Depeche Mode - Song By Song/Album By Album Discussion Thread.

Peace.

Always think about it and comment on it as being an electronic hymn to me particular because of that chorus.

The chorus is painful so this song for me cannot be saved. I don't mind if I don't hear this song again.

1/5

 

Peace. No thanks. Sterile, little Melody, boring. 1/5

 

Wow. I don't think this is an outstanding song, rather run of the mill for DM. But, I didn't expect 1/5s. I'm not disagreeing with the ratings, as it's entirely subjective. Just surprised.

 

Peace:

I am surprised how much flak this song gets. Especially with "Come Back" coming up next...

My biggest criticism (again) is that the sounds / the production is not really inventive or pushing any boundaries. It all got a bit comfortable on SOTU imo (except for Wrong).

And regarding the album title: I think Delerium covered that subject far better on Spheres I + II in 1994.

3/5.

 

Peace is ok. As others have mentioned, the band seemed to think more highly of this song than most fans do. Maybe different orchestration could have helped? As it is, I'm not sure what kind of chart success or reaction to live performances they would expect for this song.

That said, it almost seems like this could be a title track to the album. Maybe they didn't do that since Eurythmics (and I'm sure others) did it first. But Peace would make a far better album title than what they ended up with.

 

Track 8, and what feels like the start of Side B (even though no version of the album comes on just 2 sides), is Come Back.



Written by Dave, Christian Eigner, and Andrew Philpott, it's a song that some people hate and some people love. I'm in the latter camp : I love it's melodic choices, it's wall of sound production, the semi-gospel approach you can hear in the layers and backing vocals, and the conclusion of the song. Sure, it's not as good as Enjoy The Silence, but what is?

In the associated EPK, Gahan said : "I do have my favourite tracks on the album at the moment but they change all the time! I think my favourite is actually 'Come Back' which is a song that I wrote with Andrew and Christian which has really come a long way from the demo."

By the sound of it, the band worked hard on developing the potential of their demos, working through arrangements and ideas, Martin trying to make the songs sound more Depechy, and adding his own melodic flourishes to songs. The production isn't groundbreaking, but instead a measured, slow burn of sound as the song slowly builds from part to part.

In Rolling Stone, Dave added : "Martin helped a lot [with my songs], he invested a lot of time, trying a lot. Sometimes I had to pressure him a little bit, but he had this idea with the backing vocals in 'Come Back', which is wonderful."

Generally speaking, the song was in a rotational slot with "Miles Away/The Truth Is" on the 2009-2010 tour, and was last played live at *that* Royal Albert Hall show. I think it worked very well live, and I really rate this as one of the better songs on this divisive album. 4/5 for me.

 

Here's the original demo of Come Back

 

Here's a studio session of Come Back that I think was on the supermega deluxe box set version of the album.

 

There's also two remixes of the song. Here's the Jonsi Remix (Sigur Ros fans may know that name!)

 

And here's the SixToes remix

 

Christ, "Come Back" is awful, morose, melody-less pap, in my opinion. They have b-sides from the '80s and '90s that are far stronger than this. I dunno, I find a lot of their post-Playing the Angel material very difficult to defend.

 

Also, the thought that both Martin and Dave thought "Peace" to be one of the best songs Gore has ever written not only tickles me but convinces me for once and for all that Depeche's judgement is well and truly f***** to the point where it's totally unsurprising that their last near 20 years of output hasn't been all that good.

 

What happened at "that" RAH show?

 

Alan played with them for the last time.

 

Come Back isn't my favourite Dave song, I just find it rather plodding.

2/5

 

Come Back

This is OK. But, I find it a bit boring. With the large number of songs and albums that DM have released, I feel no real need to come back and listen to this again really. I will listen to it in the future when I listen to the album.

My main thought here is that I'm sure that Dave's Hourglass has a number of songs on it that are both better songs than this. And which have better production. I'm going to spin that today.

Oh, I have to vote on this.

3/5

I don't feel I want to go down into the 2s, but I can't raise this above a 3. So: vote decided.

Last time so far? Excessively optimistic? Moi?

 

Come Back:
Sounds like a lesser Oasis song to me. Otherwise as already summarized below.

 

I get that lots of people don't like Come Back, in fact lots of people don't much of the post Ultra stuff. And sometimes I agree with them. I think there's a gap between what we might want Depeche to be, and what they are. As far as I am concerned, something like Come Back is probably rubbish if you stick to what you expect from Depeche, but in its own right, and without the words Depeche Mode on the cover, it's pretty good. Sure, there's some stadium rock leanings - but there were in I Feel You, Personal Jesus, Never Let Me Down Again, etc. You could easily imagine, say Poison, covering A Question Of Time. Though please, let that never come to pass. We've already had Def Leppard doing Personal Jesus!

 

Hmm... I think there are some good songs on the album, and 'Ghost' is my favourite DM b-side. There are plenty of post-Ultra songs that I like a lot. I don't think I dislike DM because I don't like what they are, or were in 2008. I just don't like this song.

 

Sadly, for me, this wasn't in the big box. I was disappointed that the official version was (what seemed at the time) so crowded with noise and disappointed again when the demo version wasn't this version either.

I feel that something was lost between this and the official version.

 

I could swear its on my Megabox version : Depeche Mode

 

It is. It's on the DVD with three other studio session recordings, Corrupt, Little Soul and Stories Of Old.

 

It looks like the video of it is there. At the time I didn't know how to rip the audio from a video and so needed a purely audio track.

I sold my box several years ago so that boat's sailed. Ripping the audio from the youtube video is all I could do at this point.

 

I disagree with this completely. I think it's a horrible track from any conceivable angle to the point that whether or not Depeche Mode released it is irrelevant. This sounds like the type of thing hardcore fans of anything come out with in order to justify weaker output (see also: "even a weak album by (insert name of favourite band here) is better than most bands' best!" ... erm, no!)

 

I disagree, too.
And for me it's not about leanings towards stadium rock. I just think Come Back is boring and bland.
I like many post-Ultra tracks but find it difficult to warm up to those Gahan / Eigner / Philpott songs (except Suffer Well).