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You can go far with a voice like Dave Gahan’s, even though you can’t do much with it. The Depeche Mode singer is an imposing baritone who inhabits his limited vocal range as though master of all he surveys. His commanding presence has helped the British band gain more than 100mn record sales. But the lack of variation in his singing also restricts the Mode to a certain mode.
The opening number at the O2 Arena epitomised the style. A dismal clanking beat rang out from the murkily lit stage while a bassline rumbled in the depths. Momentary shards of melodic illumination emerged, only to be crushed by the song’s heavy machinery. It was “My Cosmos Is Mine”, the first track from their latest album Memento Mori. Gahan prowled the stage in a sharply cut three-piece suit, intoning lyrics about being the ruler of his universe.
He was joined by Martin Gore, his fellow survivor from the foursome who founded the band in Essex in 1980. Of the other two, Vince Clarke jumped ship soon afterwards to form Yazoo and then Erasure. Andrew Fletcher lasted the course until his death in 2022, just as the recording sessions for Memento Mori were about to begin. Its mortality-obsessed songs have been taken as a tribute to him, although they were actually written before his sudden demise aged just 60. Death is a common topic in Depeche Mode’s music.
As main songwriter and lyricist, Gore is the architect of the band’s brooding sound. He played keyboards and a 1950s-style wide-bodied Gretsch guitar. Peter Gordeno also played keyboards, while Christian Eigner hammered away at the drumkit. The sound quality was impressive. Gore sounded a bit muffled when he sang lead on a pair of piano songs, but that was partly due to the shadow cast by Gahan’s much more resonant voice.
The frontman might play second fiddle in the songwriting process (not always happily), but Gahan is very much Depeche Mode’s leading man when the spotlights are on. He would flounce down a catwalk stage jutting into the audience, spin, pause as though for his close-up, then return to the rest of the band. The microphone stand was twirled like a dance partner or used as support for extravagant arched-back poses, one arm raised towards the roof.
Wearing a waistcoat, hair slicked back, he resembled Gordon Gekko doing Flashdance, a highly watchable mix of camp and virility in the Jagger mould. However, the music was less flamboyant. Constrained by the singer’s limited range, songs had a dirgey aspect. “My Favourite Stranger” was the standout among the tracks from Memento Mori, a sinewy electro-rocker about Doppelgängers. Black and white portraits of Andrew Fletcher as a young man were projected on to a big screen marked with an “M” during “World in My Eyes”.
The set ended with a pair of signature hits. One was the irrepressible synth-pop classic “Just Can’t Get Enough”, a 1981 relic of Vince Clarke’s brief tenure. The other was “Personal Jesus”, their magnificently gloomy electro-stomper from 1989. The contrast underlined how the band’s sound grew narrower and darker over the years. Depeche Mode found their groove and are locked into it: that is the reason for their indomitability.
★★★☆☆