Depeche Modeļ¼ Momento Mori
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 52 minutes
Words per Minute
143.09837
Summary
On this episode of the Depeche Mode podcast, we talk about the band's new album, 'No War, No War No War' and what it means to them. We also discuss the songwriting process behind the album and how it relates to the lyrics.
Transcript
00:00:35.260
You know, to be honest, from listening to it and then sort of cheating and watching interviews beforehand,
00:00:41.680
I think they're kind of confronting the fact that they're both, you know, 61, 2, 3.
00:00:50.240
You know, they're older and their kids are probably old enough to be at the age they were when Ultra came out or something.
00:01:05.140
And, you know, I think it is unfair to expect a violator out of them or anything like that.
00:01:11.340
You know, I think that's safe to say that's their apex and all that.
00:01:17.260
But I don't know if it's going to be the last Depeche Mode album ever, but it wouldn't be a bad note to go out on.
00:01:57.960
I was trying to crack the nut of a lot of these songs because I do think they are about something.
00:02:05.400
I mean, for instance, Precious from many albums ago, you know, you could kind of hear it as kind of a basic love song of, you know, precious and fragile things need special handling.
00:02:21.960
But if you dig deeper, it is actually about his children and getting a divorce.
00:02:28.720
And you're going to need to leave space in your heart for two.
00:02:33.520
It's kind of confronting the reality of a child of divorce, and it's about Martin's divorce.
00:02:39.580
So it has a particular meaning if you can kind of crack the nut of it.
00:04:19.760
I don't necessarily think this one is about death
00:08:58.640
with my cosmos is mine i actually have the exact same basic note is just that it reminded me of
00:09:15.980
social media and basically it's mine kind of like losing your uh autonomy basically in the
00:09:22.780
digital age uh because it's it's that alienation is always a theme in depeche mode songs or you know
00:09:31.500
usually and you're with the social media self you're kind of alienated or you know even worse
00:09:40.740
with the anonymous social media self you're kind of alienated uh from who you are in real life your
00:09:48.400
your actual identity and and i you know that that kind of resonated with me i think it's a good song
00:09:56.160
it's not a single right it didn't get released as a single it actually was well i don't even know
00:10:01.820
what a single it's definitely played live yeah yeah i don't even know what a single means these
00:10:06.660
days it was i believe it was this video that might be the the definition yeah it um it it was released
00:10:15.060
early so ghost again is a natural first single from the album and that was released before the
00:10:21.940
album was available and it's it has an upbeat tempo of course i think it's actually the meaning of the
00:10:28.220
song is darker but uh i could i could definitely imagine um you know i understand why it was released
00:10:36.280
early my cosmos of mine was also released early before the album was out so there was only those
00:10:41.300
two songs available um immediately so it was a single of sorts it's the first song i mean they
00:10:48.900
choose that and they usually i mean i've seen them live a number of times and at least recently they've
00:10:55.300
started the concert with the first track from the album yeah that was i believe i'm like 99 sure i'm
00:11:03.320
trying to think back to april but i believe that was the uh the first song that was played was my
00:11:08.380
cosmos was mine and you can always tell because of that that bass line you know the super fuzzy
00:11:14.300
kind of distorted bass yeah yeah and i i so i well i don't want to get ahead of myself okay so what i
00:11:24.420
have basically to say about if i just take that particular song so we're talking about um the ambiguity
00:11:32.900
in um martin gore's lyrics and he has said multiple times like they have a personal meaning for me but
00:11:40.160
i kind of want everybody to have their own meaning he likes when they're ambiguous and i would say
00:11:46.520
yeah that's probably the key i think that if i could sum up just in one word their lyrics it would be
00:11:53.200
ambiguity and that's why i think they're so good they're definitely dark they're definitely personal
00:11:59.360
but that ambiguity is you can kind of tell when it's
00:12:02.900
when martin gore's uh writing the song but i i think you know he is definitely one of my if not
00:12:08.440
my favorite songwriter but if we just go track by track talk about if we want to talk about uh my
00:12:15.600
cosmos is mine i i like there's a like a term called like the loudness wars or whatever that
00:12:22.560
basically just means too much compression and i i feel like that is a it kind of starts in hip-hop
00:12:32.880
if you really think about it like everything is and the drums are the kind of the driving force
00:12:38.240
in in like rap music which i think you know for well in many cases for worse but
00:12:44.620
the sound of music you know if you take that like late 80s early 90s
00:12:50.420
that has kind of since that time just kind of changed the sound of music and things have been louder
00:12:57.140
the drums have been punchier and it's been rhythm has kind of been emphasized more than um
00:13:03.680
than melody i would say in the past let's say 35 years in music you know overall just i i like the
00:13:11.480
sound i i even like the the kind of using the static noise as snares you know that's you know they've
00:13:19.880
done that previously before going back like 30 some years but you know that's the one thing is
00:13:26.540
that the i just felt like man this is just too it's only it's like too loud it's just a little bit
00:13:31.100
too in your face and well it's undifferentiated is that is that what i what i think you're getting at
00:13:36.160
where you can't really differentiate certain lines in the song and you just get this kind of like
00:13:42.100
wave of sound where it's difficult to differentiate instrumentation and vocals and lines and and so on
00:13:52.520
yes and there's a certain depth for the low end on a so you can only go so low is what i'm trying to
00:14:00.940
say and you can just hear that i mean you hear that like i said most notably with hip-hop you hear
00:14:06.560
the that 808 bass that you feel it you know from a distance and then you really it's like i just
00:14:13.080
think that yes they're an electronic band and and that's that's fine and all but i i it's just
00:14:19.260
overall i guess not just depeche mode but just modern music in general it's just it's so loud and
00:14:26.360
yeah undifferentiated is is a good word uh for it it's just it gets muddy you know and yeah i yeah
00:14:34.360
i i'm not really uh but okay fine we can table that criticism because i i could say that about
00:14:40.360
almost everything that comes out i definitely dig the bass line i like that that it's like fuzzy i
00:14:45.640
like that melody that you're saying yeah i think dave dave's vocals are great but i and and the
00:14:54.820
refrain it's not really a chorus or or a verse is anyway no it's not because i don't think they even
00:15:00.500
care about like creating a catchy chorus anymore it's like this weird there's like a key change
00:15:06.380
and it's almost like a different world that you enter in the song and it's kind of alien to what
00:15:14.540
the the the main verses are are talking about and i i find it interesting i mean i think for better and
00:15:23.420
for worse and often for better is that they don't need to write a pop album they they have a built-in
00:15:33.160
fan base they are old you know and they don't need to write a catchy jingle i mean for instance i
00:15:44.700
i just noticed on um when i was scrolling through twitter that the rolling stones have issued another
00:15:51.120
album i mean these guys must be pushing 80 because they're both like depeche mode and
00:15:56.960
uh you know the rolling stones are like technically boomers but i there's it's clear that this is of a
00:16:06.040
different generation you know these are kids who were influenced by punk in the late 70s when they
00:16:12.040
were in middle school and or or in high school maybe and david bowie which was um i learned that was
00:16:21.020
actually how dave joined the band is that he performed a david bowie song and they were like
00:16:25.740
you're in uh um well do you know which one i'm curious uh i can go look it up it was actually in
00:16:32.780
stripped um which is filled with tidbits like this yeah it's which one is actually really interesting
00:16:39.800
the other thing dave's voice has clearly changed you know as our voices do he was
00:17:09.540
probably more of a tenor early on and then by the mid 80s you have that baritone you know
00:17:17.460
clear like really distinctive irreplaceable voice um yeah and uh but anyway um they they are they're
00:17:29.720
of a different generation than the stones and the stones you know who must be pushing 80 i remember
00:17:35.120
seeing the stones in the 90s when i was in high school my parents went with me to this concert i
00:17:40.520
think they might have dragged me there but i'm glad they did with like another boomer couple that they
00:17:46.180
were here with and um it was at a stadium i mean it was packed it was huge and even at that point i mean
00:17:54.740
we're going on 30 years from you know then and at that point it was like how do they do it aren't
00:18:02.340
they're just going to collapse on stage like how are they alive you know and right we're it's now
00:18:08.960
that was like 1997 or something we're now in 2023 and they're doing it again but that song they're
00:18:15.200
released i mean i i don't remember it to be honest but i kind of liked it but it sounds it could have
00:18:21.800
been released in any decade you know it was just they're releasing a pop song and it has a stones vibe
00:18:29.100
to it but it could have been written by another number of different bands and it was fine you
00:18:35.360
know i'm glad they're doing their thing and i think the stones are cool and i think it actually if there
00:18:40.020
is an analogy to the like second boomer generation that depeche mode is a part of i think they are the
00:18:46.360
rolling stones to someone else's beatles like they are the dark villains as opposed to the you know
00:18:54.180
cute fun or even hippie pop stars they're the the alt alt so to speak but anyway what i was saying is
00:19:04.260
that i think we all kind of like want them secretly want them to release like music for the masses again
00:19:13.040
or something like something yeah just something where like i mean music for the masses might be their
00:19:18.980
best album i mean violator is obviously up there like every track is a classic um even like clean
00:19:26.280
or little 15 like like kind of oddball songs that don't always get performed live or anything like
00:19:32.680
even those are class you know and they're like awesome danceable but they they're not going to do
00:19:40.280
that they're not going to just like the rolling stones issuing a song that could have been produced in
00:19:46.720
like 1967 they're they they're not going to do that they're not going to have like you know master
00:19:53.400
and servant part two or strange love part two and just do that standard format of like a catchy minor
00:20:01.580
mode synth you know riff and then you know anthem chorus and stuff like that they're just not going to do
00:20:10.900
it and i think i admire them for that i was another thing i saw so i'll probably follow some of the
00:20:17.360
same depeche mode fan accounts on twitter but there was actually an ai depeche mode song that was released
00:20:25.680
i retweeted it and okay i think yeah i think i saw that we might want to just recall it if you send it to
00:20:34.440
me or i'll like add it in and post or something but like it was good that was kind of the scary
00:20:41.740
thing and obviously like the problems of ai and the threat of ai that's a whole other different
00:20:46.180
discussion but it was cool and it did the same you know it had a little blues rhythm to it
00:20:51.720
a synth riff uh some you know chorus about pain and love or something like that
00:20:58.920
and it but it was ai it was fake and even though it actually was a pretty good song like i'll
00:21:23.380
you know tip my cap to the computer that wrote it um it was fake and i just i don't think they're
00:21:31.240
going to do that they they know they're they're spoiled in some ways they know that they have a
00:21:35.640
built-in fan base they know that they're legends in the alternative rock community and in actually
00:21:41.860
beyond they know that we're going to appreciate things so there's kind of spoiled and that can lead
00:21:46.200
to decadence or just unlistenable albums which momento mori is not it is good actually
00:21:52.840
um and i'm glad they did it but they want to experiment and they want to do what they want
00:21:59.480
to do they don't have to write an anthem like chorus they can kind of write this weird haunting
00:22:05.120
chant about you know no war no war no war no war no more no more no more no more no more
00:22:11.980
yeah no fear no fear no fear no pain no doubt no uh what is it my foot no final breath no senseless
00:22:19.320
death that just this like weird kind of like chorus from outside demanding an end to all suffering
00:22:26.860
and it's awesome and it's haunting and they can do that because they don't need to write another album
00:22:32.960
if they had just retired in like 93 they could have called it a day and been legends
00:22:39.880
you know yeah but they kept doing it and even you know even with the death of fletch they just
00:22:49.320
keep going so they they obviously have a creative drive and you know some of the best work that
00:22:55.940
depeche mode has done has even been like soul savers with dave gahan and the soul savers or whatever
00:23:01.940
they're calling i mean some of these like blues albums cool kind of like post country
00:23:08.840
blues electronic blues so i don't even know how to describe yeah but it's just awesome i love the
00:23:16.520
soul savers actually i think they've just done great stuff really depeche modi gets to the blues vibe
00:23:48.620
and i think they're just willing to do that like their rock is dead and i don't know if we're
00:23:56.300
going to see a new band like enter the scene that is comparable anymore i mean i i think this this
00:24:06.300
moment in time is kind of over and and there are lots of reasons for that but just their willingness
00:24:13.580
to write a an experimental album and to do what they say what they want to say and do what they want to do i
00:24:23.260
and you know ghost again they can throw in something that's kind of poppy
00:24:31.100
but it's still but there's still the mystery it's a little bit dark because it's
00:24:35.260
ghosts again you know yeah if it's not if it's not in the music it's in the it's in the lyrics or or
00:24:42.940
definitely i mean i think that's a really profound sentiment because it's
00:24:51.020
so it is again about death this is all about soul like it's i'm gonna take my soul with me like i'm
00:24:56.940
gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna leave this world and go to a clear blue open sky and i'm taking my soul
00:25:03.500
with me and my favorite stranger is about a doppelganger
00:25:07.420
my favorite stranger stands in my mirror puts words in my mouth all broken bitter
00:25:27.900
yeah some perfect stranger sneaks on tiptoes steals my shadow goes where i goes my favorite stranger
00:25:34.460
stands in my mirror puts words in my mouth all broken bitter i mean this
00:25:38.700
it's all about so he's he feels alienated from himself there but it's it's about death and soul
00:25:44.700
and i had never heard that sentiment before of like
00:25:48.620
ghost again this notion you know it's you're going back to a spirit again you were a spirit before
00:25:55.580
there's like an embedded cosmology or theology to the song for that to work i don't know if those
00:26:03.660
words have ever been put together in this sentence before before this i'd never even really thought of
00:26:10.380
it that way i was just gonna say you know it's kind of funny i i mean upon listening to them when i
00:26:18.540
first really started to get into peche mode about five six years ago i remember that you that you were
00:26:25.020
oh yeah it wasn't until uh relatively recent but i mean i i was still am obsessed but um when you
00:26:34.140
got into them you went all in oh yeah i mean i i'm one of the i'm one of the devout as as they say
00:26:42.060
yeah um i was kind of struck i was like i wonder why richard's into uh this this band because all
00:26:50.380
not all many of the themes are seemingly christian at least they're highly introspective
00:26:59.740
yes at the very least we can say that and that's kind of you know the self-examining conscience
00:27:05.580
that you that you get in christianity i you know i'd say even more so than um judaism or or islam
00:27:12.700
um but uh yeah i mean that that's why at first i was kind of like i wonder why is he like this band
00:27:19.740
you know i mean this was you know during the karaoke video that you know went semi-viral or
00:27:27.180
whatever yeah yeah which i would have been happy to uh have taken part in because i would have backed
00:27:32.300
you i would have done uh i would have been the martin to your day but um but uh anyway that's all i
00:27:39.100
wanted to basically say well i like them because they're a christian band just like you too yeah
00:27:46.140
exactly yeah absolutely you too has a theology it's a millennia in millennian theology in fact
00:27:53.740
about we christ has won the world and we're bringing it back like we're bringing it towards him
00:28:02.140
it's a millennia millenarian theology of uh of of making the world christ-like and so it's a it's
00:28:10.220
a very peculiar thing it's it's not the kind of pessimistic fundamentalist like it all gets worse
00:28:15.100
and worse and then the apocalypse comes and blah blah no um it's it's something very different and i think
00:28:22.780
that's you know outside of the just cool vibe and sound that they have which i do love like that's why
00:28:33.260
i love them and the same thing with martin gore and depeche mode it's yeah it's it's a it's a protestant
00:28:42.700
band and it's deeply introspective and deeply alienated from the flesh and all of their songs
00:28:54.700
are ultimately about this and i really appreciate that so i mean i you know whatever my own whatever
00:29:02.940
my own aspirations might be for this or whatever my own like criticisms of christian morality are or
00:29:08.620
whatever and i've made those clear on some level it just doesn't matter like i appreciate the
00:29:14.380
authenticity of both you two and depeche mode in that regard like if you're gonna do it do it you know
00:29:21.980
like be authentic yourself and i think like there's there's also this element of these kids in basildon so
00:29:30.780
it's these young guys who grew up in a in a kind of like synthetic world it was like a neo-futurist
00:29:41.580
suburban community that was created post-war to take on overflow from london and so it has all of those
00:29:52.220
you know it has all of those kind of like hopes and aspirations but also alienation and self-loathing
00:29:59.580
that we see in like the american suburbs of you know you're you're kind of achieving the american
00:30:07.660
dream or in this case the uh you know full expression of welfare socialism and futurism
00:30:14.940
you're you're achieving it and then you you get it and it's lacking and hollow and so there's almost
00:30:23.740
this like this this dual quality to depeche mode it's it's inherently an electronic band
00:30:30.540
and in a synthetic band in that sense i mean famously they would perform concerts with a tape
00:30:36.540
deck rolling in the background right where they were just they were just open about it you know like
00:30:41.660
we're not gonna we're not gonna pretend we're not gonna have anyone accuse us of being you know
00:30:48.220
synthetic we're just gonna roll the tape while we play but they were playing instruments but that
00:30:52.780
the backing tape was right there and so there is this kind of like modernist futurist synthetic
00:31:00.780
quality to it but i i guess what gives them interest is that they're not just a kind of dance band they've
00:31:07.500
never created a dance album really they've influenced dance albums or techno or whatever but they've never
00:31:14.460
done it themselves uh because it's like overlaid on top of that is this self-introspective maybe like
00:31:24.540
loathing of the flesh kind of like protestant mentality that is in combination with something
00:31:35.260
that is kind of that's like commercial and synthetic and i mean i i think you know it's very it's
00:31:43.260
interesting when you think about like the vince clark leaving the band um but i do think that that
00:31:49.100
was the best thing that ever happened i mean obviously vince clark is a very interesting guy
00:31:54.140
and um you know yaz or yazoo um i great 80s stuff and you know a erasure great some great songs
00:32:07.500
maybe a little too gay at times but you know oh yeah oh yeah but but kind of like it's it's fun you know
00:32:15.420
and and he's a great songwriter but if they had stuck with the just can't get enough sound that i don't
00:32:24.220
think they would i think they would have been just this like footnote on 80s pop you know like the new wave
00:32:30.620
generation and um they they would have just been played at like 80s retrospective nostalgia nights or
00:32:40.700
something or it would have been fun but instead their band was deconstructed and then martin took over
00:32:48.940
songwriting and he brought his own truth to the band that was very different than
00:32:56.300
than vince clark i mean the guy kind of night and day i mean you can see some similarities and
00:33:02.140
and and i don't want to like limit clark but like it was just a total it went from day to night i guess
00:33:09.340
this may be the the right way it went to the minor mode it went to you know kind of sexiness but in a
00:33:18.060
creepy way um blues inflection yeah a kind of like twisted perversion but then kind of like a guilt
00:33:26.940
overlaid also and also in a lot of martin's songs and where he's singing kind of like well look at me
00:33:34.620
i'm like forgive me i'm kind of like this cute looking guy who i'm in a black dress and i have my fingernails
00:33:44.060
painted black it's almost like uh he used to wear like stuff that would say like submissive and stuff
00:33:49.740
like in other words yeah like like he's the servant like he's the yeah i i mean i don't mean to uh
00:33:58.140
throw gay accusations i'm not um but we well he's apparently not gay because he's been married and has
00:34:05.340
children so like you don't want to accuse him but he's he's someone who will kind of go there he he has
00:34:10.860
yes yeah you know and he probably is someone who would like feel guilty about it and there's
00:34:15.740
something with like never let me down again which i've i've always felt like just some of the lyrics
00:34:23.100
choice like you know we'll be as safe as houses as long as you remember who's wearing the trousers like
00:34:28.220
right it it strikes me as homoerotic now i don't maybe that's just the trousers or you know i'm taking a
00:34:38.140
ride with my best friend maybe they're just too many kind of like connotations but it does that that
00:34:45.020
is what it sounds like but he's it's not you know it's very different than like you know erasure
00:34:53.660
saying like you know break these chains of love or something like that music and again i'm i i like
00:35:00.220
erasure like i don't but it is just open liberated gay i am who i am here you know you're yeah you
00:35:09.020
know take it in world you know like you know i'm here i'm queer get used to it or whatever
00:35:13.100
which is fine you know but like martin could also never do that like if he were
00:35:42.940
to engage in some perversion or even like contemplate it or write a song about it he would feel
00:35:49.020
guilt laden afterward like that's who he is and and i think that gives it a kind of balance
00:35:57.420
where a lot of erasure can be pretty cringe you know you know yeah oh depeche mode's never cringe
00:36:06.060
you were talking about um how their stuff wasn't dance influenced and i say about the closest that it got
00:36:13.740
to dance like house music ish was probably on the world violation tour if you listen to
00:36:21.900
like even the enjoy the silence version it's got a uh very house type of vibe to it uh everything
00:36:29.740
counts then the world violation version has a very like house kind of dancey kind of feel
00:36:42.780
and i remember martin saying in an interview uh with uh it was that guys uh paul gambicini in
00:37:10.860
before the release of songs of faith and devotion he was like you know everybody's like expecting us
00:37:16.060
to make a dance album but it's kind of like that where forgive me because i know you're not the
00:37:22.060
biggest fan but like the beatles were hippies and then it became cool to be hippies and the beatles
00:37:27.820
are already done with it like in that in that sense depeche mode was they did they you know dip their
00:37:36.060
toes they were influenced by and they influenced house music and it was we're already on to grunge
00:37:41.500
we're on the next you know we're going to the next thing yeah uh kind of what i'm trying and they knew
00:37:48.780
that and um had basically planned to obviously have a twist with every album but it's it's about the
00:37:57.420
you know looking forward to the next thing as opposed to you know repeating a formula and not doing say
00:38:04.620
violator 2 or which yeah is you know the reason that the fact that they would take chances and they
00:38:11.260
never had that mute wasn't owned uh by emi i think and not until 2004 or something you know and they
00:38:18.700
never had a major there's always literally what they wanted and i think with an album like black
00:38:27.180
celebration which was i mean i believe it was like number 70 like worldwide it did not or 71 somebody it
00:38:34.860
did not chart uh as they had wanted it to and daniel miller had been telling them like you know don't
00:38:43.260
expect it was so moody and dark and you know we we love it for for those reasons oh yeah this album
00:38:51.580
this album kind of reminds me of black celebration in the sense that there aren't the singles don't
00:38:59.260
grab me nearly as much as the as the you know the other tracks i don't know the non-singles uh yeah
00:39:08.300
ghost again and and wagging tongue and my cosmos is mine you know all at the beginning of the album
00:39:14.620
it gets it's kind of a gets better and better as it goes on what's track number four um don't say you
00:39:22.620
love me yes yeah i think from then on it just seems to get better and better
00:39:29.260
yeah so i mean and a lot of those i i think i have in my notes here that the the ones written
00:39:35.660
with uh richard butler from psychedelic furs i don't know that those are my favorite i mean uh
00:39:42.780
with the exception of uh don't say you love me perhaps he because he he actually co-wrote that one
00:39:48.700
as well yes anthony fantano i don't know you're familiar with him he does all the music reviews he's
00:39:53.740
kind of that stereotypical uh super annoying millennial you know you're not i might know
00:40:01.420
him i i i might i've listened to a few like audio documentaries on the new album um on like apple
00:40:09.820
music and stuff like that but but go on he famously did an interview with sam hyde in like 2016 and then
00:40:17.100
backtracked uh anyway so yeah so he was reviewing memento mori and he said you know i don't really
00:40:26.060
like the first half of the album and um i don't i'm not gonna say that i don't like the first half
00:40:31.340
of the album but it does get better and better and it is mature and that's you know and they were
00:40:37.100
always in my opinion strangely pervy but mature um in their um songwriting and then in the it was
00:40:45.740
never too poppy i guess is what i'm trying to say but anyway like like you said they're at the point
00:40:50.540
where it doesn't matter they don't have to make this album if they don't want to but it's it's what
00:40:54.460
they want to do and it is you know it's from this 60 year old perspective which i and you know i think
00:41:01.900
everybody has this prejudice about in their in their mind that a pop star or any kind of musician
00:41:08.700
has to be young and has to be but i can i i mean like you were talking about the rolling stones i can
00:41:14.060
still appreciate this this album you know despite the fact that i know it's coming from and basically
00:41:22.540
my dad's kind of place you know an older uh perspective you know yeah early boomer or a late
00:41:31.020
boomer early uh gen x kind of thing but yeah it's it's late boomer but it's it's like these are the
00:41:39.500
people who told the gen x who the generation x who we are you know like they they they were older than
00:41:49.500
us they're i think you know they're like 15 to 17 years older than i am probably more than that for you
00:41:56.780
but they they kind of like told us who we were when we were young like when i was i mean my my entree
00:42:04.620
to depeche mode was overhearing it in my sister's room growing up so she and i believe i overheard
00:42:13.260
it on vinyl actually because i think we we kind of skipped tape decks and we went straight to uh
00:42:20.620
to cds but um but we would make everyone had a walkman and so you you'd kind of like make yourself
00:42:28.300
a mixtape this was the uh 80s 90 90s kid vibe and um but i remember overhearing and i don't know which
00:42:38.460
album it was exactly it might have been some great reward or it might have been black celebration or even
00:42:45.500
music for the masses um but i was i was just kind of coming into my own i probably was eight years old
00:42:53.740
or 10 like really young i mean in a way i mean my daughter is um around that age and yeah it's kind
00:43:03.020
of funny to even imagine yourself you know in that kind of mindset but i overheard her playing this and
00:43:10.460
she did have a a record player and and she had vinyl and and then she had a cds later on but i
00:43:16.220
remember her over overhearing it and just i was hooked from then i mean i you you said that you got
00:43:23.500
into them but you know you went all in five years ago i mean it's been a journey i mean i don't know
00:43:30.540
of a time when i didn't love them and wasn't super into them and they didn't just speak to me i mean
00:43:37.820
they were kind of like the first band that spoke to me weirdly i even remember in my like there was a
00:43:43.660
party when i was graduating from high school and there was a dj at this party and then they said uh
00:43:51.420
oh by request you know um we're gonna play master and servant by depeche mode and everyone actually
00:43:56.940
just looked at me they're like richard you're just kind of you know i i just kind of like lovingly
00:44:03.980
mocking me like oh we know who put that request you know like there's only one man who did that
00:44:11.020
um and uh so i mean they and i think even at that point they were probably like this that's like 1997
00:44:19.500
ish at that point i think they were probably remembered as like a 80s band or something like
00:44:25.020
that that's probably like what a lot of people knew about them but again i was following them i was
00:44:29.660
attending their concerts like i knew of the trajectory with songs of faith of devotion and
00:44:35.180
ultra and like going in to the 2000s but anyway anyway that's my story i mean it's like i don't think
00:44:42.060
there's ever been a time in my life when i haven't been listening to them i don't maybe you could call
00:44:48.380
this pathetic i've just i've listened to these songs hundreds of times and i heard them when i was eight
00:44:55.340
they've kind of been with me so it's pretty remarkable stuff i was gonna say um okay so a
00:45:04.780
quick little uh similar experience i had was i was at a few years ago i was at my buddy's wedding and um
00:45:13.820
you know after a few cocktails i'm it was a really good wedding a lot of people there
00:45:19.260
and i'm begging the dj i'm like you gotta play something by depeche mode and he's like man who's
00:45:24.220
depeche mode and i was like oh my god you've got to play this song and i think there were only three
00:45:29.340
songs available and i would have just played enjoy the silence because that's you know they're most
00:45:35.740
famous at least i think most people would have would have gotten that but it was personal jesus
00:45:40.860
did matter to me and i play it and i think i was the only one everyone looked at me like
00:45:47.100
you know we wanted uh whatever kind of hip-hop song i think i killed the vibe for everybody
00:45:54.460
but i was on cloud nine i mean i think i might have been the only one dancing and and i was you
00:45:59.580
know i was i was ecstatic but um yeah so it's similar situation as far as like oh who played that
00:46:07.420
that song gee i wonder who yeah i've been you know since i i the first song i heard was enjoy
00:46:14.060
the silence i think and it wasn't it was the guitar was just perfect that it was but it was also the
00:46:22.860
from when it goes from uh c minor to e flat and that just a
00:46:29.100
yeah you know the the oh my that with the with the voices like that was i was like getting chills like
00:46:35.100
the first time i heard that and then i think the second song was uh policy of truth which i was
00:46:40.140
just like because i was familiar with with rap and and the the idea of samples i mean that was all
00:46:45.980
around when i was a when i was a kid and i knew of depeche mode as far as like you know maybe my
00:46:52.060
parents had like one song by them but which was probably and i knew i did know of master and servant
00:46:58.780
but but when i'm talking about when i like actually like sat down and kind of like absorbed it
00:47:03.500
and i remember listening to i think by it had to have been violator then all the way through
00:47:11.980
and then it just grew on me and it grew and like it really with a lot of their albums just took like
00:47:18.380
hold and it was kind of like these cobwebs have turned into chains kind of thing and i uh yeah i just
00:47:25.340
became uh obsessed uh similar but from you know the the millennial perspective that's good that's
00:47:34.380
good no i i mean this this is a little bit off the beaten track but i i i said earlier that rock is
00:47:41.180
dead and i i do believe that and i you know i could go into this for i i it had a moment where it was
00:47:49.820
culture defining and cultural trans culturally transformative and it no longer is and it is
00:47:58.700
basically a source now of nostalgia or in a way it's a source of kind of like music that is background
00:48:06.140
noise and that is sad but you know all good things come to an end you know like cinema is coming to an
00:48:14.140
end on some level like opera had a 125 year run of being culturally defining music and no longer now
00:48:24.780
it's museum piece for the you know rich to to enjoy it just is what it is um but uh yeah i mean i i think
00:48:37.020
in a way these like gen x and boomer bands are the still ones they're they're the last ones producing
00:48:44.860
albums and thus like creating new content in a way that everything else is like radically fragmented
00:48:53.340
where it's like someone's creating ai music someone's creating some like he's a soundcloud artist with
00:48:58.780
tens of thousands of followers doing whatever um you know this and that someone's just into nostalgia
00:49:06.780
i mean i i was talking with someone who's quite he's younger than you i presume he's like gen z he
00:49:11.740
was saying that there are all these like gen z girls who will listen to nirvana on vinyl and so it's like
00:49:19.740
this weird you know we weren't listening in the 80s we all knew of the beatles or the stones or whatever
00:49:26.460
we weren't like defining ourselves personally through them um it's weird to think of that and it was
00:49:35.900
something like nirvana that was coming in and just smashing everything um and uh yeah but i mean i think
00:49:43.180
it's like these older like the gen x band is the last one to produce an album like an actual work where
00:49:48.940
you're like let me sit down and listen to this and i don't think that exists anymore i think it's just
00:49:55.660
it's radically fragmented it's like a cool thing some kid does on soundcloud it's having a 90s playlist on
00:50:03.340
spotify it's buying a vinyl album of like pink floyd or nirvana and listening to it on vinyl to be you
00:50:11.580
know the ultimate hipster or something like that um but it's very rare that a band is producing
00:50:19.580
something new telling you something speaking to you and producing something original i i think we're
00:50:25.980
we've just seen the end of that yeah um that's interesting that they would choose nirvana
00:50:33.260
because it is obviously a uh you know smash everything i mean i was listening to an interview
00:50:40.540
that kurt cobain gave i don't know what year exactly but he's saying he's like i don't know
00:50:46.380
anything about like dorian modes or any of that shit he's like that's just a
00:50:51.340
bullshit to to get in the way of originality or whatever yeah i yeah i kind of i kind of disagree
00:50:59.100
a big crunch yes yeah i'm but you know it's just like when he said that shit about
00:51:05.820
if you're racist don't buy our records or whatever he just you know uh whatever that's
00:51:11.740
a personal thing but um yeah i i i'm certainly no music snob but i think that attitude is uh
00:51:18.460
ignorant to to say the least yeah but as far as as as far as people in the millennial uh gen z
00:51:26.380
i think i can group them together in this case it is a it's like a replaying of like well what did my
00:51:34.060
what were my grandparents and parents listening to because we've client yeah like you were saying
00:51:39.500
we're at the top yeah like what was revolutionary back in the day i mean because nirvana
00:51:45.500
everyone had an opinion on nirvana i mean people there were like news reports on nirvana local news
00:51:52.540
reports about you know what do we make of this it's it's it's grungy and out of tune and nihilistic
00:52:00.220
like what does this mean for the youth and so on like they're in and like well how did this band that
00:52:05.980
no one had heard of like sell out like why why is this band you know all the kind of pop stuff from the
00:52:11.580
80s is gone this band is outselling madonna you know what what has happened to the world like
00:52:17.740
they're they're they're looking back at a time when something actually was transformative
00:52:24.540
under the assumption that no music created today however good it might be has any cultural impact whatsoever
00:52:33.580
yeah and what did nirvana end up leading to i mean the early part of the we take what bleach comes out
00:52:42.220
in 89 and then never mind their biggest one comes out 91 which goes on to really change music so or i
00:52:49.660
would say if you split the 90s in half and that early half is grunge it's dark it's pearl jam nirvana um
00:52:57.580
sound garden yeah yeah it's and then the later songs of faith of devotion yeah and so yeah and
00:53:05.980
songs of faith and devotion but and but the later half of the 90 the the 95-ish shot it's spice girls
00:53:13.020
britney spears in sync yeah and and then we get to 99 that's when like m&m really takes over and it's just a
00:53:21.660
different kind of different blend of nihilism i guess but um i i i think i've said this before but
00:53:28.460
like the 70s punk stuff kind of nirvana kind of mirrored that in the 80s more like glamorous kind of
00:53:35.900
poppy stuff the later 90s early 2000s kind of mirrored that because i remember being in elementary
00:53:42.700
school and it was all that was on mtv that you could watch um until maybe 10 a.m was just britney's
00:53:51.500
spears and sync backstreet boys it was yeah that's what that's what dominated it and
00:53:58.700
those obviously have not aged well i don't i mean their sound isn't wow man i i really need to hear
00:54:05.980
that you know maybe as as an irony which is another thing that's super common for uh the millennial and
00:54:14.460
uh gen z uh uh age bracket yeah or like this euro pop parody that was so hilarious um danger and dance
00:54:24.860
yeah yeah yeah uh clapping clapping the hands yeah when the rhythm is glad there is nothing to be sad
00:54:41.660
yeah it's it's this like journey back to when you were when a millennial was like five and they overheard some
00:55:01.580
like euro pop band you know it's it's just a pure i mean i even like that song i mean i would i i think
00:55:07.900
it's fun actually but it's it's just pure irony and nostalgia like there's no sense that this is leading
00:55:16.780
anywhere it's just going back and rehearsing or reiterating something over and over i mean it's kind
00:55:23.580
of sad yeah and you know you've got 12 notes in the uh western scale of music but you know there's still
00:55:32.780
other i was thinking about this there's still other scales and things to be explored and you know they
00:55:39.740
might like if for example if you did like a byzantine scale or or some kind of like egyptian scale yeah
00:55:46.940
it would sound you know kind of like weird to the to the western ear and it doesn't necessarily
00:55:54.700
you know it's not a to e or uh a to d or something like that my god just to do anything to change it up
00:56:01.420
and that's like i think well but i think that's where like lyrics come in i mean it's a total artwork
00:56:07.340
yeah you know it's combining a a sentiment and poetry and music i mean that's the thing that's
00:56:16.780
the thing that's special and different and unique and you can't really you you can't really put your
00:56:25.340
finger on it or to find it and you can't really imitate it um but yeah i mean to go a little bit
00:56:34.700
to go back to the album a little bit um so one thing depeche mode did and and this is actually a song
00:56:44.140
co-written with uh richard butler but don't say you love me you said that you didn't really like
00:56:51.180
the first half of the album or the the first four tracks i i might disagree i usually do like those
00:56:56.940
but one of the things why i like don't say you love me is that the the vibe i got from it actually
00:57:04.700
was like it's a bond song and it had the flat seven or sharp seven chord like the brown you know
00:57:15.100
kind of like clangy kind of 60s chord and it's singing about love in a kind of croonish um way
00:57:24.060
like um you are the singer i am the song the tune that will linger the the bitter taste left in your
00:57:30.300
tongue um you'll be the killer i'll be the corpse you'll be the laughter and i'll be the punchline of
00:58:11.820
kind of self-deprecating he's he's singing about a woman who's kind of winning or he can't have her
00:58:29.260
and she's just she knows it something like this but just this the vibe of it there's even some strings
00:58:36.300
in the chorus it it struck me as like a crooning bond song like a really cool bond song actually
00:58:45.900
that would come in the the the title sequences and i don't think they've ever really done that before
00:58:51.580
i think that was a totally new direction for uh for depeche mode and and martin gore in particular
00:58:59.420
yeah i definitely liked the uh well first of all i wouldn't say i didn't like dislike the the the
00:59:08.860
first four tracks that's that's what uh anthony fantano said but i understood where he was coming
00:59:13.100
from as far as i didn't come to listen to the whole album for singles in fact i think soul with
00:59:18.460
me is probably my favorite we'll get there yeah um but i definitely like the string section on there
00:59:24.540
uh and don't say you love me i i mean dave's voice you had mentioned this earlier it changing
00:59:31.500
it is kind of it kind of reminds me of i don't know if you're a sting fan at all but uh sting's voice
00:59:37.340
as it got lower because when he started you know you take a song like roxanne it's way up there but as
00:59:42.780
he gets older about 10 years into it it gets it's kind of like uh i mean it's like a wine or a bourbon
00:59:48.940
or something like that it's got the age to it now it's kind of rough and smooth at the same time
00:59:53.740
that's what i think i mean obviously dave's a baritone and uh sting's a tenor but his voice
00:59:59.260
it's just it's powerful still and it's got this like little bit of grit but it's still smooth kind
01:00:07.020
of i don't know how to uh to really describe it but i yeah i definitely like uh don't say you love me
01:00:14.460
yeah and the other one is people are good which isn't really one of my favorite songs but
01:00:23.740
i do find it interesting because the the immediate song you want to compare it to is
01:00:29.340
people are people but i think this also it's and i think it's it's almost like and martin gore
01:00:35.580
wrote it it's almost like a rejoinder to people for people which wasn't that was that was that a
01:00:43.900
part of some great reward or is that just like a single on its own because they they have a couple
01:00:47.900
of interesting singles like shake the disease and a couple of others people are people yeah
01:00:54.620
people are people is on something that's on some great reward okay i think it's the third track
01:01:00.300
okay so you you have construction time again where everything counts is like a real single
01:01:06.460
and i think that was actually like number one in germany and things there was some funny interview
01:01:12.620
that they had where they said like where you know where are you popular like oh we're popular in
01:01:17.180
europe and soviet union they're like where are you unpopular they're like oh at home which is kind of
01:01:22.140
funny yeah they were like more they spoke to people they spoke more to eastern europe or central europe or
01:01:31.260
someone closer to the soviet union um and there is a vibe to that with the scythe wielding woman on
01:01:37.740
broken frame and music for the masses and so on a kind of cold war vibe which is interesting yeah
01:01:42.620
hopefully we'll talk about that when we get to those but um yes uh like people are people so
01:01:49.420
why should it be you and i should get along so awfully um we're different colors and we're different
01:01:54.700
breeds we're different people who have different needs it's obvious you hate me though i've done
01:01:59.420
nothing wrong i've never even met you so what could i have done yeah i've never even met you so what could
01:02:05.020
i have done yeah what makes man hate another man help me understand
01:02:33.020
it's coming from a very peculiar perspective because it's about racial hatred i would say
01:02:47.340
but then it's assuming that we're all people like why should it be like we're different colors and we're
01:02:56.060
different breeds but why should it be that you hate me you know how is this possible and so
01:03:02.940
it's a kind of like disappointment express which i think is also expressed in like where's the
01:03:09.740
revolution you know like how long are they going to piss on you where is the revolution why haven't
01:03:14.940
you done any it's a it's a weird it's a very peculiar kind of perspective actually and then people are
01:03:23.900
good which it it doesn't have the anthem like chorus of people are people it's not going to be
01:03:30.780
played at stadiums etc but it's an interesting sentiment and i think this is like his most
01:03:37.020
literal song um but keep telling myself that people are good whisper it under my breath so i don't
01:03:44.300
forget keep fooling myself that they do all they can sometimes they simply slip up but it's not what
01:03:51.420
they meant heaven help me heaven help heaven help me heaven help us heaven help us keep reminding
01:03:56.700
myself that people are good and when they do bad things they're just hurting inside keep fooling
01:04:01.900
myself so what he's saying is that they're not that he's fooling himself to believe that people are good
01:04:18.540
they're just hurting inside keep fooling myself
01:04:38.300
it's a kind of like you know rejoinder in fact to people
01:05:07.260
people which assumes that people are good and this is actually selling no all that leftist garb i
01:05:13.900
mean i again i don't think depeche mode is necessarily a right or left band i think they
01:05:19.020
they kind of flirt with right-wing things they flirt with communism i i definitely don't think they're
01:05:23.900
a left-wing band although i guess you could kind of sort of see that with where's the revolution but
01:05:30.620
i don't actually uh but and i think that's what makes them good i mean heaven help us if they
01:05:36.700
became like a christian rock band or something like that like they would have nothing to say
01:05:43.180
but it's basically saying that people are bad you're inherently bad and i can tell myself i can
01:05:49.420
fool myself whisper to myself that like you're hurting inside and that's what you did that's why you did
01:05:57.180
yeah that's really intimate it's an interesting sentiment and it's kind of like a good rejoinder
01:06:06.060
to the heady post-racial liberalism of people are people if i don't say so myself
01:06:12.860
mm-hmm yeah it's kind of um like the people are people is kind of like that idealistic i'm a young
01:06:19.660
kid i'm what's the stupid ass cliche quote if you're uh not a liberal in your teens you don't
01:06:27.900
have a heart if you're not a conservative i mean that's kind of what you're making me think of when
01:06:31.980
yeah when you say that but um you know what when you said disappointment um i didn't really think about
01:06:39.100
that being a lyrical theme in their songs but it definitely is if you take a song like uh things
01:06:47.340
you said i heard it from my friends about the things you said you know yeah never felt so disappointed
01:06:56.860
whatever like yeah that that is definitely uh a theme if we go to the next song uh wagging tongue
01:07:05.260
did didn't that kind of sound like uh vince clark could have uh been involved in the studio as far as
01:07:14.860
the arpeggiated sin you know it was kind of like ah yeah i can see you taking you back but not no you
01:07:23.340
know not in a bad way or anything like that yeah i mean another thing too i think is the lyrics in
01:07:30.460
all these songs seem oppositional like there's you know the the writer or singer versus somebody else
01:07:40.620
whether it's a woman whether it's a person there's there's i don't know maybe that's sounds really
01:07:47.340
really obvious but you know it's like uh or like adversarial kind of and you know maybe that's gone
01:07:56.780
that's just a theme that's just continued since people are people which by the way i did want to
01:08:02.380
mention being that it is more obvious i don't think it's been played live since the uh 101 show in uh
01:08:11.660
pasadena in 88 so which i think is interesting because you know they're most on the nose kind of song and
01:08:20.380
yeah i think they definitely don't want but they always play never let they never let me down again
01:08:25.980
they always play personal jesus they always play enjoy the silence there are a couple and they always
01:08:30.540
play probably just can't get enough as they're like back to the 80s you know yeah and it is did you
01:08:38.060
know we actually wrote this one yeah it is just a fun song for sure yeah i did uh i do and then
01:08:47.820
see even with that kind of upbeat vince clarky sounding feel how do they end it watch another
01:08:55.980
angel die you know that kind of watch another angel die and i did write down the chords for that one
01:09:03.660
the chords aren't anything i mean at least if um this website is to be trusted that they're not anything
01:09:10.460
it's literally a one four five and then uh a four five one they just switch keys really quick that's
01:09:19.020
that's it there's nothing you know and not saying that you know their songs need to be that way that
01:09:25.420
everything needs to be an experimental thing obviously but just goes back to that opposition
01:09:30.620
even when it's a happy song it's not really a happy song or yeah you know
01:09:34.860
you won't do well to silence me with your words a wagging tongue
01:09:44.140
with your long-told tales of sorrow your song yet to be sung
01:09:52.220
i won't be offended if i'm left across the great divide believe me they will follow
01:10:14.140
well what do you think that one is about i mean again i i feel like to go back to my
01:10:21.820
theory that this is a covet album it it strikes me a bit like cancel culture or something you won't
01:10:31.020
do well to silence me with your words or wagging tongue with your long tall tales of sorrow your
01:10:37.180
song yet to be sung that's obviously um sarcastic it's like i mean i it's weird i'm not i'm genuinely
01:10:46.060
not trying to make them a right-wing band but i'm not trying to make them a left either but this is
01:10:53.500
your long tall tales of sorrow your song yet to be sung this sounds like just bashing i don't know
01:11:01.420
like someone who's telling the singing the sorrowful song of george floyd or something and just kind of
01:11:10.540
them just being like you're you're not gonna silence me with this um i won't be offended if
01:11:15.500
i'm left across the great divide like you all can go forward into your new world and i'll just will be
01:11:22.700
back there believe me they will follow just to watch another angel die watch another angel die so what is
01:11:28.700
that what do you think that means i mean immediately the the thought i i think of a police shooting or
01:11:37.020
something like watch another angel die yeah we're talking about martyrs modern day martyrs i mean
01:11:42.140
yeah that would that would make sense continuing with their obvious christian uh themes you know with
01:11:48.700
what you said with george floyd dare i use that cliche again but are are they becoming like
01:11:54.460
conservative in their in their old age i highly doubted or but they're not like magatards or anything
01:12:00.780
like that i'm not saying that but i think they're they're kind of they're expressing something pretty
01:12:05.740
serious in this yeah they stood they stood behind the uh j6ers um yeah i i martin gore was at j6 yes
01:12:20.620
could you imagine oh yeah that'd be funny alan walder also known as the q anon shaman yeah
01:12:27.820
once he left the band he really let himself go yeah yeah he's been walking dark paths ever since
01:12:38.860
yeah but i'll meet you by the river maybe on the other side is this like again this evocation of
01:12:44.140
baptism and so on but i but it's a it's kind of like convoluted in a way it's it's also connecting it
01:12:54.060
with watch another angel die like you're enjoying it and you're that's what you're about to do and
01:13:02.140
again i just i i know this this almost sounds like too literal or too easy but my impression listening
01:13:08.780
to the first two tracks in the album is that they're about cancel culture but in a good way
01:13:15.260
like if some dumb conservative wrote a song about cancel culture it'd be like you know we are free speech
01:13:21.740
right it's in this gland yeah i can tweet what i want and i'll defend your right to tweet what you
01:13:30.780
think too but you shouldn't censor me like it's just it would just be unbearable just unlistenable
01:13:39.340
garbage you know akin to rich men from richmond or something it was just just terrible but when you do it
01:13:46.060
this way and you bring in religious imagery it becomes kind of interesting because it can be it
01:13:53.500
can be about whatever you want in a way you know but it also kind of gets to the like archetypal
01:14:00.300
element of what they're doing i i can't disagree uh with anything that you've said or or really um
01:14:08.140
add to it but as far as the uh watch another angel die yeah that i don't even know if they know
01:14:19.820
the contemporary uh martyrs i guess exactly and and martin gore is resisting it which i think is
01:14:28.220
very interesting yeah but go on oh go on would have thought due to his ancestry that he would feel
01:14:34.220
some sympathy with the uh oh you don't believe that i'm joking i don't believe that i read that in
01:14:42.140
strips and i'm not saying i'm not like i don't care actually like i'm not i would still love the
01:14:48.620
band just as much if so in stripped it was revealed i don't even know if it was the book that revealed
01:14:54.940
this or it's it's mentioned somewhere else he definitely doesn't wear it on his sleeve the notion
01:14:59.100
is that his um father was like a black american soldier or something yeah like uh what it would have
01:15:08.220
been no it couldn't i don't know why it wouldn't have been that there were no there were no soldiers
01:15:12.220
stationed oh no no 60s but there weren't so weren't there soldiers i mean i'll go look and stripped
01:15:20.300
maybe i'll go find where true but i mean not not that it's impossible obviously if you're a soldier
01:15:28.140
you're kind of traveling around the world but um it so there's this notion that his father is black he
01:15:34.860
was not raised by his father his father's absent from his life he's raised by his mother um and then
01:15:41.980
there was actually a line from stripped which i remember they're like oh yeah we noticed that
01:15:45.820
because of his pee or something i i don't know if they were saying that he had a big dick or
01:15:51.900
whatever i do know yeah it just sounds extremely inconclusive it sounds like a story his mother told him
01:16:01.020
and i'm sorry but if you're half black you look like barack obama you don't look like martin gore
01:16:09.180
like it's not i mean it's possible there could be some weird fluke of genetics that he looks as white
01:16:17.100
as he does but he's actually half black i just i'm i i don't even i don't even like doing this because i
01:16:23.580
don't really i don't want to really go after him it doesn't matter he he could be from you know
01:16:30.220
zwahili land or from china and i would still appreciate his music and perspective so it it
01:16:36.940
genuinely does not matter but i remember reading that and thinking to myself this is just
01:16:43.340
this is some story his mom told him perhaps to like gain social credit or something i just i do not
01:16:50.940
believe it i actually want to backpedal for a second okay so i don't know what you thought of
01:16:57.660
of i like playing the angel i liked uh yeah i like playing the angel uh i didn't care for there's
01:17:06.460
a what is it three albums uh sounds of the universe not not a fan of yeah that one delta delta machine
01:17:15.580
wasn't it might have been a hint of something here there and uh spirit i i wasn't a huge fan of i mean i
01:17:24.060
remember when it came out that was actually was that right it might have been right before or after i
01:17:33.980
started getting into them but i remember listening to where's the revolution and you know i just felt
01:17:41.260
like the marxist imagery in the video i was kind of like uh i maybe i'll have to well i know i'll
01:17:48.540
eventually revisit all of them yeah but um the problem is at least for me and um this is i'm just
01:17:58.300
echoing uh alan wilder here but he said in interviews without sounding um uh polemical or anything he's
01:18:07.500
basically just saying you know what we did on songs of faith and devotion and what i had been trying to
01:18:14.460
do more of is get like a clip or a loop or a you know piece of performance and add it i mean obviously
01:18:22.060
he was playing drums back then but the point is is that the sound has become too robotic there's not
01:18:29.180
like on these drum machines they all have this in some form or another they had this swing where you can
01:18:34.460
put it and and you can place the hi-hat or the snare or the kick drum just behind the beat or just in
01:18:41.500
front of the beat so it sounds like a drummer's playing you know extra anxiously or something
01:18:47.340
and he was what he's saying is that something that a lot of rap producers will do
01:18:54.380
is take that whole drum loop and so you get the feel of an actual drummer you know it doesn't every
01:19:01.660
song doesn't have to be this way the way that i'm explaining it with that kind of humanized
01:19:05.900
electronic feel what he was basically getting at is everything is so grid-like and that's something
01:19:12.460
that i would have to uh agree with it's not so much on ultra i think ultra they were still
01:19:19.260
doing it they were still having that no there's well some of the songs just flat out have what uh
01:19:27.180
the line what's the name of that song uh it's on all truck damn it don't tip my tongue
01:19:31.900
like a cat dragged in from the rain oh anyway that one
01:19:35.020
dragged in from the rain who goes straight back out to do it all over again i'll be back for more
01:19:48.620
it's something that is out of our hands something we will never understand the drums are actually played
01:19:57.180
on that but the point kind of remains is especially on from exciter on it just everything to me is just
01:20:04.700
cold and rigid and and that's why i can appreciate in a song like how's this for a segue in a song like
01:20:11.020
soul with me the drums yeah they're electronic and they're you know on the beat in the bar but there is a
01:20:17.500
kind of a kind of feel where it feels like there could be a band playing uh that song i just like the
01:20:25.020
intro the way the intro of that song starts with the it's kind of like these synthesized strings
01:20:33.500
i'm not gonna imitate the rest of it but you understand i think it is and i just think
01:20:39.580
no you'll disagree with this i like his voice better however big caveat is he's not a lead singer
01:20:46.700
he's good for the ballads he's good for i just like tenor kind of singers but dave is it's like
01:20:56.380
i would prefer paul mccartney's voice over john lennon's and john lennon is the more baritone singer
01:21:02.460
he's the lead singer do you know what i mean and and i like those kind of higher harmony uh singers
01:21:10.300
that's just personal preference or whatever but he kind of in that song he's kind of going for like
01:21:18.060
death as a sort of liberation i'm heading for the ever after leaving my problems and you know
01:21:28.460
world's disasters disasters i'm heading for the open sky yeah yeah yeah it kind of sounds like he's
01:21:35.580
he's you know headed to and i'm taking my soul with me oh yeah absolutely
01:21:42.700
i'm heading for the ever after leaving my problems and the world's disasters
01:22:51.820
just a critique of the uh the actual song itself i just kind of wish there was a little bit of a
01:23:03.180
build-up to where i could because his voice on that song is to me it's really rich like it's just you
01:23:10.860
know it's in the right key and everything is what i'm trying to say and i just wish there was a little
01:23:14.780
bit of space i guess i could make that overall criticism of the the in the album is i wish there
01:23:20.700
was a little bit of space between voice and music you know maybe start off a little bit slower
01:23:28.940
you know and add instrumentation with the choruses and and verses but yeah i definitely really like the uh
01:23:36.940
the chords are textbook like martin gore there's always they make sense but then there's that one
01:23:44.060
that's just like wow how is this why is this here yeah that kind of thing but i know i'll let you uh
01:23:51.660
i'll let you uh marinate yeah that that is something the like shake the disease like like
01:24:04.940
it it doesn't make sense in music theory he's like going in what what is it it's like five three
01:24:16.300
five three and then like flat five it's it's a weird tonality i could go look at my score book that
01:24:23.660
it has has this in it but it's yeah it's creepy kind of like it it it doesn't it's like out of tune but
01:24:33.340
you know that it's intentional and so it's just kind of creepy and yeah i think there there is
01:24:39.740
something like unique about that that i could just hear that one little bit and know it's martin gore
01:24:45.660
that he would do that i mean even with you know enjoy the silence was their most pop song although
01:24:50.700
it was written something it was written very differently this was something in the stripped
01:24:55.660
book which is that martin writes with the guitar and um wilder wrote with keyboards or piano because
01:25:03.180
he was a pianist and um so i don't even know what he's doing he's coming up with some like weird
01:25:09.500
chordal formations in the guitar but that song enjoy the silence was written originally i don't know if
01:25:15.740
you've heard the like original backing track but it's this like organ you know yeah like very slow
01:25:23.180
dark weird and then wilder listen to it he's like this could be a pop dance track
01:25:28.860
violence break the silence come crashing into my little world painful to me pierce right through me
01:25:48.300
but even that ends on a um what is it it's in c sharp i believe and yeah so yeah it's in
01:26:01.180
they never as far as i know they never released an official official like chord book or anything like
01:26:06.780
that i remember reading an interview with alan saying like so a fan had basically asked why don't you
01:26:12.300
release a chord book and explain or you know show in notation uh somebody you know but he said and i
01:26:20.060
mean this was in 1998 ish or something like that he said that they hadn't done that he wouldn't be
01:26:24.860
interested in doing something like that because he said he never really played it the same as the record
01:26:31.340
but the version that i've always practiced or played is in c minor but so you're talking about
01:26:38.220
enjoy the silence right yes yeah so it's just a half step difference but but it's but it ends in c
01:26:44.060
major so it's like unnecessary they can only do harm so you end on the e and the c minor chord but then
01:27:15.980
and so it's just this weird obviously intentional but out of tune like there's no music theory that
01:27:23.100
would suggest that you do something like that it's very surprising and strange but it's just so
01:27:29.420
martin gore you know like you it works uh let me see what shake the disease is um that i was going
01:27:38.220
to before i think i'm gonna guess it's in d minor because it goes yeah i don't know if i should lower
01:27:44.540
my keyboard so again he goes to he goes down a semitone so it's this like falling sensation or
01:27:51.340
something so it's so you're doing a flat five while the bass goes down from d minor to d flat major
01:28:04.300
like again there's no i don't even know like you know so there's some dorian mode that we haven't
01:28:09.740
discovered yet or something i don't know any music theory that would justify doing that and so it almost
01:28:15.900
has like a blurring like you know like the um um you know i've got to get to you first like
01:28:24.140
it has this like blurred effect to it of whoa so that's bright but it's
01:28:41.900
it's it's great i mean it's it shows he's just doing it on his own like he's he's coming up with
01:28:58.540
a sound that's very intentional and it just kind of works there is a a word for that kind of progression
01:29:05.740
and it's i feel like i'm giving away his secrets because i once i you know i had to know how these
01:29:13.580
chords like fit well it works on a common tone so like you can if you if you flip between the major
01:29:22.380
minor modes you can find a common tone between two keys that are semitone apart so like c sharp
01:29:30.380
minor has a common tone of e with c major but otherwise you couldn't get any different but
01:29:38.140
there's that one common tone that e and because of the yeah yeah and it harmonizes but but again that
01:29:47.180
that works on a well-tempered clavier i mean it works on a piano it's it's just yeah it's just strange
01:29:53.660
but it's almost suggesting at least to me it's suggesting like a falling feeling like it's it's like
01:29:59.020
like the whole key is kind of like dragged down with like okay yeah great stuff definitely agree with
01:30:09.180
the falling aspect and there is which is the one that dave uh dave wrote did he write two songs on here
01:30:17.100
or because he wrote speak to me yes okay so there's a lift in speak to me it's like c minor e flat uh
01:30:28.460
f minor a flat whatever so that's fine that's all in the same key but then it goes from c minor
01:30:35.980
to c major to i'd have to find that but anyway what i'm the point i'm getting at is there i noticed
01:30:45.740
in his song the uh the lift and but yeah just basically that there was uh that lift being there
01:30:54.860
it was kind of like the yin to martin's yang because i know exactly what you're talking about
01:30:59.100
because you know they martin usually it's a minor key but then it goes to another minor so like
01:31:09.420
that kind of thing which is extremely dark it's the uh the chorus there um in speak to me that is
01:31:22.540
lying on the bathroom floor no one here to blame there's a message i know can be found
01:31:40.540
so that i think that was that especially that end
01:32:10.540
yeah what is that that is e flat to would be b major or oh wow to d flat back to e flat
01:32:28.620
which you get in the song like instant karma by john lennon where it's like
01:32:40.620
don't want to get don't want to get back into beatles territory with uh
01:32:45.180
with you anyway i'm not you're kind of making me into more of a beatles hater than i
01:32:51.020
that i actually am but yeah um no i i appreciate it um but yeah i mean just to kind of like go through
01:33:01.820
all of these it's variation on death um and variation on the soul like it's ghost again is a poppy song
01:33:14.940
about dying but it's like becoming ghost again it's we were we were born as spirit and we're going to be
01:33:21.820
ghost again um soul with me is i'm taking my soul so i'm like it is like as you say like death is a
01:33:29.420
liberation i'm going to the open sky and i'm actually going to take my soul with me so it's this
01:33:35.740
kind of like i'm going to go i'm going to retreat into death but i'm going to be there
01:33:40.140
and it's not my soul isn't just going to vanish or or something i mean it's a you could say it's a
01:33:46.220
kind of image of heaven as well so it really is suicide and death maybe not suicide but perhaps
01:33:52.620
suicide and death is as liberation um yeah i definitely get that feeling from soul with me
01:33:58.700
i mean it's it yeah yeah i think uh ed dutton would have referred to those lyrics as a sick or something
01:34:04.860
because he's kind of you know excitedly not excitedly he's kind of yeah you know he's not
01:34:10.940
upset about it basically no no definitely but um you know i'm not uh sure can you figure out caroline's
01:34:23.660
monkey i can't like totally figure out that song you mean in terms of it's like tabulature or something
01:34:33.260
no no no the um what it's about yeah i i anytime i hear um monkey i think okay maybe that's like
01:34:44.860
heroin or something um but i'm i think it's someone who has like a tremendous amount of baggage that was
01:34:53.420
definitely my Caroline's monkey lives where she lays sleeps like a thief and steals through the days
01:35:00.380
Caroline's monkey makes up all the fun leaves chaos and ruin on Caroline's tongue it's like
01:35:06.380
singing about someone Caroline i mean i think care whether he knows someone named Caroline is up for
01:35:11.660
debate but i mean it's it it's someone who has this like you know devil inside or something or some
01:35:19.340
big baggage that's dragging her down feels the ice in her veins the minutes and hours the naming of
01:35:27.980
days Caroline said her dream never ends the Caroline's monkey and Caroline's friends
01:35:42.300
yeah because when i first heard that i was like Caroline's monkey like the hell but and then i i like
01:35:46.860
this also it's it's kind of like giving up like fading is better than failing i think fading is a
01:35:54.380
you know it's a euphemism for um smoking out isn't it like fading um i don't even know if that's
01:36:02.540
necessarily what he's indicating but fading is better than failing falling is better than feeling
01:36:08.540
um folding is better than losing giving up is better than losing fixing is better than healing sometimes
01:36:16.860
which is kind of which is kind of a reference almost to like you know i'm clean as clean as
01:37:08.940
There's like an inner dialogue I think with this album
01:37:18.540
I don't know if you can find other instances of that
01:37:26.120
Of their kind of like revisiting and like offering a rejoinder
01:37:48.920
And I think that it's the best album they've done