Reflections from another Depeche Mode concert

Even though I rarely listen to Depeche Mode these days, they’ve meant a great deal to me for over 20 years. My first experience of Depeche Mode was the vinyl records of “Speak & Spell” and “Construction Time Again” in the early eighties. After the somewhat disappointing Exciter album they returned four years later with an album last autumn.

When it comes to touring, they have always been interesting in some way. I remember seeing Dave Gahan with the grunge beard on the Devotional Tour 1993, a dark concert where the audience went crazy, as well as the opening of Singles Tour 1998 where the concert started in full throttle with “A question of time”.

On this tour called Touring the Angel, much was different. Only a few meters from the stage, I saw with my own eyes how they’ve grown older. But even though they can’t even entirely keep up with their old hits, they managed to make us believe that they actually have fun on stage. Martin sported an archangel hat and even smiled a few times when he thought we didn’t look. Best moment of the evening was Martin performing an acoustic version of “Shake the disease”.

Reach out and touch Dave.

Unfortunately the songs from the new album Playing The Angel were better on record, since they didn’t really work well even for the devoted audience. But of course they also performed a lot of classic songs which started a wave of nostalgia through the aging audience, especially in the unavoidable wave of “Never let me down again” with 23 000 arms waving in the air. The concert ended with Dave kissing Martin on the forehead, while singing “Goodnight Lovers” together on the catwalk, an unifying gesture on several levels. Cute.

And for those who just can’t get enough, Depeche will feature the song “Suffer well” in the add-on to The Sims 2, where they will sing in the Sims language Simlish! Have a look at the animated video, which even features manikins of the Basildon trio! Hilarious.