THE BASILDON BAND EVOLVED FROM CAREFREE POP PIN-UPS TO DARK ELECTRONIC OVERLORDS IN A PIONEERING CAREER THAT HAS TAKEN SYNTH MUSIC TO NEW STADIUM-SIZED HEIGHTS
JON O’BRIEN
After various false starts with the bands No Romance In China and Composition Of Sound, former schoolmates Vince Clarke and Andy Fletcher – along with two other Basildon boys they rounded up along the way – finally gained momentum under a guise inspired by a Parisian style bible.
As shown by the slightly mixed messaging of their Top Of The Pops debut – a frilly-bloused Dave Gahan looking every inch the teen discovered at a scout hut jam session and a mesh-vested Martin Gore apparently off to the nearest BDSM club – Depeche Mode were unlikely to grace its pages themselves. But bridging the sonic gap between the pioneering electronica of The Human League and Kraftwerk as well as the Smash Hits pop of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, their sound was very much in fashion.
Co-produced with Daniel Miller, the Mute Records founder who gazumped several major labels for the band’s signature, first studio effort Speak & Spell is considered somewhat of an outlier in the band’s vast catalogue. Only the moody minimalism of the Gore-sung Any Second Now (Voices) hints at the noir masters they would mutate into.
While it’s undoubtedly both musically and lyrically the most disposable record of their 43-years-and-counting career – “PG-rated fluff” was Rolling Stone’s harsh, if not entirely inaccurate, summary – it’s hard not to get swept up in its sheer exuberance. Still only on the cusp of adulthood – Gahan and Gore hadn’t yet turned 20 – this is a band confident they’re making the music of the future. And while its bleeps and bloops, often resembling the noises of a Speak & Spell toy, now sound primitive, they still exude joyous youthful optimism.
The album’s incongruity is, of course, down to Clarke, the chief songwriter who, reportedly tired of increasing media commitments, had made his exit by the year’s end. Breakthrough single New Life is up there with any of the synth-pop gems Clarke would go on to craft as part of Yazoo and then Erasure. Likewise, Just Can’t Get Enough, an instant classic so unapologetically upbeat that even a Comic Relief cover by The Saturdays barely needed to change a note.
Less convincing is What’s Your Name?, which saddles its homoerotic intrigue (“Hey you’re such a pretty boy”) with sugary sweet synths and sub-Beach Boys harmonies. It’s no surprise that the band themselves consider the song a ca
