BBC2 has a Depeche Mode concert from the “Songs of Faith and Devotion” tour available on its website since Saturday (November 11, 2023). The performance from London’s Crystal Palace is still on online until mid-December this year.
Tracklist: “Higher Love”, “Policy of Truth”, “Walking In My Shoes”, “Halo”, “Never Let Me Down Again”, “Rush”, “In Your Room”, “Personal Jesus”, “Enjoy The Silence”, and “Everything Counts” – around half of a classic DM gig of that era, the last tour with Alan Wilder and the one after which things went downhill with Dave Gahan for the time being.
Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993)
He now wore long hair, lived his childhood rocker dream twelve years into his career, loved “Moonage Daydream” and Jane’s Addiction, but Dave Gahan also knew that his change had to be carefully sold to the fans. As he sang, he had pure thoughts – they were not immature: “If you see purity as immaturity / Well, it’s no surprise / For kindness, you substitute blindness / Please open your eyes”. Open your eyes folks – this was Depeche Mode in 1993.
Gahan wanted to push “Condemnation” as a pre-release single for “Songs Of Faith And Devotion,” which would have been a revolution for the band. The song was gospel and marched ceremoniously, carried forward. Martin Gore vetoed it.
With “I Feel You” as their first release, Depeche Mode continued the triumph of their energetic pieces – “Never Let me Down Again”, “Personal Jesus”. The simple blues guitar, whose monotonous playing almost seemed like masturbation, received the most congenial interaction between the two musicians in the chorus with Gahan’s spit “By and By” and Gore’s “Ah, Ahh, Ahhh!” background vocals, hands down. “I Feel You” was the birth of Dave Gahan as a shaman, as he still plays the role today. And for the first time he completely forgot that he was singing someone else’s lyrics.
In the liner notes of the 2006 Songs Of Faith And Devotion reissue, producer Flood complained that there wasn’t enough time for polish. But for the listeners the record sounded perfect. Just what Flood and Alan Wilder got out of the gore demo of “I Feel You” (released years later). The soul of the piece can be seen in the rough version, but the sound was reminiscent of the narrow sketches of the “Sounds Of The Universe” demos from 2009, which sounded little better in the finished production.
The strings of “One Caress” still demonstrated the orchestral volume on the album that the arrangements from the successor “Ultra” from 1997 onwards lacked. Tim Simenon, who set up “Ultra”, used the Bristol sound in “Home”, where violinists sound like they are playing the keyboard.