Depeche Mode： Construction Time Again
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Summary
In this episode of the 15 Album Ode to Depeche Mode homage podcast, I discuss the band's first album, 1989's Everything Counts. This album is considered to be one of the most influential albums in the history of punk rock, and is considered by many to be the turning point of the band s sound.
Transcript
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don't you think absolutely yeah this is and it's you know i never
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liked this album all that much when i was a lot younger like when i was into
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depeche mode when i was you know 10 to 15 years old or something
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i you know everything counts was a classic track of course but i would
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mostly just listen to the live album 101 over and over again
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basically but i did mention that it i i remember
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listening to catching up with depeche mode on cd actually very early on
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and i did almost discount a lot of the speak and spell
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and broken frame tracks it was like uh you know
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you know it's just too early they don't have the sound but
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which you know isn't actually that impressive in terms of
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the banging and clanging there's a certain new toughness you could say
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to dave gahan's voice and i feel like this was actually it
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all of the verse and the definite last that lay in store for me
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and i i wasn't even positive that i would have said this
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before we started doing this you know 15 album homage podcast
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this album contains all of the essential elements
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of depeche mode the samples the noise at one point i can't remember which track
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it is at this time but but it's almost like they recorded like a
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um subway or uban train when they were in berlin
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and uh and played it and and integrated it into the song
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and so everything the lyrics the socialist whether that's communist or fascist vibe
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the tough singing by dave that you move they're starting to move away from a love song
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and they're singing protest songs which is very interesting
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and they're also singing a song like everything counts which both
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and in talks about the the shallowness of it all
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but then you could almost imagine this song as a soundtrack to wall street or something like it
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in in criticizing capitalism there's almost something
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aesthetic or cool about so to speak you know what it like in the way that wall street
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and you know gordon gecko's speech about greed is good and all that kind of stuff
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you know taking from the needy giving to the greedy that is good as i had ran said
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you know that overtly anti-capitalist film probably inspired more people to go to wall street and be a
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broker than i and i ran novel perhaps i mean if you understand what i'm saying
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the handshake still the contract from the contract there's no turning back
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the turning point of a career in korea being insincere
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the holiday was fun packed the contract still intact
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the grabbing hands grab all for themselves after all
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the grabbing hands grab all they can all for themselves after all
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yeah i mean i think it's all here and then the other thing because i'm just giving my kind of
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my general overview here is that with alan wilder it was clear that alan wilder is paying a lot of
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attention to the sound uh there's an interesting quote i have from the book just can't get enough but
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uh about alan in studio he's also writing songs i mean even one of the b-sides from this album
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fools is one of my favorite songs from the album actually and it's a b-side absolutely
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don't know the reason why i think i've been here before
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you'll walk right out the door don't tell me secrets anymore
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think this is it this is when they're still young at this point and they're still in that
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put out an album every year and kind of throw it together in a few months and
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you know see what happens kind of thing uh but this is it i i think this is where
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depeche mode found a unique sound that no one else can do
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at the time before them afterward their obvious influences
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there's kraftwerk influences there's like a lot of german new wave because they were in germany
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recording this um there's all sorts of things that you could say are influencing them david bowie
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you know as well it's this is where there's like a confident
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demonstration of who they are in one album so those are my opening thoughts and i was surprised
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to have them i'll say before i let you speak um is that again i so many of these things you know
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get grooved into your mind and my how i remembered this album was uh it's not that great it's kind of
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like broken frame um you know everything counts as a great single but nothing else is there and
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just sitting down and re-listening to it and listening to the whole album as again doing the
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vinyl thing just sitting down putting the needle to the to the record letting it play it really
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changed my perspective on things so i i this album increased a great deal in my estimation and and
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also just in like a historical or objective look at it i think this might be their most important album actually
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interesting to say that you think that it's it's it could be their most important album
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i guess i understand that insofar as it kind of projected them to get that kind of quality fan like you and i
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and kind of made them who they are i guess sonically as far as the uh super superficiality of the uh
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the music you know with using synthesizers and you you're kind of making up your own sound and i think it
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kind of reflects that the neoliberal capitalist era of uh of the thatcher reagan period and i think this album as a
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whole in in some ways is a repudiation but like you said could also be construed as a uh kind of
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buttressing of of that time period yes this was released the year that margaret thatcher came to
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power by the way it's kind of interesting that makes sense the themes are pretty the whole album i think
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it's kind of anti-martin gore in a lot of ways because it's outward looking it's objective it's
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about other people it's about you in the world but it's you know maybe three quarters about the world
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and one quarter about you there's not the as we've talked about the martin gore that is introspective
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navel gazing guilt-ridden as much i mean there is you know with a song like shame that might be an
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but it's still outward looking even the song love in itself
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it's kind of like about it's relatable you can yeah it's about him losing his first love and
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getting over that there was a time when all on my mind was love now that i find uh most of the time
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love's not enough in itself yeah don't you think that's also like a manifesto i mean usually the
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first track on the album at least for the best moment i think for a lot of bands it's a bit of a
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manifesto it's kind of it's telling you what the album is about i mean i i was just editing our uh
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podcast on memento mori and and you know my cosmos is mine kind of sums up so much of the
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album and this it offers sonically as well just kind of is a statement about the album and yeah love's
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not enough in itself like we're not singing those songs anymore right and i you know with my cosmos is
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mine it's obviously outward looking as well i think that's been the kind of repeated theme
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with a lot of their songs as i said with world in my eyes on violator and uh love in itself obviously
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but i think that i think to say that it is just simply like a political or conscious album
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is is wrong uh i think that's what some have said about it this sounds like a labor party
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manifesto uh but i don't actually uh think that that's the case i kind of think that
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with a song like the landscape is changing that's it's kind of like about uh britain changing uh maybe
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financially uh or fiscally or environmentally but it's also about them changing in my opinion
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and demographically becoming uh less traditional in a way
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evolution the solution on a saturday can you imagine this intrusion of their privacy
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because i don't care if you're going nowhere just take good care of the world
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i don't care if you're going nowhere just take good care of the world
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it's obviously a political album in the sense that these are protest songs and maybe
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people are people could count as something like that and it's something that they moved away from
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um some great reward is definitely a different album in terms of tone black celebration etc
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uh but it i i think it gets to something we were talking about with spirit as well where
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there's and and a broken frame there there's somewhat of a pretense
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about depeche mode and i mean that in a good way even though the word's not usually used that way in the
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sense of it's it they're they're kind of imagining a certain vibe or situation or attitude um and
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they're evoking communism and fascism in pretty much equal measure and they they kind of were trying to get
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at that aesthetic very early on and i think now they're they're achieving it so it's a it is a very
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it's an aesthetic socialism in in in both ways i mean in in both senses of that term it's talking about
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the landscape is changing like the and then there's there's a there's a way in which martin gore is kind
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of throwing up his hands but then also offering something a radical vision of taking a map off the
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wall and tearing it into pieces and they all the boys and girls will see how easy it would be to
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tear you know redraw the lines of the map or tear it up or refashion everything um but then there's
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also a certain kind of sarcasm or irony is that all all we need at the start's universal revolution
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that's all uh and we'll trust in our hearts we'll find the solution so i mean i take that as a little bit
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a little bit um a little bit sarcastic or the cheeky is maybe the better i certainly it's ironic
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in the sense of we we can't really do it but then look how easy it would be just to remold
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to put it all down and start again from the top to the bottom and then
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i'll have faith or i prefer to think that things couldn't turn out worse
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and if we trust in our hearts we'll find the solutions
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to put it all down and start again from the top to the bottom and then
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i'll have faith or i prefer to think that things couldn't turn out worse
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attitude or or vibe or aesthetic and i think they're they're better achieving it at this
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point but i think the aesthetic comes first it sounds like a criticism in a way but dogmatic or
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didactic or preachy music just stinks to high heaven and to be on to be fair here there's a little bit of that
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uh i i don't care if you're going nowhere just take good care of the world i mean a little
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but a a a working class song that's telling you to vote labor or
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you know lower taxes or put your trust in jesus or something
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these things suck inherently conservative movies as as an example of a didactic
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it's uh it's it's patronizing and insulting on some level hollywood is much more
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sophisticated than conservatives when they make films they'll teach you something
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but it's very subtle and they almost make you think that you came up with the ideas yourself
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but anyway i won't go into that but they're trying to get to an aesthetic of fascism
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i'll just say it i i actually i'm gonna dump all the commie stuff at this point i mean look at
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the cover of the album it's a guy with a sledgehammer granted hammer and sickle
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you know the the sickle was in the last album but he's standing before the matterhorn and
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it looks pretty fashy so they are trying to get towards an aesthetic of fascism and i think
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they're writing some like the kind of song that a fascist would write let's put it that way okay
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yeah yeah and so it's not really i mean again with some exceptions where it's preachy and not that
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and and a little bit cloying um we'll we'll forgive those faults but i think overall they're
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they're they're they're approaching that fascism as an aesthetic and you know remember when we
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were talking about spirit where you know they said that they they were inspired by the hitler youth
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and again i don't i i obviously don't think that any member of the band is some hitlerite or anti-semite
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or or whatever they just grasp that the nazis or their national socialism as a as optics
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was just very successful and it was powerful it inspired in many ways so much of the fashion
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movement going forward and corporate presentation a national presentation etc and i think they're they're
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trying to capture that and in the next few albums from that again three albums recorded in germany
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very interesting they're they're going to get there and and they'll end up with music for the masses with
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a red megaphone as this you know commie fasci aesthetic all in one but it is an aesthetic i think this and i i
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say that as praise i think this would be a lesser album if it were actually singing about working
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class issues or or offering some kind of mawkish pain to the working poor or something not that the not
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that those people don't deserve sympathy but the the best way to show them sympathy is not to sing some
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you know hippie anthem or or saccharine uh pop song it's i i think they're going for something very
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different and in a weird way it sounds strange to say this about a rock band but they're going for a
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visual aesthetic that they're achieving sonically if that makes sense sure i another way you could
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say it is that the image reflects the music i guess or the music reflects the image yeah the the yeah
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the album cover and uh yeah you know the associated artwork yeah and just the vibe they've dropped the
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sweaters and and the like vintage suits that they wore there this is when you know martin gore is wearing
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bondage gear the leather jackets the toughness are they even from britain at this point you mentioned uh
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and then and there's kind of two interpretations of that song that i have uh with the lyric i took a
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plane across the world got in a car when i reached my destination i hadn't gone far superficially it's a
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comment on how technology of transportation makes uh the world smaller but yeah i kind of also see it as
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like capitalism uh has kind of homogenized our our world in a lot of way for example
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in vegas you can visit new york new york or the bony eiffel tower that they have there or even
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something as simple as getting like a neapolitan italian food in new york city that's you know might
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even be better than neapolitan food in naples i which i think is is what they're what they're getting at
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yeah there's no doubt that i i think that's i hadn't gone far you you could read that in all sorts
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of ways but um like he personally hadn't gone far or something um but yeah what i think it is is looking
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at this homogenization of the west at the very least and most of the globe through industrialization
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and again they're going to embrace this i mean they're going to write as an album called music for
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the masses and what is that outside of this almost like fashy gloss that they're going to put
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on onto western capitalism i think gareth jones needs to be kind of recognized as taking their sound
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and making it so much harder and so much more interesting because this album is especially
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sample based at this point it's it's the most sample based uh of of their three albums at the
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time but it's also harder and edgier and as you said dave really comes into his own as having that
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quintessential dave gone almost kind of yawning baritone that that he was popular for in the 80s
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and you know i mean they're taking especially in a song like a pipeline they're they're taking
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basically all of those sounds were with the exception of a few were really just sounds that
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they had in that they found in a uh construction site and i mean they have the train at the end of the
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song they have the train literally going over the tunnel to kind of end the song uh and so the the
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sound is i can understand where it's labor related or labor adjacent whatever because these are all
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industrial kind of sounds and it they're using you know i smack a hammer on a piece of aluminum siding
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and kind of pitch it in the in the keyboard and spread it across the keyboard and then i play the melody
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At the time, it would have been extremely radical and original.
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There were other bands who were doing it, but Depeche Mode was doing it in a similar way that the Beatles were incorporating, let's say, Indian music into their songs.
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So they had kind of taken it and really pushed it to the fore and made it popular.
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And, I mean, you hear that, of course, in Everything Counts with the scraping of the metal to open the track.
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But if you let friends listen to it today, they're kind of like, ah, this is kind of corny.
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But to which I rebut, well, what is, you know, today at least.
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Yeah, no, I think there's definitely, I mean, like Pipeline, I think taking from the needy, giving to the greedy is a bit cringe.
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And it also, when you have a line like that, I don't quite know what you're singing about.
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And it's obviously not this fun song that, you know, you want to dance to or sing along or something.
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That's granted, but it's not trying to be that.
00:27:58.400
I mean, I definitely, it's this art song with all of these layers, these repetitive sounds that will enter in a kind of crescendo and then leave and then come back.
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And it really, it strikes me as a kind of more listenable version of some experimental music that people might write in like grad school or something.
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Like they're trying to do a kind of anti-music and put it together and make something of it.
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And yeah, I mean, again, is it like a song I love listening to or singing along with?
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Not really, but it's great as a statement on about what they're trying to achieve.
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Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that makes it not very Martin Gorey is the...
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One, the fact that it's outward facing and it's kind of objective, but there's no, as far as the chords, there's no, you know, enjoy the silence type of chord where it's that C minor to E flat minor.
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It's weird and quirky, unfortunately, a little bit corny.
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Maybe a comment on Thatcher's, the neoliberal revolution and it being more than just a party.
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This is more than just the Republican or conservative party.
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This is a revolution in the West as far as deregulation and kind of, I don't know what you call it, hypercapitalism or just neoliberalism.
00:31:07.540
I don't want to throw those words out there because they're kind of buzzwords, but I'm kind of short on the vocabulary.
00:31:24.880
The failed magician waves his hand and in an instant the laughter's gone.
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I was thinking while I was reading Simon Spence's Just Can't Get Enough, this is a quote by a man named Fettin.
00:31:49.040
We talked a little bit about that regarding Broken Frame and started going out with these more sophisticated women.
00:31:56.280
We'd go to some strange fetish-style club somewhere in the Netherlands and he'd do a strip tease on the table.
00:32:02.340
But I have to say, it was mostly harmless fun of people being silly rather than anything heavy.
00:32:13.780
I don't know if there's a little bit of that quality to it.
00:32:20.220
But I think your reading is also probably correct.
00:32:51.980
You know, might they be singing about the Tories or something?
00:33:10.980
Okay, yeah, I could definitely see that being about a swinging party or some kind of BDSM laden
00:33:22.560
There's the hidden, there's like the personal hidden meeting for Martin Gore
00:33:32.580
As far as the failed magician waves his hand and the laughter's gone
00:33:38.480
I could also take that as a song about deindustrialization overall
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With like, okay, I waved my hand and these factories are now in Asia or wherever
00:33:51.140
Because I kind of view the magician as, you know, he's asserting his will on reality
00:33:59.640
And changing reality in the same way that a politician can actually do that
00:34:03.400
I mean, maybe that's a stretch, but, you know, they wave their hand
00:34:06.760
The corporation waves their hand and the jobs go overseas
00:34:12.220
And the laughter's gone because, you know, people are out of a job
00:34:16.700
And actually, the next album in Some Great Reward
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That same year that that picture was taken in 1984
00:34:31.920
So, I mean, deindustrialization might be a theme to consider
00:34:42.740
He's, whereas if he's channeling any humanities or disciplines
00:34:52.580
I'm talking about the quintessential Martin Gore that we know and love
00:34:56.520
But in this album, he's kind of like channeling like political science or economics or something
00:35:05.720
And I think it's outward first and then inward second
00:35:12.440
Also, a song that struck me was Two Minute Warning
00:35:46.160
I mean, around this time, Naina had this single
00:36:31.460
So I think a lot of this almost like black comedic look
00:36:49.920
But I appreciate the, again, the hardness of it all