mainstream ‘devotion’ grows for depeche mode
USA Today
LOS ANGELES--You’ve heard of new age music; call this coming of age.
With their new album, Songs of Faith and Devotion, premiering at No. 1 in Billboard this week, Depeche Mode is the latest example of a recent phenomenon: veteran English angst/dance bands that finally outgrow cult status in America and claim a chunk of the mainstream.
Like The Cure previously, and New Order and Morrissey, who seem next in line, Depeche Mode—French for “fast fashion”—has built an empire on the seesaw emotions and unabashed honesty associated with adolescence. The group has crossed over mainly by word-of-mouth—managing to keep old fans while winning new ones.
“That’s the amazing thing: New groups of teenage fans keep coming, but their big brothers and sisters are still fans, too,” says Richard Blade, a DJ at Los Angeles alternative station KROQ, which helped introduce the band stateside more than a decade ago.
Born of the ’80s techno-pop explosion (remember Human League?), Depeche (as fans call them) enjoyed instant success in England. But in the Springsteen-obsessed USA, they were belittled as a synthesizer novelty act. Then, as songwriter Martin Gore started exploring themes like teen suicide, Depeche was labeled morbid.
Despite sold-out stadiums on their last U.S. tour, and record sales to match (1990‘s Violator sold more than 2 million copies stateside), Depeche was seen as a cult group for disaffected youth, or as the “thinking girl’s teeny-bopper band," to quote The Village Voice. Their 1985 Top 10 hit People Are People was called a fluke.
Why does the group, which drew 15,000 fans to a 1990 L.A. record store signing, maintain a passionate fan base of earnest teens? “They just, like, represent all the teenagers,” says Forest Meadows of Orange, Calif., 20, a fan for seven years. “lf you meet someone and they’re a Depeche fan, you're instantly bonded.”
Depeche’s Gore, like Morrissey and The Cure’s Robert Smith, “captures that intense joy and sorrow a teenager feels.” Blade says. “You know, like the joy a guy feels when he's on a date and had the best time, and he drives the girl home, and she turns to him and says, ‘I hate you.’ You crash from the gates of heaven to the depths of hell...”
The band’s songs, says Chris Brase, 17, of Fountain Valley, Calif., have “helped me through a lot of hard times. Just, like, depression, love, heartbreak, all that stuff.”
And Gore tackles his subjects with a simplicity reflecting youth’s heart-on-the-sleeve: In Condemnation, off the new album, he writes: “Hand me my sentence, l’ll show no repentance, l’ll suffer with pride. If for honesty you want apologies, I don't sympathize.”
Depeche and the other British artists have developed a seemingly disparate mix of melancholy lyrics and euphoric tunes that mirror the emotional roller coaster described. Singer Dave Gahan identities with the feelings he sings about: “Everybody’s looking for that thing. You know, mostly love and somebody to be with and respect. What else is there? You know, one minute you’re here, and the next you’re f— dead.”
Fans also appreciate the band’s down-to-earth attitude, disinterest in cashing in on the latest trends, and slightly naughty teen-idol good looks.
And though they might outgrow the teen scene, fans don’t outgrow the band. “My sister’s 27,” Meadows says. “She took me to my first Depeche concert. Even my mom loves ’em.… and she's a well-educated woman.”
For adults, the band’s songs may provide a chance to dust off not-quite-lost innocence. Explains Joe Banks, editor of Chicago’s Alternative Press magazine: “There’s a little teen angst in all of us.” +
other british acts branching out
Like Depeche Mode, other British bands with a danceable angst approach are broadening their following. A look at three:
The Cure
Mastermind Robert Smith is legendary for rubber-tongued vocals; word salad, storybook lyrics; and German expressionist-film-star looks. He’s inspired legions of young would-be existentialists to smear their lipstick and spray their hair into spidery bushes.
Pigeonholed as the kings of gloom rock, the members have created more complex sounds over the group’s 15-year history. 1992’s Wish (which entered the charts at No. 2) showcased this mixture of rolling guitars and shivering synthesizers The dark, monotonous Open can probably be appreciated only by a miserable drunk (it’s about an alcoholic). But then, ZIP!, you’re up out of it and into High, a bouncy pop song about a lost love: “When I see you kitten as a cat, smitten as that, I can’t get that small…when I see you happy as a girl who lives in a world of make believe, it makes me pull my hair all out to think I could have let you leave.”
The band’s first feature film, a chronicle of the Wish tour, is due in July.
Morrissey
The Oscar Wilde of pop, Morrissey has been dubbed “the prince of mope rock.” But many critics miss his self-conscious humor.
Formerly front man for The Smiths, his survival after the band’s breakup proves fans’ loyalty. He’s an antihero, the alienated diamond in the rough—an image he's courted by wearing a hearing aid as fashion. Morrissey’s fans consider him a messiah, leaping up to hug him when he performs. He says he needs the hugs to make up for a loveless childhood.
On his most recent album; Your Arsenal, his band moves toward rockabilly. But the lyrics are familiar: “I am a poor, brazenly cold soul, so far from where I intended to go, scavenging through life’s very constant lows…”
New Order
The band Joy Division still has a serious cult following long after its demise, in part because lead singer Ian Curtis hanged himself on the eve of its first U.S. tour.
The other members survived, re-emerging as New Order. The group has maintained a mythical aura, gracing a record sleeve only once (in distorted photos) and skipping liner notes. Fiercely independent, they won’t sign to a major label.
Says bassist Peter Hook, “Our last gigs were (for) 25,000 people, and I could walk in the audience and nobody knew me…. It was nice that it was our music standing up and not some publicity photo.”
Their increasingly bright music was enough to get Top 40 airplay for their last album, 1989’s Technique. But “we’ve played America successfully for a long time without any Top 40 airplay," Hook says.
The band’s new album, Republic, is due May 10. In the first single, Regret, lyricist Bernard Sumner expresses tentative hope: “I would like a place I could call my own, have a conversation on the telephone. Wake up every day, that would be a start, I would not complain about my wounded heart.” +
