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Memento Mori

I'm not a crazy Depeche Mode fan but I remember them from my teens and thought I'd give their new album a listen, while I read up on them. I have a friend on FB who is crazy about them.

People are people might be a top hit of theirs, preaching tolerance for others. Never Let Me Down is another. 

Of course it's new print media that reminds me of a band. The New York Times has an article about their new album. Dave Gahan and Martin Gore are the main guys on this album, in a band that has rotating personnelle. "...the sound is foreboding and sleek, sardonic yet soulful — music for lovers in black-leather-upholstered bullet-train compartments, racing toward ominous destinations." And, "“Death is everywhere,” Gore wrote years ago, in a song called “Fly on the Windscreen,” whose narrator goes on to beckon, “Come here, kiss me, now,” because you never know."

Reading up on them, I read Sasha Frere-Jones has a good article: "Americans can handle aesthetic darkness as long as it’s depoliticized and personal. Look at Depeche Mode—we love Goth music, which is essentially a passive pleasure: depression as comfort. The Cure and Depeche Mode ended up with big American fan bases (although the Cure’s happy songs are what really caused them to break out here)."

I'm a part a whole to the part learner and I really appreciate the song Somebody. I like it when someone says something in a simple way. I know that might open me up to ridicule, because in a way it's a simple fantasy. Of course they have many hits.

Depeche Mode means 'hurried fashion' or 'fashion dispatch'

Depeche Mode was formed in 1980, and they just came out with a new album, Memento Mori (Spotify).

Depeche Mode's music has been variously described as synth-pop, electronic rock, new wave, dance-rock, post-punk, alternative rock and pop rock. The band have also experimented with other genres throughout their career, including avant-garde, electronica, pop, soul, techno, industrial rock and heavy metal.

Depeche Mode's origins date to 1977, when schoolmates Vince Clarke and Andy Fletcher formed a band called "No Romance in China" with Clarke on vocals and guitar and Fletcher on bass. Fletcher would later recall, "Why am I in the band? It was accidental right from the beginning. I was actually forced to be in the band. I played the guitar and I had a bass; it was a question of them roping me in."

Vance Clarke also did Yazoo with Alison Moyet.

Dave Gahan does the vocals for Depeche Mode. 

The Wikipedia page has some nice graphics about who is in the band and when.

"Depeche Mode, Gahan suggested, has always survived by evolving. “Sometimes we’ve changed naturally, and sometimes change has been forced upon us,” he said, “and I think that’s what’s happening now. We lost an integral part of Depeche Mode, who’s irreplaceable. Circumstances forced us to be different, to think of each other in a different way. We need each other in a different way.” (NY Times)

Fletcher died in 2022, he was a filter between Clarke and Gahan. 


Discography:

Speak & Spell (1981)
A Broken Frame (1982)
Construction Time Again (1983)
Some Great Reward (1984)
Black Celebration (1986)
Music for the Masses (1987)
Violator (1990)
Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993)
Ultra (1997)
Exciter (2001)
Playing the Angel (2005)
Sounds of the Universe (2009)
Delta Machine (2013)
Spirit (2017)
Memento Mori (2023)

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