Suppose Depeche Mode would perform the concerts of their “Memento Mori” tour behind a curtain, so they could not be seen, only heard. Based on Dave Gahan’s announcements, we would still know what the singer is doing, because his announcements are always the same, and his movements too: “Christian!” he calls to his drummer Christian Eigner during his dramatic drumming in the finale of “Walking In my shoes” and he rears up in front of the drums. “Take it, boys!” he even calls out to the whole band on “Everything Counts,” with a slight bow; and “Mr.! Martin! L! Goooooore!” after the solo vocal performance by Martin L. Gore on the current album track. So everything is the same as it was on the previous “Spirit” concert tour from 2017.
Only one thing has changed: After “World In My Eyes”, Gahan no longer represents “Mr. Andrew Fletch Fletcher” but says: “Our friend Andrew Fletch Fletcher”. “World In My Eyes” was Fletch’s favorite song. And behind that imaginary curtain that hides the band is this: Fletcher’s face is superimposed on all screens on the “Violator” track. A face that is slowly aging. Got glasses. And a few wrinkles. But his keyboard on stage is missing, the place is empty. And the keyboard player is missing too.
Since the death of Andrew Fletcher in May 2022, many have proclaimed the end of Depeche Mode, and while his death makes no difference to the live work (nor to the composition in the studio), the Memento Mori album will , as well as the associated tour as “triumphal procession in the face of death” or “mourning work” or “requiem for a dead friend”. The passing of the long-time band colleague and partner is actually noticeable, even if the stage design designed by Anton Corbijn now simply provides for a tighter arrangement of the four musicians (in addition to Gahan, Gore and owner, keyboard player Peter Gordeno). Most of the “Memento Mori” songs are said to have been finished before Fletch’s death. The stage logo with the capital letter “M” naturally stands for “Memento Mori”, but intuitively one expects the “D” to flash to the left at some point. “DM” for Depeche Mode, or “DM” for “Dave and Martin”, as if the band’s name had been an ominous omen since 1980: which two musicians would be the Last Men Standing.
Depeche Mode concerts are always the same. Depending on how you feel about the band, i.e.: always equally good – or equally bad. Nobody wants to read that in a live review. But there is no other way.
Maybe Gahan has to announce the same stanzas over and over again because their setlists always follow a fixed pattern. The five songs “Walking In My Shoes”, “I Feel You”, “Enjoy The Silence”, “Never Let Me Down Again” and “Personal Jesus” are logged, which have not been distributed on all, but almost all tours since 1993 be brought to 20 to 23 pieces in that order. Variations on Pearl Jam level are out of the question, Depeche Mode’s machine park, as ex-colleague Oliver Götz from “Musikexpress” once judged, simply cannot be reprogrammed from evening to evening. Currently, “Waiting for the Night” is swapped out for “Condemnation,” and “Speak To Me” with “My Favorite Stranger,” depending on whether the band is performing two nights in a row at the same venue.
Their concerts usually begin with one or two songs from the current record, which have unfortunately been so average for many years that they never have to be performed again after the tour is over. So “In Chains” and “Hole To Feed” (2009) or “Welcome To My World” and “Angel” (2013) or “Going Backwards” (2017) are now followed by “My Cosmos Is Mine” and “Wagging Tongue” – after that comes the first real hit that, to be honest, you’ve been waiting for these ten minutes. If you want to get more beer, you can do so right at the beginning of the concert. It’s actually a nice feature of Depeche Mode that their setlists contain at least five new tracks from tour to tour; Gore and Gahan believe in their new material and want to perform it, unlike Kiss, who also named their concert tours in the late years after studio albums from which they only played a single song.
Gahan, 61, is arguably the most athletic frontman of our time, other than Mick Jagger, who turns 80 at the end of this month. Gahan could afford to go shirtless again, but he doesn’t do it anymore. His look is that of a page boy, jacket in the “Grand Budapest Hotel” style, and he dances a kind of ballet, with sprawling dying swan arm movements, pirouettes without skates. He is enough for himself, he celebrates a “Dancing With Myself”. Unlike before, Gahan now bends forward during some ballads (“Waiting for the Night”), he squeezes out the words, an almost painful-looking curvature, as if he were feeling a burden.
“Walking In My Shoes” unfortunately still contains the unchanged Scooter-Döp-Döp-Döp arrangement from 2017, “Everything Counts” – completely given away in the middle of the set – announces Gahan with “Do you have some fun?”, what’s strange is that the song is a harsh criticism of capitalism. Some film clips are distracting, such as the donkeys and horses on the beach in “It’s No Good”, which are to be understood more associatively than in terms of content that fits the text; the chewing gum beat of “Wrong” doesn’t quite work with the rhythm machine on the “Sounds of the Universe” album and loses even more effect when playing the drums. The question may also arise as to whether DM fans really prefer to hear the stoically dragged along from tour to tour “A Pain That I’m Used To” than the long-ignored classics like “Behind the Wheel” or “Policy of truth”. “A Pain That I’m Used To” has at least one attraction, Depeche Mode present themselves here (and on “My Cosmos is Mine”) as a rock band with guitar, drums and a bass that Peter Gordeno straps on has.
There are some fine moments in the set. The interaction of guitar and drums in “I Feel You”, one of the most difficult pieces to perform live since it was released in 1993, now sounds far more harmonious (even if one would like to hear this song without live drums, instead with machine rhythm). . In the “Zephyr” stage version of “In Your Room,” Martin Gore applies careful melodic nuances on his six-string that almost become a new solo (also a little more coherent than the traditional Nile Rodgers variation on “Enjoy the Silence”). On the keyboard he seems similarly considered. Gore plays the notes on “Just Can’t Get Enough” with such tedious little finger movements as if he were sitting at a decoding machine.
“Stripped” is still the best song to describe the sudden change from the British “A” (“We’ll lay on the grass / and let the hours pass”) to the American “Ä” (“Take my hand / come back to the land”) to illustrate.
A highlight is “Soul With Me”. The “Memento Mori” song is like an urgent plea for a first collaborative piano album by Gore and Gordeno, with Gordeno as pianist and Gore as singer. These two form Depeche Mode’s most harmonious duo, while Gahan often seeks the closeness of his drummer Eigner, whose playing aligns his own movements. It speaks for the pathetic sound of the Olympic Stadium that the palaver in the stands can be heard louder than the electrically amplified tones on the stage, especially with this piano-only song. Right, really bad.
“Soul With Me” is a song about accepting the fact of arriving at some point in life’s fall. Gore sings fatalistic words: “I’m ready for the final pages / Kiss goodbye to all my earthly cages / I’m climbing up the golden stairs”. The golden stairway to heaven. Gore raises his hand in an upward motion, ready to run. But he’s smiling.