A Song From Your Favourite Band (30 Days of Music 2014)

Enjoy The SilenceDepeche Mode

I even love the video-exclusive intro..

This looks like I planned it, doesn’t it? Oops. Didn’t mean to have two songs from the same artist on consecutive entries. Ah well. Nowadays, I don’t really have a favourite band. There’s great songs, good albums, bands I have affection and/or personal attachment to, but a ‘favourite’, if you took just the last 5-10 years, that’s difficult. So my criteria for this is – band who have the most songs that I enjoy. And, since 1998, that has been Depeche Mode. I remember liking this particular song when it came out, but didn’t really pay attention to the band behind it – indeed, in my head, thanks to Now! That’s What I Call Music VHS tapes, Martin Gore and the slightly scary looking one from Heaven 17 (Wikipedia reliably informs me he’s called Glenn Gregory), were one and the same.

It was only with the release of The Singles 86>98, bought by my brother, that I fell in love with the band – there is no song on that compilation I don’t love. There’s a consistency of theme, of atmosphere, and yet a very different and evolving approach, which makes every song a delight. My love of electronic music, being a child of the 80s, probably helps, too. Then I started to explore the older stuff, and the albums, and again, it’s pretty much all gold. The videos are often works of art, too.

Yes, the 2000s have been less kind to the band – Exciter, the first release since I became a ‘fan’, was disappointing, but not a complete failure, and it’ll always be special to me – the thirty second preview clips were great for speculation. Playing the Angel and Sounds of the Universe were definite steps in the right direction, and yet it’s symptomatic of my waning ‘favourite band’ thing, that I’ve still not listened to the latest album, Delta Machine, in full.

Enjoy The Silence is wonderful, and the album, Violator, is a masterwork, oh, and Andy Fletcher is brilliant.

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