Word: modelied
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Okay. It happens to all of us. There are some bands that we've all heard of, yet they're perpetually relegated to the tips of tongues. For example, there's The Cars, A-Ha, Donny Osmond, Club Nouveau...and Depeche Mode. Now granted, there are some staunch fans out there, but the rest of us know Depeche Mode in passing, if at all. But trust me, we've all heard Depeche Mode. Yes, even you. Get your hands on the single "Enjoy the Silence." That's right! They played them at the eighth grade dance...
...that Depeche Mode's (debatable) historical validity has been established, we come to the matter at hand--The Singles 86>98, a recently released compilation of the group's singles of the 80's and 90's. This two-CD set does indeed span twelve years of releases, which is odd considering that the band has been around for eighteen years. There's a good reason for this--Depeche Mode reached an epiphany of sorts around 1986 (didn't we all?). Pre-1986 Depeche Mode was pretty out of control. The band only hit its groove with the release...
...French, Depeche Mode is roughly equivalent to "fast fashion." Now forget that. Their sound has nothing whatsoever to do with "fast fashion." In a whimsically unimaginative fit, the band named themselves after a French fashion mag. So you can put the French-English dictionary away and concentrate on the music...
...Depeche Mode's biggest influences were David Bowie, Kraftwerk and Roxy Music. Sound eclectic? Well, so does this album, Musically, it's all over the place, but the set remains uniformly strong. The styles range from the richly balladic "Condemnation" to the mainstream "Enjoy the Silence" to the NINish "Stripped." Regardless of the individual style of the music, you can count on it being driven by synthesizers and being immoderately gloomy...
...prime example is "Strangelove." The song begins with a rousing synthesized beat and dives right into such glum, semi-introspective lyrics as "I give in to sin because I like to practice what I preach." If you listen to Depeche Mode over and over again without ever listening to the lyrics (I highly recommend this), they sound like the perfect band. But when you take your ears off cruise control, what you're hearing are songs of two varieties: pretentious self-loathing and nasty love stories. Verdict: great sound, questionable lyrics...