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

I should point out I really like plenty of their post-Alan releases, but the back half of Ultra, feels like it is sequenced like a Big Black album, where the band present the album in order of how good the songs are, so by the time you get to the 13th song, you get the 13th best song of that period.

 

The Bottom Line - The vocal melody is very reminiscent in style of a Martin Gore vocal track from Black Celebration/Some Great Reward era. It got got close to out staying it's welcome and I would doubt it would have made it on to the album if it were recorded with vinyl in mind but CD let it through the door, in other words, filler, passable but filler.

2.5/5

 

The Bottom Line

I also wouldn't say that I hate this song either. In fact, apathy would be my feeling towards it. Aside from the very out of place steel guitar, this song simply meanders and plods along and it takes real effort to even concentrate on the lyrics. In more capable hands, this song might have been salvaged into something catchier and more memorable. It's almost hard to believe this track came from the same group that chugged out Barrel of a Gun and Useless.

 

The Bottom Line

Brilliant song, beautiful lyrics and I connect with it, once of the best non single songs on album.

4/5

 

I was starting to wonder if I was the only one who likes the song!!!

 

You’re not – I love this song. I love how Martin’s vocal is mixed so prominently over the sparse arrangement. I think it recalls nicely the gospel influences of Songs of Faith and Devotion with echoes of “Somebody” and “It Doesn’t Matter”. And that 3rd verse with Martin humming behind the vocal – wow!

Not saying this is the best DM song ever, but I think it ranks pretty highly, and like “One Caress”, it would have been a nice breath of fresh air if not sandwiched in between the milquetoast duo of “Freestate” and “Insight”. And yes, it’s the last great Martin vocal for a long time to come…

 

Here's a live version of The Bottom Line, and I think this is the only filmed performance of the song, Montreal 2001.

 

The next fifteen or so songs you'll think I hate Depeche Mode. More accurately I found the period 1997-2001 tough going as a fan as the band adapted to life without Alan, a newly sober Gahan, and Gore himself suffered from writers block. Depeche Mode seemed more like a job to the band members at this point than any other time in their career, and I got the feeling that some of them weren't really enjoying it. The last song on Ultra is Insight. It's an OK, serviceable song, but like a number of their contemporaries, the band seemed to be feeling a little Out Of Time, as they'd entered the 'legacy act' stage of their career, with The Cure tanking with Wild Mood Swings, New Order in pieces, and R.E.M. stumbling along with the pretty good but clearly wounded Up LP. Insight is a much, much better and livelier song that the two that preceded it, but it's still not great at all : the musical arrangement, like much of the rest of Ultra sounds like Depeche Mode trying to sound like Depeche Mode again, and not quite hitting the mark. There'n a lack of dynamics, and inventive rhythms, and it's all so tasteful, restrained, minimal, elegant, and thus, a bit dry. One song on this album like this would be fine, but three in a row seems a bit uninspired, not helped with a limp snare drum sound (if its there at all, I think it's all percussion and texture), alongside a barely present bass line. About the only thing that sounds 'awake' is Gore's underpinning backing vocals in the verse and the climax "give love you've gotta give give love you've gotta give love you've gotta -" which handily starts mid-line and thus sounds a little more engaging. Though the lyrics are somewhat abstract and meaningless, with no real story in them apart from possibly the continuation of a potentially unrequited love or a hope to recover something that is lost.

Not played live unless sung by Martin in the acoustic slot, it's a thoroughly unexceptional Depeche Mode LP track that I never return to. It was played 72 times, mostly in 2009-10 and 2017-18.

That Ultra exists at all is both unexpected and surprising, but in retrospect it feels like the band barely stumbled to the finish line of recording before collapsing in a somewhat exhausted heap that they followed with 16 months off. Insight 2/5

 

Here's a live version from the Live In Barcelona 2009 release :

 

Insight

Another very good track indeed. Like all of side 2, this isn't a career highlight, but a song that in terms of songwriting and production quality is similar to songs on SoFaD, With the position of the song in the track listing, the obvious comparison is to Higher Love, and while Insight isn't quite a match for that song it isn't far off. Both function very well to finish their respective albums.

3.9/5

 

I think, with a different arrangement, Insight could have been an LP closer as good as Higher Love, but I think it would need a pulsing bassline, and a set of dynamic shifts that this era rarely has.

 

I mostly echo markreed’s assessment of Insight. It’s certainly an attempt to replicate Higher Love, but it pales in every regard to SOFAD’s epic closer—lyrically, arrangement, etc. It’s not bad—definitely a step up from the previous few tracks, and I don’t mind it, but even the opening line, “This is an insight…”, seems hilariously on-the-nose for a song begging to be “deep”.

All in all, Ultra was fine, with some essential tracks, but also a pretty far drop from their previous heights. But while I agree we are firmly into DM’s weaker era, I think I’m a bit less forgiving than our esteemed thread host. Maybe I’m just a sucker for bands that once blew my mind, always trying to find the positive. Looking forward to 86-98 and Exciter.

 

Ultra's probably my second from bottom Depeche LP : Exciter is my least favourite! That said, Ultra has five solid classics on it - it's more that the other songs bring the album back to ground pretty heavily.

 

Nothing really wrong with “Insight” but nothing really great either. I think it wants badly to be an epic closer like “Higher Love” or “Clean” but comes up pretty short of those lofty heights. It’s an okay ending to an uneven album.

Ultra has a couple pretty pointless instrumentals, a couple pretty dull tracks, and a general unevenness in both writing and production. Still, there are some amazing high points and hidden gems on this album, and considering everything that’s was going on in the band at this time, it’s amazing they pulled something together at all. It’s an album that’s far from perfect, but it’s really pretty decent overall.

 

I quite enjoy "ultra".... It doesn't get to the heights of "faith and devotion" but it definitely has enough about it. I'd say over a half of it is really excellent and I especially like Martins guitar work.

After "exciter" i lost interest in the band completely, but i'm hoping to be proved wrong as this thread develops.

 

Insight 2/5 Instantly forgettable and it doesn't really go anywhere, definitely CD filler

 

As it is, Insight, much like the prior 2 tracks, just kind of meanders and goes nowhere. There is some definite untapped potential in this song, however, that could have been fully brought out by a functioning band member. There is a beautiful piano playing that could have been brought into more pronounced focus and a drum that was strong instead of weakly mixed could have made a huge difference. Finally, this is the sort of song just begging for some synth orchestration to enhance the dark mood and add some intensity. Even keeping the limp instrumentals, this album could have stood to lose 2 of the last 3 tracks. While I like Freestate and think its a slightly better track, this does make the best closing number.

I might like this one more if I didn't have to slog through or skip the preceding numbers. If you listen to this one chronologically, you're pretty beaten down by the time you get to this one.

 

That's an interesting take. For me, the first couple--and maybe more--DM albums are the worst, simply by the band not having found their sound quite yet. The solid classics on Ultra, as you describe them, easily make the album at the very least "decent", if not quite up to their previous efforts. As you indicate, the second half drags it down considerably, and weakens what's actually a pretty strong first half. I would also probably say the most recent couple of albums easily rank below Ultra and, yes, Exciter for me. It seems like steadily diminishing returns at least since Playing the Angel. I'd love for them to surprise me with something new--at this point, I think something on the level of Ultra would be heralded as a modern classic.

Bring on 86-98!

 

The songs are better on Speak & Spell and A Broken Frame at their lowest point : I may think What's Your Name and A Photograph Of You are really not to my taste at all and glorified nursery rhymes, but at the least they redeem their weaker parts with interesting arrangements, instrumentation, and not outstaying their welcome by dragging on too long. Huge chunks of Ultra feel tentative and unsure which really makes the LP feel less compelling than I'd like it to.

 

Insight, always loved this track, 4.5/5.

 

After the release of Ultra, Depeche Mode effectively powered down for a period - with two single releases in Home and Useless (combined together as a double-A side in the US), but no activity apart from two video shoots. No interviews, TV appearances or live dates. Gahan continued to work on his health and sobriety, Gore returned to writing material for the next album.

Announced on 20th April 1998, the band prepared to release their second canon compilation album, Singles 86>98, compiling (mostly) in sequence their singles in the 7" mixes with a new single Only When I Lose Myself. And, for the first time in four years, a substantial tour The Singles Tour 86>98 which saw a new lineup of the band play around 66 shows across Europe and the US in September>December 1998. More on the tour in a few songs time.

Only When I Lose Myself, the first new track post Ultra, is a very under-rated Depeche Mode ballad, created with a similar configuration as Ultra, and has largely been forgotten . It's a great shame, as it's a soulful, tender love song of the type Mode rarely do directly, with a delicate, almost brittle arrangement that belies a maturity in their work. It's a superior Depeche song that seems to have fallen through the cracks.

Talking of how the band had changed since Ultra, Dave said : "It was quite a big ordeal just getting together the three of us and recording another record. After Alan departed, we had to have a re-think about how we were going to work and we had to find people to fulfill the role that Alan played. It was too much to take on. It took quite a while, probably about six months during the recording of "Ultra", before we really settled in and became OK with each other. Not that we disliked each other, it was just that everybody had kinda been through a lot of different things and getting familiar with working again took some time."

The press conference announcing the single, compilation album, and tour can be read here : https://web.archive.org/web/2012122...echemode.com/video/other/pressconf_ger98.html. Live the song was played at every show on the Single Tour, the 8 dates of Martin's 2003 solo tour, and at 8 shows on the 2013-14 Delta Machine Tour.

Only When I Lose Myself was released in many many formats, with lots of remixes, 2 non-album B-sides, and some 'new' remixes of old songs. The video wasn't directed by Anton Corbjin, and frankly, it shows. It's not bad, and definitely better than the videos where they're serending chickens and running through fields, but (badum-tish) it's no good. Song : 4/5

 

Here's Martin's demo of Only When I Lose Myself, released in 2009.

 

And here's my favourite remix of Only When I Lose Myself, by Gus Gus.

 

OWILM is definitely a step up from much of the Ultra material. While the beat is great and doesn't sound much different than Barrel of a Gun, the dark orchestration that supplements the song is the perfect completing element that was simply missing from most of the mediocre tracks from the album.

It is a song that seems to fall through the cracks for whatever reason. I don't think it got much radio airplay in the US and certainly didn't chart well. It is also attached to the maligned Singles set. Such a shame that this song also offered a false hope of a coming resurgence in their sound.

 

OWILM is a good track. Like you said, it would have been a welcome song to replace one of the weaker ones on Ultra. I never knew it got played any time after the 86-98 tour. To me, while they were certainly on a bit of a hiatus at the time, it was continuing evidence that they STILL had some gas in the tank—even after the album after their peak.

Was the Singles set maligned? I always thought it was a darn strong set which actually proved Ultra’s singles were worthy of DM’s legacy. Not sure if we’ll be discussing the full set proper here, or moving onto the tour…