and frivolity.
It was a long tour, and maybe there was a delayed reaction with the cracks appearing later.
Perhaps when it dawned on us that expectation had risen, we would have to try and follow Violator.
This is fame evidently had its bonuses, but for the 29-year-old Khan, a married father, it was weighing heavily on his shoulders.
By the time the tour ended, he had changed from the home-loving individual, as he described himself, to one who had walked away from his wife and child in search of a different life, effectively mirroring his own father's destructive behavior some 25 painful years
you.
Gahan, and this is...
I should mention this.
Having positioned himself over 5,000 miles away from his five-year-old son and heir, Dave cemented the move by taking up with the vivacious Teresa Conroy, who, according to the Internet Movie Database, had appeared in several hardcore pornographic films under the name Terry before accompanying the band across America.
As press liaison officer on the 1988 and 1999 Treks.
Looking back at his rash American move, Gahan admitted, I fell in love with a girl during what was the Violator tour.
So there was that.
And I always wanted to live there.
I brought up the idea of moving to California and trying something different.
I was really bored and really safe, Gahan told Times, Paul Connolly, 2001.
I felt really safe in my life in England in a lot of ways, and I didn't like it.
There I was with a loving, caring wife, a new baby, a big house in the country, a couple of cars in the drive, and it just didn't feel right.
I wanted to move to California, but Joanne didn't want to.
Gahan's anguish was further compounded by his estranged father's untimely death.
My dad died in 1901.
I think he liked to drink.
She only had a couple of pictures of him, but one of them was him in a pub.
I thought, yeah.
That's my old man, alright.
So you see a pretty conventional story, actually, of self-destruction that's happening throughout this tour and that is also expressed in the lyrics of the tracks.
All of these songs, including the B-sides, are written by Martin Gore, but they seem to capture the milieu of what was going on.
I think one of the things about The album is that it's many things, but it's peak Depeche Mode because it's sexy and pervy and bold.
It's hard to review the album, like you said, because all you want to do is just listen to it and not really analyze it.
When I was listening to it earlier today, I was just starting to bob my head and just get into it, and I was like, oh wait, I have to actually analyze these lyrics here and think about it.
I think what makes it such a classic album, too, is that it's extremely listenable without selling out, without any compromise.
It's the album that I think every type of person, like a metalhead or a punk or new wave or whoever, could like this album.
And that's basically been my experience, is that when I've shown this album to friends who aren't even into synth pop, they're just...
Run-of-the-mill rock-and-roll fans, they really like this album.
There's something just accessible about it.
I think one thing that they're doing, though, is they're getting a little bit away from the industrial stuff.
It's not construction time again whatsoever.
There's not a lot of clanging ashtrays against the wall or whatever.
But it is almost like a hard dance and house-ish sounding.
Yeah. But I think that...
I mean, just the fact that this album has five songs that have their own music video, which just says that those could be singles.
Any one of those five.
One of the best things about it, too, is just that it's mixed.
I think this might be their best mixed album.
It's so...
Like, crisp and perfect and to the point.
And that's where somebody like Francois Kevorkian who had worked with Kraftwerk before, where he comes in and he has this reputation of being super meticulous and it's just painstakingly in the corner of the studio with headphones perfecting a hi-hat for days on end.
I mean, that kind of stuff.
I wish, actually, they would have got him...
Back in for any of their subsequent albums, but they didn't.
And I don't know.
I just think that this album is probably their best mixed album.
It's just perfect.
And Flood.
Flood produced Joshua Tree for U2.
He produced a few albums for Erasure.
He's a kind of unknown.
In many ways, but he obviously had a hand in what the sound of the 80s would be.
And that's pretty remarkable.
I think this was the first time they used a producer who wasn't Daniel Miller as well.
Well, Dave Bascom technically would have been, I think, that first one.
I mean, Dave...
Daniel Miller, rather, would show up, I guess, just on occasion, just to kind of monitor the whole thing and see what was going on.
But as far as I understand, it was Dave Bascom and then Flood.
And I think Flood, like you say, he just took it to another level.
From what I understand, he would actually get the band to play live music together with Alan on drums, Fletch on bass, Dave singing and Martin playing guitar.
Generate a new kind of sound and he basically was kind of like their guru in a lot of ways and just said, alright, Martin, we want the demos as stripped down as possible, which is why you hear enjoy the silence with just his voice and harmonium.
And I think that was actually the best approach that they've had and maybe it doesn't work on every single album, but I think it really works here because It's almost like Alan and Flood could interpret Martin's demos better than Martin could himself,
which is odd, but sometimes it takes a few sets of ears to hear something in a song and get rid of the quote-unquote demo-itis.
From what I understand...
World in My Eyes sounds completely different, but I can't find a demo for it.
And definitely Enjoy the Silence sounds completely different than the demo.
So there's a lot of...
I mean, almost to the point where you're kind of thinking to yourself, does Flood or Alan or both deserve a little bit of writing credit?
Because, I mean, it's not for me to say for sure, but just because...
of how much the songs might have been transformed, the demos to the songs, you know?
Words like violence break the silence Come crashing in into my little world Painful to me,
pierce right through me
Can't you understand, oh my little girl?
All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms.
Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm.
Words are spoken to be broken, feelings untaste, words are trivial.
Pleasures remain, so does the pain.
The demo of Enjoy the Silence, which is kind of amazing.
The way that it was transformed to this synth-pop dance number from where it began.
Supposedly Blue Dress went through a number of variations as well.
Yes, yeah.
So, yeah, it would be interesting to hear this.
Yeah, I agree with everything you...
It is interesting.
So there are drum samples, and you can hear this on a song that I think is really underrated.
I think it's great, Halo.
And they're sampling live drums.
And so...
In Songs of Faith, the Devotion, they'll move to even like live, at least on tour, they'll move to a live set, a drummer, Alan Wilder will drum, which is pretty remarkable.
But you're getting, this is not an industrial album in the way that Construction Time, again, clearly is, as is Some Great Reward.
And maybe even music for the masses, where there's a little bit of that Neubauten sound of noise and craziness.
There's a little bit of sampling of, you know, or something like that, impersonal Jesus, or things like that.
But actually, sampling's reduced, and industrial sounds are...
I'm absent unless I'm missing something.
And they're now sampling the instrument itself.
So they're also kind of moving towards rock.
It's like they had to go around the bend in order to get to where other bands were already.
So I think that's also interesting.
And it kind of shows the perfection of the album where it's almost like all of those sounds are almost implied.
You know, it's like this is clearly an industrial band that's going for that sound, but they don't need to bring in like, you know, the ashtray thrown or like the, you know, what was like a rock going down a gutter or whatever.
They don't need to do that anymore because it's implied.
It's already done.
That's where they're coming from.
And now they can kind of leave that behind and produce a commercial album that...
implies all of those things without actually including them.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I mean, we can start with World of My Eyes.
I think we probably should just go through it all.
I would say this.
I usually play the opening track of the album for these podcasts because I think they kind of set the tone with their first song.
I find it a bit of a disappointing choice.
The... It reminds me a little bit too much of...
I don't know, maybe a Michael Jackson song or something.
At least the opening sound to begin with.
Or hip-hop or something.
I like the song, but it almost seems a little bit too much like pop numbers that were...
It's interesting to begin the album with, you know, let me take you on a trip around the world and back, and you won't have to move you to sit still.
It's kind of like bringing you in, announcing to you what this is all about, you know, Bill Coleman or something like that.
But it's one of the lesser songs on the album for me due to the instrumentation, the sonic quality of it.
Oh, really?
Yeah. Well
defended, if you will.
No, I mean, yeah, I understand, but like, you know, they're kind of going for that dark craftwork with this album.
So that, like, wouldn't that, that super quantized, rigid...
Yeah, I mean, I guess, like, I can understand it sounds maybe predictable or for that time.
Definitely Michael Jones.
It just sounds poppy, but yeah, it's tough though.
I think the track is pretty tough.
And yeah, it definitely seems to me, I get big time never let me down vibes because it sounds like a drug song.
That's all there is.
Nothing more than you can touch gives off like a kind of sensual sex vibes.
It's like a sex or a drug song.
Definitely a party song.
Well, it's interesting because it's like from the other perspective from Never Let Me Down Again.
So where that one is, you know, I'm taking a ride with my best friend and then it goes into hallucinogenic chorus.
This is from the perspective of the drug dealer, I guess you could say.
You know, let me take you on a trip around the world and back.
This is one thing that I would...
Let's suggest here.
Let me show you the world and my eyes.
I'm already intoxicated.
I'm going to show you what that feels like.
That's all there is.
Nothing more than you can feel now.
That's all there is.
Let me put you on a ship on a long, long trip.
Your lips close to my lips.
Let me show you the world and my eyes.
That's all there is.
Nothing more than you can touch now.
That's all there is.
Perhaps I'm just...
Overdoing it here, but it's almost like he killed her or something.
You know, I kind of listen to this and I get question of time vibes from it too.
There's something sinister about it too.
It's like I will corrupt you or it's a question of time.
I can get my hands on you.
It's from the perspective of the criminal.
You could say.
Right. Yeah.
And there's nothing you can feel now.
I mean, that's like putting someone into a coma or killing them.
I don't know.
I think it's not my favorite song from the album, but I do think it at least suggests a certain kind of darkness.
That's all there is.
Yeah. Maybe like an overdose or something like that, too.
Let me take you on a trip.
Yeah. Which sounds a lot better than, like, comatose on Exciter, which we just reviewed.
But yeah, right.
Anything's better than a cider.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sweetest Perfection is great, and I think it should have been the first song of the album, or Halo, or Personal Jesus.
Personal Jesus was the first song recorded.
It was recorded in Milan.
It's a single, and I think the album came out like nine months later or something, so it's interesting.
The Sweetest Perfection is another drug song.
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to get away from this reality of the album.
The sweetest perfection to call my own, the slightest correction, couldn't finally hone.
The sweetest infection of body and mind, sweetest injection of any kind, also seems to be about heroin.
I stop and I stare too much, afraid that I care too much, and I hardly dare to touch for fear that the spell may be broken.
When I need a drug in me, it brings out the thug in me.
It feels something tugging me.
Then I want the real thing, not tokens.
It very clearly seems to be about heroin use.
Interesting that it's written by Martin Gore, at least in the biographies that I've read, it doesn't suggest that he was a heroin user.
It was Dave, and Dave almost died due to it.
Yeah, this sounds like hard drugs.
The other thing is that there are sections of it that they're sampling a drum, but a live drum, and it gets that.
It actually does reach the state of a heavy metal.
Not quite, I guess, but that hard rock, hard drumming quality to it.
But yeah, I think Sweetest Perfection is a great song.
The sweetest perfection to call my own The slightest correction couldn't finally hone The sweetest infection of body and mind The sweetest injection of any kind I
stop and I stare too much.
Afraid that I care too much, and I hardly dare to touch.
The fear that the spell may be broken, when I need a drug in me.
And it brings out the thug in me, feels something tugging me.
Then I want the real thing, not tokens.
The sweetest perfection, to call my own.
The slightest correction, couldn't finally hone.
The sweetest infection, of body and mind.
The sweetest injection, of any kind.
The things you'd expect to be.
Having effect on me.
Fast undetectedly.
But everyone knows what has got me.
Takes me completely.
Touches so sweetly.
Reaches so deeply.
I know that nothing can stop me.
I know that nothing can stop me.
Yeah, it is a really good song.
It did take a while for it to grow on me, but I agree.
It's like a heavy ballad that it's the better version or iteration of Sweetest Condition or these kind of songs that Martin does with this kind of like shuffling, almost sounds like 6-8 time,
this kind of shuffling rhythm that you hear in a lot of blues.
It just opens with that.
Sampled drum loop that sounds like jazz brushes that you hear, that kind of rhythm.
And that tremolo guitar to sort of fill out some space.
And then, yeah, like you said, the live drums.
And the song kind of builds and builds and builds.
But, I mean, again, though, with the mix, this song, you hear every sound sort of panning across you in stereo, and it just sounds...
Like, so good.
So I have to give credit again to Francois Kevorkian.
Thank you.
With the lyrics, you know, there's that sweetest injection, which is about, I think, like you said, it's about heroin, but it's interesting to think of that heroin needle as like a phallic symbol, and like, you know, the heroin itself being something like semen, because there is that kind of drug and sex parallel there.
But everyone knows what has got me, as in, you know, everyone knows that I'm basically on heroin.
So yeah, it's just a great...
It's a great drug song.
Personal Jesus, and I mentioned this before, it was recorded in Milan, interestingly, and it was recorded as a single before the album, so I think it set the tone for the album, but I guess it didn't quite set the tone musically,
because this is the one time where they will go back to what they were doing with Pleasure Little Treasure or Route 66 cover from Music for the Masses and they'll go for
they don't really return to that for the rest of the album it's something they'll obviously return to it's worth
So this is from Stripped.
Interestingly, Personal Jesus was one of the few Depeche Mode songs where Gore actually agreed to talk about its inspiration.
That is its meaning.
Elvis and Me, Priscilla Beaulieu.
I don't know how to pronounce that in the South.
Baloo. Presley's candid autobiography of her time with the king.
It's a song about being a Jesus for somebody else.
Someone to give you hope and care, explained Martin Gore.
It's about how Elvis was her man and mentor.
And how often that happens in love relationships.
How everybody's heart is like a god in some way.
And that's not a very balanced view of someone, is it?
Yeah, I mean, I also get a sense that does strike me as a very American early 90s of, you know, all alone by the telephone, pick up the receiver,
I'll make you a believer.
It strikes me as this religiosity in America.
Of the televangelist of, you know, you've got to call right now and, you know, make a seed donation for our ministry and all of this kind of creepy, fraudulent stuff, but something that also harkens back in an atavistic type way of,
you know, you're living in some ranch house 40 miles outside of Dallas.
But you're picking up your phone and you're talking to God.
And I like that irony of it, of picking up the telephone and talking to someone.
Whether it's Priscilla Presley talking to Elvis or some old lady talking to Robert Tilton, who I remember as the most famous con man minister of the 90s in Dallas.
As surely as I'm speaking by the Spirit of God, that is a word for a person right now.
That is God penetrating your heart.
It's burning on the inside of you, and you need to make a vow of faith of $1,000.
Oh, Bob, couldn't you say $25?
No! You can't make a $1,000 vow of faith.
I'm saying in faith.
So we got people that don't have teenagers that have no hardly nothing going for them I got enough faith to make a thousand dollar bow and send them five dollars here and ten dollars there and
It's a very powerful image.
And it's ironic, but also, you know, atavistic, kind of getting at something older and deeper and primal, you could even say.
Primordial. And the fact that Dave is singing like Elvis.
I mean, he's now almost 30. He's fully embraced his baritone status.
I think he did that really with Music for the Masses, but there are a lot of low notes in this album.
In Speak and Spell, was he a baritone?
He was a young man.
He was 19 years old or something like that.
He, you know, Vince Clark complained about his limited range.
Well, that probably just meant that he was a baritone.
He has a baritone voice box.
Now that he's older, he's embracing it.
He's crooning.
He sounds like Elvis.
There's an evocation of American blues.
And there's this evocation of fundamentalist God.
And yeah, when essentially Depeche Mode, really amazing song.
Reach out, touch faith.
personal, Jesus.
Someone to be your friends, someone who cares.
You're on, personal, Jesus.
Someone to be your friends, someone who cares.
Feeling unknown, you're on, alone.
Fleshed off by the telephone.
Lift up the receiver, I'll make you a believer.
Take some confess, put me to the test.
These are no choice, you need to confess.
My words are living, you know, I'm a beginner.
Reach out, touch faith.
Reach out, touch faith.
An amazing song, sonically as well.
There was a lot of layering that Flood would do, so effectively the kick drum is some of the members of the group stomping on the ground while Martin was doing the guitar riff.
It almost gives it that marching kind of feel and makes it also kind of danceable.
The bass, for example, was like a...
A clav and a bass and a sub-bass.
It was layered with three or four different sounds to give it an interesting or a different bass sound.
The chord progression is interesting too with that F-sharp minor riff.
And then going up to the Reach Out and Touch Faith where it goes from G-sharp to G back to F-sharp minor.
I mean, these are...
And the reverse reverb, that kind of almost sounds like...
And then it goes...
That would have been, in my opinion, a way better introduction to the album, just to have that kind of reverse reverb just come in with a banger like that and to introduce the album that way.
Yeah. No, I think that would have been.
It definitely would have been the best first track.
It's interesting because it's in G minor.
So to begin.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, but you go into A flat, of course.
So a semitone above the tonic.
Reach out and touch faith.
Even the beginning of the song is your own.
I guess kind of like muddled or something the way that he sings it, but it's D-F-G, so it should be the leading tone F sharp if you're going up, but it's the F, the natural F, so it's a whole tone below G. Your own personal Jesus,
kind of monotone.
But he's doing the thing that Martin Gore will very often do.
He'll find some common tone between the tonic, And a totally exotic key.
So, you know, he'll be in C sharp minor and he'll find that common tone with C major, which couldn't be more different.
And he does that again.
You know, there's the, you know, A flat five, reach out and touch faith.
Yeah, quintessentially Martin Gore in terms of harmony.
And I think the lyrics are, obviously they're interesting, but...
It kind of makes me think of how the quote-unquote work in the religion of Christianity or contemporary Christianity is sort of done for you.
All you need to do is just follow orders and you shall be saved.
That's at least, I think, what he's sort of getting at or part of what he's getting at in the song.
But yeah, obviously there's a huge televangelist vibe.
And I want to read a quick quote from Johnny Cash, actually, about this.
He covered it.
Yeah, because he did cover it.
And he said, it's a fine evangelical song.
Probably the most evangelical gospel song I ever recorded.
Although I don't know if the writer meant it to be that.
But that's what it is.
It's where you find your comfort, your counsel, your shoulder to lean on, your hand to hold on to your personal Jesus.
Your own personal Jesus Someone to hear your prayers Someone who cares Your own personal Jesus Someone to hear your prayers Someone who's there I
don't think he was getting the irony of it.
Well, I mean, there is an irony, but then there also isn't an irony.
I think that's the kind of abstractness that I was talking about when we went into Black Celebration and Music for the Mass.
It's like singing about sacred or a Black celebration.
What is it exactly?
What is sacred?
Is it love?
I mean, that seems to be the answer.
But it's creating these anthems for the modern age or people living in totalitarian societies, which is what seemed to resonate for Martin Gore.
But I think that's the same thing with Personal Jesus.
Like, this is their version of...
Getting in connection with God.
So in many ways, it's not ironic.
Come on now.
Halo.
Halo. I think this is some of the most evocative writing.
You wear guilt, like shackles on your feet, like a halo in reverse.
I mean, it's incredible, actually, just the imagery that he's going for.
But it's also interesting to think about the perspective of the song again.
I can feel the discomfort in your seat, and in your head it's worse.
There's a pain, a famine in your heart, and aching to be free.
Can't you see?
All love's luxuries are here for you and me.
I get the impression, again, that it's from the perspective of the devil seducing someone.
And then it becomes very different because it's a temptation to personal destruction.
And when our worlds, they fall apart, when the walls come apart,
And it will be worth it kind of in both ways.
Is it worth it in the sense that you've given in to the ultimate luxury or pleasure?
Or is it worth it in the sense that you're suffering and you overcome?
I mean, I think it's...
It's a little bit of both, but what I find interesting is the perspective.
It's the perspective of the person doing the crime.
Like shackles on your feet Like a halo in reverse I can feel
The discomfort in your seat And in your head it's worse I read
the lyrics, I was thinking that like a halo in reverse
really stuck out to me.
And then I was thinking that perhaps it was
not an actual angel, but a
but about one who's playing the angel, someone who wants to be seen as being good.
And I think that's a theme that obviously he's touched upon.
You wear guilt like shackles on your feet.
It's like a halo in reverse.
And then there's this Other aspect that Martin has where it's like, you wear guilt like shackles on your feet.
Your lips of tragedy as well.
That supports your interpretation of it.
But you're only good if you're suffering or you have this guilt that's bringing you down.
That shows that you're good.
Is that you have this whatever, your lips of tragedy, whatever baggage.
And then there's this kind of...
And when our worlds fall apart, when the walls come tumbling in, though we may deserve it, it will be worth it.
I get, like, again, Armageddon humanity may deserve the end of the world because we're such flawed sinners or whatever.
And it's that classic Martin Gore, like, where this meaning could be about the Lord or religion or a lady, you know, though our worlds may fall apart.
You could see that also as a romantic.
Our separate worlds that collided or whatever.
But yeah, it's classic Martin Gore, and it's got the same guitar samples also that are in Policy of Truth with the...
Now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now.
And that was a thing that Flood had sort of given them permission to do was he said, like, look, you guys can use the same sound twice.
It's okay.
You know, you can't.
It's so difficult to fill a song up with at least, you know, a dozen plus sounds each song that's, you know, it's going to be difficult to do.
So we'll just basically reuse some of these songs, uh, sounds rather.
Yeah. Yeah.
Waiting for the night, I think, is also equally evocative.
I mean, I think what's great about his writing is that it's abstract, it's layered, there are multiple things going on at the same time, but then it also communicates itself to you.
It's not stream of consciousness or dada or something.
It is something, but you can kind of interpret it.
I'm waiting for the night to fall.
And, you know, this is also interesting, just this, the quality of this sound.
There's this band, it's a long-time band, it's lasted longer than Depeche Mode even, but Tangerine Dream.
And I definitely think they were going for some of their sound.
There's actually this movie called Legend, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Tom Cruise, believe it or not, but it's not terribly well known.
Some of the images of it are.
But Tangerine Dream did the soundtrack for the US version of Legend, and you can hear a lot of...
Tangerine Dream sound in this work.
You know, they've been influenced by Croft, Barrick, Noy Bounton, obviously, but they're kind of looking at some other bands.
Again, looking at more alternative bands and kind of drawing from them and bringing their sounds into commercial music.
Ben Thede
Waiting for the night to fall.
I know that it will save us all.
When everything's dark, keeps us from the stark reality.
I'm waiting for the night to fall when everything is bearable.
And there in the still, all that you feel is tranquility.
So there's this idea of the night falling and kind of taking away reality or taking away pain and suffering.
I think in that way, you could associate the night to fall with drunkenness or intoxication of drugs or something like that, but also death.
And he says, you know, there is a star in the sky.
This is when the music gets kind of lighter, guiding my way with its light.
And so there's something out there.
There's some kind of point of centeredness that he's looking at.
And in the glow of the moon, know that my deliverance will come soon.
I'm waiting for the night to fall.
There's a sound in the calm.
Someone is, and then this is where it gets really creepy.
I'm waiting for the night to fall.
There's a sound in the calm.
Someone is coming to harm.
I press my hands to my ears.
He's blocking it out.
It's easier here just to forget fear.
Is there a crime that he's almost, you know, the crime is kind of being covered over by night or drunkenness or something?
To go along with the suicide theme, is the crime his own death?
Someone's coming to harm.
He's like disembodied.
I think all of these are like plausible ways of reading it.
Because it is creepy, and it is very touching, if that's the right word.
It really grabs you.
It's easier here just to forget fear.
And when I squinted, the world seemed rose-tented.
The angels appeared to descend.
So he's talking about an almost fantasy of deliverance that's occurring when the night's falling.
Yeah, with half-closed eyes, things look even better than when they were opened.
I mean, I think that's what's great about Martin Gore.
I mean, it's rude, I guess, to compare him to Taylor Swift.
We did that in an earlier podcast.
But these lyrics that are just, there's no interpretation necessary or even possible, in fact.
It's, you wear short shorts, I wear t-shirts.
That's not a metaphor for anything.
You're your captain.
And I'm in the bleachers.
There's no way of interpreting that.
But I think what's interesting about Waiting for the Night to Fall, it kind of invites you.
It offers this mood, but then it has also powerfully religious evocations or tonalities like deliverance and so on or angels.
And so it...
It can kind of just be a mood song, like you're literally waiting for the night to fall out in a field, but then that becomes a metaphor for drug use, and that even becomes a metaphor for death, of leaving suffering, leaving reality, leaving the pain,
leaving the crime perhaps you committed, and kind of entering somewhere else.
So I think it's a really just strikingly...
Beautiful song.
It's one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs of all time, actually.
I'm waiting for the night to fall.
I know that it will save us all.
When everything's dark, keeps us from the stark.
Reality. I'm waiting for the
The night to fall When everything is bearable And there in the still All that you feel Is tranquility
There is a star in the sky Guiding
my way with its eyes And in the glow of the moon
No mind to heaven will come soon I'm waiting for the night to fall I know that it will save us
all When everything is bearable
Yeah, me too.
It's a beautiful chord structure in the verse, going from the C minor to E flat minor, which they do on Enjoy the Silence, but then going from E flat minor to A flat minor to B flat, so there's this kind of lift at the end,
and it kind of begs the question, what key is this in?
It's just a beautiful, very melodic song.
I really enjoy the harmonies.
With Dave and Martin, I think those are incredible.
And then on the live version, you have Alan singing back up in the third verse.
I think that song is a total achievement.
But yeah, as far as the lyrics are concerned, I definitely think it's about escapism, about death.
And I almost get Soul With Me off of Memento Mori.
I almost get those kind of vibes.
Just looking forward to this kind of escape and death as a liberation.
Definitely. I've heard them perform this quasi acapella, actually.
I forgot which tour this was.
I think this might have been Sounds of the Universe tour, actually.
And it was an encore, and Dave and Martin performed it acapella.
I mean, there probably was a little bit of accompaniment going on.
But yeah, it was incredible.
Usually Peter and actually when I was in Detroit, Peter and Christian Eigner were both...
I think that's appropriate as an encore, just to have this stripped-down version of the song.
There's not very much to it.
There is this rhythmic kind of bass part.
This very subtle drumming part that kind of seems like it's rolling or pushing forward.
But yeah, the stripped down live version is really good.
And again, wish they would do more, wish they would have done and wish they would continue to do more of that vocal harmonizing because I think it's a great juxtaposition between Dave's baritone and Martin's tenor.
Real quick though, on Dave's voice, actually, it's...
If you listen to the World of Violation Tour or anything that's out there around this time, his voice live does start to get raspier.
And not Songs of Faith and Devotion raspy, where it's a different voice.
But I think this album, at least for the studio versions of these songs, this is like the end of his quintessential day of God, 1982-3 to 1990.
You know, speak and spell like you had said before is...
Kind of like a tenor-ish, very youthful sounding, and then he's kind of falling into his own.
And I think after this album, the songs of faith and devotion, Dave is like, it's just a different beast.
Been waiting for the night to start.
I knew that it would save the stars.
Everything's dark, keeps us from the start.
Reality. Been waiting for the nights of fall.
Now everything is bearable.
And here in the still, all that you feel is tranquility.
Please. Please.
End
Okay, we finally reached it.
So this really is perhaps the most incredible transformation of a song from a demo album or a demo tape to the album song.
There's probably some other example of someone...
Transforming a song to this degree, you know, in studio.
And it's rather jarring, in fact, to listen to it, to listen to the demos, which are available there.
Yeah, it's a harmonium is what you said.
It sounds like an organ and it is very soft and dark and so on.
So Alan Wilder, Deserves a whole lot of credit for the song.
I mean, he saw something in the lyrics, in the harmonic aspect of this, which is very interesting.
And he brought it to just a totally new place.
And then that inspired Martin to...
Offer this, you know, which on the guitar.
So that came afterward.
came after Alan had actually transformed it.
Words like violence break the silence come crashing in into my little world painful to me pierce
right through me
Can't you understand, oh my little girl?
All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms.
Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm.
Vows are spoken to be broken, feelings are intense, words are trivial.
Pleasures remain, so does the pain.
Words are meaningless and forgettable.
All ever wanted, all ever needed is here in my arms.
Words are very unnecessary.
We're very taken only to harm.
We're very clean.
We're very clean.
Amazing. Martin has this love of C-sharp minor for this album.
I have no idea why.
It seems like an odd key to write it, but he does.
And the beginning of the song vamps between C-sharp minor and the three chord, which is a major E. And then when the...
When verse comes in, it takes that to a whole new level.
So you start out with C sharp.
Words like violence break the silence.
So you have this sinking feeling that you see in like Shake the Disease or something.
You're starting somewhere that's harmonic.
You're on G sharp, so it's the five of the chord.
Words like violence break the silence.
Then you sink down a semitone.
It's almost flat or something.
And so you go to an E minor, which doesn't exist in C sharp minor, but they just do it, and it has this creepy quality, and then they come crashing in, and you go back to the G sharp, they come crashing in into my little world.
So you're back in A major, which is a major chord in C sharp minor, and then you return to that.
So it's this, they're playing with tonalities, and then...
To take it over the top or to add insult to injury, but in reverse.
They can only do hum.
So you find that one note in common between C sharp minor and C major, which is E natural.
And so he sings the E natural, and then the harmony below it syncs to C natural.
They can only do hum.
So you have this bright C major.
And then you just immediately go back to C sharp minor.
So he's playing with minor and major tonalities all the way through, both within the key of C sharp minor and then between C sharp minor and C major.
Now, this is great.
You don't know what key it's in.
You don't know whether it's major or minor.
I mean, dare I compare it to Wagner, but...
It reminds me of the Tristan Chord, so-called.
The End
Now, it's obviously not that complicated and not that brand, etc., but...
It is very smart for a song that is a hugely popular pop song that everyone loves.
And he's playing with music theory and creating ambiguity in your mind of you don't know if this song is minor or major.
You don't quite know what key it's in.
And that's actually pretty brilliant for a pop song.
And he's done it before.
You can see examples of this and everything counts.
It's done almost perfectly here, and it's something.
It's quite an achievement.
Yeah, and he doesn't have to use, you know, these big ginormous E minor 11, you know, or whatever, like a E7 sharp 5 flat 9 kind of like big jazz chords and stuff like that.
He doesn't need to use that.
It's simple and bold and, you know, causes you to do a double take.
When you hear that, would you say C sharp minor to E minor?
Yeah, like you hear that.
It's like, wait, what's that?
That's different.
Those two chords don't necessarily go together.
But then when it goes to the A major, it kind of resolves.
But yeah, I agree.
Textbook, Martin Gore, songwriting.
And then that's what I was trying to say earlier, giving my introductory take.
It's just like, that's what makes this album and this song especially a great pop song is that...
It's not basic.
He could have made that basic if he just went from C-sharp minor to E major, that relative major and minor, and could have just done that for the whole song, and then gone to A, and then G-sharp minor, something like that, all fitting neatly into the key.
But he didn't, and it's got that over these drums that are just disco-y.
Four on the floor, just powerful, this snare that sounds really distorted, but super 90s, but in the best way possible.
Yeah, it's just a complete achievement, and I will never get tired of this song.
I don't think I ever could get tired of this song.
Because you still don't know which key it's in.
In a way, you know?
It's kind of an E major, actually.
Because if you play it for someone, I think if you just ask someone, is that a major, is that a bright sound, or is that a dark sound?
They'd say it's a bright sound.
So it's almost like this song is an E major in some weird way.
But anyway, it's great.
It's great stuff.
Yeah. And it's like, like I said, it's like the anti-jazz or whatever.
There's no, it's so simple.
Like the chords, I'm saying.
There's no extensions on any of these chords.
It's just straight and to the point.
And it's, uh, it's powerful and it's unforgettable.
And, um, yeah.
And I mean, there's even like that tritone.
They can only, yeah, they can only do harm.
So in your case, from C to F sharp minor and that kind of tritone difference that you hear as well.
It's funny because sometimes I'll think that he's really studied music, but then he'll always, in interviews, play it off as though he hasn't, or I don't really know anything about chords or structures.
But he's got to know something because a lot of the stuff is unusual and signature.
Yeah, he clearly knows what he's doing.
He's consciously playing with this.
I mean, there's no other way to describe it.
You don't just randomly do something like this.
So yeah, that's remarkable.
So it's pretty interesting.
So there are two music videos for this.
One of which, I don't know if you even know this one, but it's...
A performance on the World Trade Center.
I was going to mention that, actually.
Yes, I do know that one.
Which takes on a whole new connotation.
Enjoy the silence.
Words like violence.
So, yeah, there's that.
Then there's the more famous one, which was filmed by Corbyn.
Was this filmed in Denmark when they were...
Doing the recording for most of the album?
I don't know.
I'm wrong, but I thought it was Switzerland or something.
I know it's somewhere in Europe.
Germanic Europe.
Yeah. And it's this kind of oversaturated or overexposed camera.
But it became an iconic idea of them.
Dave Gahan is this king, but he's a kind of king in a nutshell or something.
He's alone.
He's finding his space.
And I think that it was a perfect imagery of the song.
But words like violence break the silence.
So it's someone who's enjoying his alone time.
And then words come in, come crashing in into my little world.
Painful to me, pierced right through me.
Can't you understand?
Oh, my little girl.
So it's this words coming in and being daggers pointed at him, but without any purpose.
All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms.
But it's also, you know, it's like you, you and my little girls in my arms or something.
I think that's probably there, but there's also this profound sense of being alone.
Words are very unnecessary.
They can only do harm.
Vows are spoken to be broken.
I mean, all of these rhymes are great.
Rhyming violence and silence.
Vows are spoken to be broken.
Feelings are intense.
Words are trivial.
Pleasures remain.
So does the pain.
Words are meaningless and forgettable.
So words themselves have no meaning in comparison to, you know, I don't know, to evoke the Exciter album.
I can't believe I'm doing that.
But let the body speak.
It's like there's something more powerful than language.
And, you know, words can only do harm.
Words are like daggers.
You know, attacking you.
The words are vowels that you'll break anyway.
They're trivial, they're meaningless in comparison to emotion, and I think particularly with the music video, with just the self, the notion of silence,
atomistic. Yeah,
there's that aspect of the king in the deck chair, and it's...
I don't know, it's like the king being jealous of the peasants or something like that, because they can just get away from it all.
They don't have the fame.
And I wonder if that was a thought in Martin's head, or maybe that was just totally Anton's contribution, just the getting away from it all kind of aspect.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think they were ever at a point, maybe in Los Angeles at that warehouse incident with the release of this, but I don't think they've ever been at a point where they've been really bum-rushed with people, save a few times.
I think they could walk around and basically go unnoticed today, which is probably a good thing.
Yeah. To be broken.
Feelings are intense.
Words are trivial.
Pleasures remain, so does the pain.
Words are meaningless and forgettable.
All I've ever wanted, all I've ever needed is here in my arms.
Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm.
Policy of Truth.
What do you think this is about?
I'll let you go first on this one.
I mean, I think it's a bit straightforward in that it's not straightforward, if that makes sense.
It's like a song about the moral quandary of lying to protect someone because the lie might have better consequences than telling the truth.
To me, it sounds like a relationship song.
For sure, I get...
Lie to me.
Yeah, yes.
And sort of...
Well, maybe not things you said, but I don't know.
There's something about this that made me think of things you said.
At least insofar as there's that kind of relational aspect between perhaps a woman and a man.
But yeah, maybe by telling...
your significant other the truth that you would hurt them and it's best to just let sleeping dogs lie.
Now you're not satisfied with what you've been put through.
It's just time to pay the price, not listening to advice, deciding in your view on the policy of truth.
It's just time to pay the price.
Yeah, don't look into the fact that I cheated on you, even.
Maybe. I mean, I think that's definitely the sentiment with why to me.
Yeah. Like they do it in the factory.
You had something to hide, should have hidden it, shouldn't you?
Now you're not satisfied with what you're being put through.
It's just time to pay the price for not listening to advice and deciding in your youth on the policy of truth.
Yeah, it is.
I think it might even...
It might even have a quality of the artist himself, or it's better to lie, it's better to, you know, what are the lyrics to get the balance right?
Let me just look these up real quick.
Be responsible, respectable, stable, but gullible.
I think there's also a sort of quality to that of...
You know, art is the lie that tells the truth.
And, you know, I have attributed as Picasso or something.
I mean, it's I think there's there's a lot of truth to that.
And there's you can kind of read in both ways.
You can read as a noble lie of don't tell me that you cheated on me or don't look too hard into this matter because it's only going to bring pain.
But there's also I guess I get this feeling maybe just due to the fact that.
Alan wrote Get the Balance Right.
Oh, no, excuse me.
Martin wrote that.
Yes. I thought Alan wrote that.
Okay. No, Alan, no.
That was like the first song he was on.
Oh, I see.
I see.
Helping to produce.
Helping to produce.
Okay. But this notion of just live your life in Basildon, you know?
Go get a job, you know, maybe in the factory, but you'll be in middle management in no time and just be respectable.
And responsible and pay your mortgage and be ultimately selfish, but getting the balance right is much better than singing songs that tempt us to think about death and oblivion.
Yeah, that's an incredible song too in itself.
I don't care what the band says about that song.
They don't really like it, but we can talk about that later.
But yeah, that's a great song in itself.
Thank you.
A critique of just bourgeois life.
Well, we could talk about it now.
It's interesting because this was in Stripped.
So by the time that the 90s came around, there is a notion of techno.
This is largely coming from Detroit.
And actually, there's this man, African-American Derek May.
And he claimed that Get the Balance Right was the first techno song.
Yeah. Whatever that might mean.
He said that no one knew.
This is like, what, 83, right?
Yeah. So no one knew who Depeche Mode was really in Detroit.
They just, I don't know, somehow, some way in a record store got the record and then they started to loop the instrumental part and just kind of turned it into this, you know, danceable four on the floor.
It just became its own kind of remix dance song or whatever.
And yeah, I mean, I guess they loved it, which seems really weird because it's not like a funky song.
It's pretty white, you know?
Yeah. Well, this is Alan Wilder.
We all went to May's flat.
So this is between the 101 live album and Violator.
We all went to May's flat and pretended we were part of this techno scene.
Derek May was horrible.
I hated him.
He was the most arrogant fucker I've ever met.
He took us into his back room where he had a studio and played us his track, and it was fucking horrible.
you
That's funny.
Wait, so Alan hated him and Fletch liked him?
Yes. Oh, that's funny.
But it was a bit...
Yeah, but he goes on.
But it was a bit of an odd situation.
In those days, that scene was all orange juice and no drugs.
We went to the Music Institute and they were all on orange juice.
We just wanted a beer.
It was frustrating at that point.
So, anyway, just kind of fun tidbits from us.
Wait, so they visited him in Detroit?
Is that what...
Yeah, I don't know the context.
They were in America and Derek May...
He almost wanted to meet his idols, but he almost wanted them to meet their idols.
In the hymn.
All I was going to say is that I guess he's gotten in some serious trouble as of the past few years.
I don't know.
I'm not much into techno.
Oh, I don't know.
But he's gotten into trouble as far as some Me Too kind of territory that he's been in.
But yeah, a lot of people...
Not terribly surprising.
Yeah, as far as I understand, a lot of people don't really care for him.
I have a cousin who's pretty into techno.
They're like, man, that guy stole everything he ever released.
I can't say.
That's interesting.
When I hear the word techno, I think of myself in senior year of high school, late 90s, and this really hard, throbbing, endless rave culture where everyone's on ecstasy or high or something.
When I listened to Derek May, it was a little bit different.
His songs were odd in the sense that they, at least to my ear, were literally out of tune.
I'll have to give him a serious listen, but yeah, I can't really do...
You can only do so much four on the floor before it just becomes irritating.
Yeah. What is four on the floor?
Is it four by four?
Yeah, four bass drum or kick drum.
One, two, three, four.
Like that over and over.
So it's not like a syncopated like...
Right. So like Enjoy the Silence is four on the floor in the sense that it's one, two, three, four.
One, three, four.
But like you're still hearing that kick drum.
One, two.
It's going on even on the two and the four where the snares are as well.
So that, I mean, that's just a standard.
But it's highly danceable, which is, yeah, it's just simple.
Never again is what you swore the time before.
Never again is what you swore the time before.
What do you think that means?
It just sounds like relationship stuff to me.
Don't you think so?
Yeah. So,
I like Blue Dress.
I think it's a great song.
I mentioned it the other night, I guess, last week when we were talking about Exciter and how much better this song was because it was so simple and evocative.
But, you know, put it on and don't say a word.
Put it on, the one that I prefer.
So it's this blue dress.
That evokes something.
And then there's an almost kind of cynical lyric to it.
I just reminded when I was at summer camp when I was a teenager and this camp counselor named Pistol Love,
the remarkable name, he said, you know, What makes the world go round?
Some say it's money.
Others say power.
But I'll tell you what really makes it all work.
Pussy. And it's not wrong, of course.
Is Naper's Pistol love, though?
His name was, in fact, Pistol Love.
Yes, last name was Love, first name Pistol.
I don't know if Pistol was a bit of a nickname, but yes.
He was one of these, like, he was like the Matthew McConaughey character from Days of Abused.
He was like 30 years old hanging out with teenagers.
He was that guy.
He was really that guy.
I don't even know if that guy still exists.
He might have been canceled long ago, but he was that character.
Yeah, I like how stripped down this is and how simple and evocative in the sense it's not telling you too much.
You don't know really what it's about.
And it's from the perspective not of the criminal, but kind of the perspective of the victim, I guess you could say.
You can imagine him sitting there and, you know, maybe it's that porn star that Dave Conn was dating.
Just some woman.
Putting on something that has an uncanny quality to it.
It's not the dress itself.
It's what is embodied in the dress and what it all means, and it's evoking something.
And this is what the world turns around.
Yeah. Yeah, I love it.
Very sexy, a little bit creepy, a little bit of S&M.
Also kind of slow.
It reminds me a little bit of Princess Di is wearing a new dress and that kind of...
I don't quite know how to describe it.
Slow, the melody is kind of disjointed, and so on.
And, yeah, it's a great song.
Yeah, so it's a textbook, like, Martin Ballad, you know?
It's a good, like, 6'8", kind of...
You know, the same thing that Sweetest Perfection has.
And don't say a word Put it on The one that I prefer Put it
on And stand before my eyes Put it on Please don't question why Can you believe
Something so silly Simple Something so trivial Makes me a happy man Can't you understand
Say you believe Just how easy It is to please me Because when
you learn You know what makes the world turn You know what makes the world turn
It's got that vocal sample of a...
You know, way up there.
Which, at first, I'll be honest, it did kind of annoy me, but now I just can't picture the record without it.
And I think that scream is there on purpose to sort of mimic a female's moans or something like that.
The tremolo guitar on it gives it an edge to it.
A different kind of atmosphere.
But I guess, as far as I understand, the band didn't really know how to approach it.
It was almost like a throwaway.
Alan calls.
It's the penultimate track on the LP, the filler position.
I would put it in the same bag as Get Right With Me from SoFad, in that we never really quite knew which way to go with it.
Again, I'm a bit vague about the demo, but I remember the approach when we recorded it was based around using washy-sounding drone guitars, which formed the backbone of the track.
It was deliberately quite wet-sounding to give it some atmosphere.
But yeah, it's amazing.
And that is a song that I wish they would...
They have played live?
But it's usually just been Martin with the guitar.
And the same thing with Sweetest Perfection.
I wish they would have played that live, besides just Martin.
Clean, the cleanest I've been.
And the end to the tears and the in-between years and the troubles I've seen.
Now that I'm clean, you know what I mean.
I've broken my fall, put an end to it all.
I've changed my routine.
Now I'm clean.
I don't understand what destiny's planned.
I'm starting to grasp what is in my own hands.
I don't claim to know where my holiness goes.
I just know that I like what is starting to show.
Sometimes. Clean.
So, the final, the ultimate track of the album, Clean, which I think is ironic.
If this had been on the Ultra album or something, it would have made more sense in the sense of Dave overcame drug addiction, but now here, it's ironic in the sense that he's about to fall off a cliff.
But that's also indicated in here with that sometimes.
Do you know the chords for this?
Okay, yeah.
So it's B minor throughout the...
From clean all the way down to...
And the in-between ears and the troubles.
When it goes to, and the troubles I've seen, the I've is E minor.
And then after C is D. Now that I'm clean.
And when he goes clean, it goes back to B minor.
And then, so, there's not really...
What is sometimes?
C. So that is...
See, he does it again.
Yeah, yep.
Semi-tone up sometimes.
So that's...
Yeah, I knew it was something like that.
So... It's like a rising tone, but yeah, it's not.
I mean, I think this is also a pretty on-the-nose drug song.
I mean, he's an overcoming addiction song, I guess.
But it's done really well.
I've broken my fall, put an end to it all.
I've changed my routine.
Now I'm clean.
I don't understand what destiny's planned.
I'm starting to grasp what is in my own hands.
So he doesn't know what's happening.
Yeah, it's kind of self-deprecating, I guess you could say, in that sense.
But yeah, I think both of these songs, like Clean and Blue Dress, they're not trying to be singles.
They're not trying to be danceable anyway.
And they're just much more complete and listenable to some of the...
You could call them deep cuts or you can call them like filler tracks, I guess, from Construction Time again, where they're kind of experimenting with percussion and so on.
These are like that in the sense that this is not a single.
It's meant for the connoisseur to listen to, but it's really great and really memorable.
I mean, I think these are two of my favorite songs on the album.
Definitely. Halo being another one.
Yeah. And there is a version of this that you can't get.
They don't have, like, a live recording of it that's any good, but you can get just listening on YouTube, where they sort of rework it on the exotic tour in 1994, where Alan's playing, like, live drums and kind of really going for it at the end.
And it just sounds, you know, even, like, heavier and a bit rockier.
And it's a great try.
a great try.
So, to sum up, what are your thoughts?
Is this the peak?
Yeah, I mean, it's not...
Do you like it more or less, like, listening to it again?
I don't know if I can like it anymore.
Well, I guess if I thought it was better than Songs of Faith and Devotion, I would say yes, but...
I mean, it's a close second, I'll say that.
It has gone up in my estimation, just because there are so many good songs.
Even if they were just like, you know, demos, like Martin's songs by themselves, him and an acoustic guitar, every one of these would be interesting to listen to.
But then the production is just taken up, like, to another level.
And I, you know, I credit the personnel, whether that's...
Francois Kevorkian or Flood or this guy, this engineer, Steve Lyon, who had worked with YouTube before and had become a friend of Alan's.
Yeah, I mean, this is all...
I mean, even songs on here like Happiest Girl or Sea of Sin are dangerous.
Dangerous is a great song.
Dangerous should have been included on this album.
That's what frustrates me.
Maybe you couldn't have had room.
I don't know.
You could have put that on there as the last song.
I mean, it's so...
Yeah, all these songs are incredible.
Like, I feel like, yeah, we've reached, you know, peak.
be right back.
We'll be right back.
Yeah.
And it definitely follows from Music for the Masses.
I think there's a lot of similarities.
And I think they needed to go in a different direction.
Which they will.
Oh yeah.
And so I think this was a culmination of the 80s.
And to return to some things that I observed earlier on, You know, it's not an industrial album.
Just objectively, it's not.
But it's almost like all of that experimentation and work that they did five, seven years ago, it's almost now like implied or they've imbibed it and it's there.
And so I do think this and Music for the Masses are kind of like just culminating their sound.
They've totally found themselves.
And, you know, again, in their next album, they're going to have to go in a new direction.
