Depeche Mode studio album ‘Music for the Plenty’ turns 35
Depeche Mode had their first gulp of glory with the enduring single ‘I Simply Can’t Get Sufficient’, which adopted their Prime of the Pops debut with ‘New Life’ in 1981. This early materials had the band understandably grouped with the burgeoning synth-pop wave, alongside the likes of The Human League, Ultravox and Orchestral Manoeuvres within the Darkish.
Like contemporary act Talk Talk, Depeche Mode deviated from this new romantic affiliation to develop a novel sound extra in verify with their id. Whereas Speak Speak moved more and more in direction of a extra ambient, jazz-influenced sound, Depeche Mode embraced a darker, gothic type because of their infatuation with The Remedy and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
In 1986’s Black Celebration, the band’s fifth studio album, they introduced a brand new edge to the darkening Depeche Mode sound with the introduction of samplers. This sound was constructed upon over the following 12 months for the 1987 follow-up, Music for the Plenty, which noticed Depeche Mode writhing within the shady salacious haze that they had begun to embody on the musical map.
“The title’s… a bit tongue-in-cheek, actually,” the late Andy Fletcher stated of the album’s identify, per Jonathan Miller’s Stripped: Depeche Mode. “Everyone seems to be telling us we must always make extra business music, in order that’s the explanation we selected that title.” Chatting with NME, Martin Gore defined that Music for the Plenty “was a joke on the [sic] uncommerciality of [the album]. It was something however music for the plenty”. This title was compounded by the ironic picture of megaphones positioned within the huge panorama of the Peak District.
Engaged on the album with a serving to hand from co-producer David Bascombe, who had beforehand labored with the likes of Tears for Fears and Peter Gabriel, Depeche Mode determined to proceed down their path of non-conformity. In a return to the theme of darkish temptation, frontman Dave Gahan sings of sexual fantasy, drug dependancy and sadism.
For me, the album’s spotlight second is ‘By no means Let Me Down’, its third most profitable single behind ‘Strangelove’ and ‘Behind the Wheel’. The music combines homo-eroticism with the razor-edge attract of drug-induced euphoria. Gore’s meticulous association and the observe’s seamless manufacturing set a excessive bar that was roughly reached by the rest of the album.
In the meantime, the album’s most commercially profitable single, ‘Strangelove’, which reached quantity 16 on the UK Singles chart, got here with extra opaque lyrics. Some level out the music’s obvious connection to Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 dark comedy Dr Strangelove or: How I Discovered to Cease Worrying and Love the Bomb. Elsewhere, the lyrics depict a sadomasochistic encounter in a continuation of considered one of Depeche Mode’s most associative themes.
The tumbling tempo of ‘Behind the Wheel’ creates a way of urgency and angst applicable for dropping one’s bearings, or certainly marbles, on the wheel. Artistically, with the motive force and a “passenger”, it seems to proceed in the identical universe as ‘By no means Let Me Down’, wherein Gahan takes “a trip with [his] finest pal”.
In ‘Nothing’ and ‘Sacred’, the band return to a extra conventional synth sound with its stressed rhythm and catchy lyrical hooks. In distinction, tracks like ‘Little 15’ and ‘To Have and to Maintain’ include sparse, atmospheric textures evoking photos of unusual encounters at midnight.
With Music for the Plenty, Depeche Mode refined the plan laid out by Black Celebration and succeeded the place their ironic title for the album is worried. Whereas the album’s business efficiency didn’t condemn the band to a bottomless pit of destitution, it was on no account a chart sensation, nor ought to it have been.
Music for the Plenty confirmed a band following their noses towards true creative integrity. With just a few catchy hooks added to the system, 1990’s Violator noticed Depeche Mode deliver their truest sound to the worldwide enviornment as they started an period of stadium excursions and heightened business success. They did finally deliver their music to the plenty, however they by no means offered out.
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