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

I can't see why we wouldn't mention it as a separate entry. We might skimp giving each of the 100 or so live albums from 2006 and 2009-10 a separate entry though!

 

Argh! Why does the forum fail to notify when threads start up again?

 

Catching up...

Freestate - honestly can't remember when I last listened to this. It's just incredibly boring. 2/5.

The Bottom Line - one of my favourites on Ultra, loved the Exciter tour Country version but in typical DM ffashion it didn'take the tour video.

Insight - lacking that extra something but a pretty nice closer to the album. Was glad to hear Gore do it live at the O2 during the Universe tour. 3/5

OWILM - nice production but a little bit plodding for me. 2.5/5

 

OWILM

Great song - yes it gets missed often...
Accompanied by some good mixes and the brilliant Surrender.

 

Good deal—I couldn’t remember if we covered every release, or just every song.

 

So glad to see some love here for “Only When I Lose Myself”. I, too, think it’s a tremendously underrated DM song. Dave delivers one of his all-time best vocals and the production is strong enough you’d never know Alan had left. It’s dark and beautiful – classic DM with a very mature feel. This song deserved a far better fate than to be relegated to a singles compilation.

 

Only When I Lose Myself

This I think is a good song, but it isn't as good as the highlights on Ultra. (Though, better than that what was to follow.) It has a good melody, and the production is a bit DM by numbers, but still good. If this song was on an album I'd enjoy it, but with it being effectively a standalone single released on a compilation, it's not something I seek out often and I'm not that famailiar with it.

3.4/5

 

Oh, I would agree, the Ultra releases fit right in and sound great in sequence with the Singles chronology. You also got the bonus song on each disc which makes it a keeper since I don't have the Some Bizzare album or OWILM single. The set itself was panned for its extreme loudness though. When you listen to one of the 98 Singles discs after just about any other DM disc, it sounds terrible, at home on a good system or in the car.

Compared to the original Singles 81-85 which was sounded fantastic, the 98 release was dreadful.

 

B-side of Only When I Lose Myself is a rare beast : a fantastic Depeche b-side that has never seen album release.

Surrender. This is simply one of the best Depeche B-sides there has ever been. A slinky, pulsing thing built on a throbbing bass line, a delicate guitar line, and a minimal approach, it could easily have been a fantastic album track and the fact it wasn't an extra track on Singles 86>98 mildly annoys me as it definitely deserved to be on there. The arrangement is specific, layered, and precise, with new instruments being added to add texture line by line (especially in the second verse) and this song definitely got more care and attention than a number of Ultra tracks. You can't really tell the band were wounded by the loss of their primary musician when you listen to this : the idea that they could replace Alan with a team of others is convincing here. It's a fantastic Depeche song, no matter where or how it surfaces. A particularly great touch is where Martin takes over vocals near the end of the song to add flavour, the nearest thing to a duet Depeche had got so far. 4/5

When asked in 2005 about under-rated Depeche songs, Martin said "There's one I particularly like that got lost because it was just an extra track on [the 'Only When I Lose Myself'] single, called 'Surrender'."

Surrender has been played live 20 times on the 2001 tour, and 8 times by a solo Martin Gore on his 2003 tour.

 

Here's Martin's demo of Surrender, released in 2009.

 

Here's a 2001 rehearsal backstage (in Paris, I think) of Surrender with Martin and Peter from the One Night In Paris DVD extra features.

 

And here's the 2005 Bare Recording of Surrender, released on some versions of Playing The Angel.

 

i like the remix version of surrender:



later
-1

 

Surrender is a better song than OWILM and easily in their top 5 B sides. 4.5/5.

 

Surrender is another good track, though I can never quite remember it. That’s probably more my issue than the song’s, and the fact it was a b-side to a one-off song. At the time, I only ever bought the OWILM single, and not the full 86-98 set. (Disappointingly, the a-side was actually a remix and not the original version.) Surrender was one of the b-sides, but I must not have listened to it too much. But as I think of it to remember, yeah, it’s a good song, with some odd production going on. Some odd growling in there, if I recall, which might knock it down a peg for me.

Does anyone know if these songs had been completed during the Ultra sessions? They sound like they fit neatly with Ultra, and we’re included in the deluxe version of Ultra. If they were, I question the wisdom of saving them for this set—Ultra could have used some of this to replace some weaker tracks—but they also did provide some good new material for the 86-98 project.

 

Surrender 4.5/5

I love the original and the remix. Probably one of their best b-sides.

"Easily and elegantly tear my world apart" is one of my favourite lyrics of all time.

 

By the sound of it, they finished the final mix of Only When I Lose Myself the day after the press conference in April 1998, so I don't think they were ready in time for Ultra.

 

There's no specific date mentioned for when they were recorded. I do remember from the Malins book that it was a completely different studio session when Dave was doing much better and mentally and physically ready to go again. Even though the song has nothing to do with Dave's addiction journey I always thought the title fit for where he was at on his road to recovery at the time.

 

Some cardsleeves...

 

I will add, OWILM has an odd place in DM's catalog. It feels, in some ways, like their last single. I realize that's not true at all, but the way it served as the final track on the 86-98 set, and is the only new track, lends it a weird kind of feeling of finality that maybe it shouldn't really have. Sure, Alan's departure was a more significant event to the band's history, but the fact they still seemed intent on cranking out Ultra despite that loss seemed to indicate a refusal to give up. But then, they didn't tour for the album--I think maybe the first and only time that's happened?--and the album itself seemed to peter out by the end. Even the album name sounds final. Cut to 1998, and you have a greatest hits set--never necessarily a positive sign of the band's long-term prospects--with one new song. I don't recall when the Singles tour was announced, but I almost feel like there was less assurance the band would continue in 1998 than in 1997. Since Ultra was covered in that set, it really kind of demarcates things in a way that wouldn't otherwise be obvious, which makes Exciter feel like a genuine beginning of a new era, for good or bad.

 

Interesting perspective. I think it's simpler than that - Dave was still struggling with being clean (and even Martin was drying out, right?) and touring prematurely might have not been the best thing for them psychologically. A year later, after they'd proven themselves with Ultra's success (and without Alan), they probably had more confidence in pulling it off.

To me it doesn't feel like closure at all. The video for OWILM was notably a departure from Anton Corbijn and in that sense it seemed to be opening doors, not closing them.

 

Ultra felt far more like a last-gasp attempt to see if Depeche could still work, and the band went into recording with no pressure, only that if they couldn't get to an album, they could do some material and convert it into Greatest Hits bait. When the band didn't tour Ultra, I sort of felt both that maybe it was the end for the band (a number of acts didn't tour their final album, or did a very small number of live shows, such as New Order, The Smiths, etc)., but also I didn't think Dave was well enough to tour and if the band did tour it would be quite some way off. Dave needed to get healthy mentally and physically, and be able to tour in a sober way. If nothing else, he was definitely in Last Chance Saloon when it came to being admitted to the US given the number of drug use offences he had on his record at the time. One more arrest/charge/conviction would see very serious consequences including potentially not being able to enter the US / other countries and/or jail time.

At the time the Singles Tour was announced there were lots of rumours that this was the bands final, farewell tour as a way of finalising some significant retirement income with a 60 show arena tour - grossing £15m ish over the run. Alan was asked in his regular Q&A's, and he said "Who knows? I don't."

Given that the Singles Tour had up to 6 songs from Ultra and beyond in the set by the end of it, it felt like a belated Ultra Tour to me (after all, the band were touring 18 months after the LP's release, and they were touring SOFAD * just* 18 months after the albums release when Devotional ground to a halt), with slightly more hits than normal.

Though Singles and the associated tour will get a discussion very shortly.

 

Yeah, by no means is my impression of OWILM to be taken as gospel, it's more just my own feeling at the time. Totally understood why the band didn't tour in '97, but even though those reasons were totally justified, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe we'd already seen the end of them as a functioning, touring band. And honestly, if that had indeed been the end of the band, I think it was a decent song to go out on.

 

I've been playing this a bit recently. It's a DM song that, as I mentioned, I managed to partially miss. I won't change my vote, but I appreciate it more now than I did.

 

Last of the new songs in 1998, and thus, bookending the era is the instrumental Headstar. Compared to Slowblow, and a lot of the upcoming underwhelming B-sides, this is really strong indeed : a tense, coiled atmospheric track stuffed with production flourishes that sounds like the theme tune to a non-existent cop show, full of builds and climaxes, and you can't really tell that the band are a trio missing their key musician. There's not much to say about this, apart from the fact it is one of their best instrumentals. Certainly less annoying that Pimpf 3.5/5