Depeche Mode Five Questions: Exciter

There's been a lot going on at the Desdichado place of work and at home, so I've found that I'm often just kind of intellectually exhausted when it comes to making posts.  My normal topics of discussion, such as my DH5 or AD ASTRA settings, custom rules for m20, or whatever, are too hard at the moment for me to think about much.  I know, I know—that sounds ridiculous, but when I sit down to think up a post, I just get tired thinking about it.  Home life has had it's turning point; young Desdichado #3 departed for his two year Church mission to Peru yesterday, after a lot of preparation on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Desdichado.  Now, other than Mrs. Desdichado being sad a lot as she can't stop thinking about missing him while he's gone, home will swiftly return to a routine that's predictable and kinda nice, really.  Can't wait.  I don't see a similar change coming for work too soon, but as we get later into the fall, we do eventually get into "holiday season."  Because we have use it or lose it vacation, the end of the year nearly grinds to a halt every year, because so many people are out of the office that it's hard to get anything done.  This isn't necessarily unwelcome to folks like me who use my vacation earlier in the year (I was out of it before Labor Day), but in the meantime, gaming related topics are a little bit slim right now, and I don't know exactly when that will turn around, although I don't think it'll continue in that vein too much longer.

On the other hand, as you've no doubt seen, if you're looking at this blog, I've been interested in chatting about Depeche Mode, about whom I'm having a bit of a personal renaissance, after slowing down just a bit on my long-lived obsession with hard dance.  I still love hard trance and hardstyle, of course.  I'm not that fickle.  But I'm not quite so obsessed with it.  It's not all that I'm listening to; I'm getting back into stuff that I've always liked and always will once again.

Of course, in my Depeche Mode review, I'm definitely in the period of their work that's my least favorite.  In fact, sitting here at Exciter, I'm at the absolute low point in their trajectory.  Not that I think albums like Delta Machine or Spirit are great, but they are at least an uptick from the low point of Exciter.  Let me reiterate, or perhaps clarify something that's come out a bit in my earlier reviews, but which may have not stated quite right out.  I fell in love with Depeche Mode's sound during the later 80s.  However, that doesn't mean that I'm a victim of nostalgia, merely that that sound was a great sound that I loved and, in fact, still do.  What was Depeche Mode in the later 80s?  Hyper-electronic synthesizer new wave (or synthpop) with an aggressively bleak and dark tone and an industrial edge over catchy pop songs.  This isn't the only kind of music that I like, of course, but it's probably my absolute favorite type of music, and Depeche Mode was the absolute best at it.  Nobody has ever been as good at it as Depeche Mode was during especially the Black Celebration and Music for the Masses albums, and Some Great Reward was nearly as good too, although it still had a few lingering social justice themes, which were more common in Construction Time Again.  Martin Gore was at the peak of his songwriting, Alan Wilder was at the peak of his production talents, Dave Gahan was at the peak of his vocal and stage presence performances, and Andrew Fletcher... could clap on stage pretty well, I guess.  Or whatever it is exactly that he does.

Prior to Some Great Reward, Depeche Mode were certainly an all electronic synthpop act still (with the very occasional guitar sound here and there at most) but they were still in search of their voice and a "brand" if you will that was their own.  After Music for the Masses, there was a lot of drift in terms of what Depeche Mode was.  Martin Gore's songs often wandered farther afield from the recognizable brand that they'd built up, and arguably, he's just kind of tired and phoning it in half the time nowadays anyway.  Alan Wilder is gone now, of course, but even before he left, he allowed or participated in the drift of Depeche Mode from being an electronic synthpop band to an alternative rock band that experimented with a lot of grunge and industrial guitar stuff, as well as bizarre experiments with gospel music and other themes that I can't really believe anyone thought that a fan of Depeche Mode's signature brand would find appealing.  Dave's voice, in part due to abuse, in part due to aging, has changed too, but I think part of it is a stylistic choice; he's trying to be a growly Las Vegas performer now.  Even their live shows have changed, and for the most part, the band likes these changes; tour musicians on keyboards and drums have more of a typical rock and roll over-the-top performance thing going on.

Arguably, in at least some cases, Depeche Mode were really good at being this different kind of band; Violator, Songs of Faith and Devotion, and even Ultra, for instance, I see as good albums for what they were, just that what they were was too much of a departure from what I loved about Depeche Mode into something that I wasn't interested in.  Yeah, yeah... I get it.  I don't expect Depeche Mode to be locked into a permanent 1986-7 phase forever; they can evolve, and change, and honestly, they can do whatever they want, including throw in the towel altogether.  What they can't expect is that if they make dramatic changes to their brand, sound, and whatever else, that all of their fans who loved one version of them will come along for the ride just as excited as they always were.  And, of course, the other problem is when they get tired, lazy, or phone it in, while also experimenting with gospel (Songs of Faith and Devotion), grunge, or in the case of Exciter, lounge lizard crooner songs. 2001's Exciter was the ultimate moment in DM's trajectory of a direction that I had no interest in combined with a band that just didn't seem to know who they were or what they wanted to be, or what they were doing.  I think it was a bit of a wake up call for them... I think, given that the obviously purposefully retro Playing the Angel was what followed in 2005 for the next album, and to some degree, Depeche Mode have toned down their experimentation in weird directions following Exciter.  I still think that they're getting tired, and maybe should just call it quits.  Wilder was the oldest of the band, but only by a couple of years, and I'm pretty sure he's 60 by now.  The rest of the gang has got to be about that age too.  (Just checked on Infogalactic; Gore and Fletcher are 58, Gahan is 57.)  Their shows aren't what they were in the 80s or even the 90s, and their new output isn't bad, but y'know; I wouldn't exactly be terribly sad to not see another new Depeche Mode album anymore either.  But again, it's Exciter that we're reviewing now, and it's also the album that I think they were really going through a bit of an identity crisis.  With A Broken Frame, although there were a lot of new directions that Gore took them, they were still reluctant to break too far away from the destination charted by Vince Clark, I think Ultra, where they came together after a near catastrophic implosion of the band, they were reluctant to go too far afield from where they'd been, but it's with Exciter that they came a bit unmoored; wanting to do something differentish, but not quite sure where they were going or even why they were doing what they were doing.  The documentary The Intimate and Delicate Side of Depeche Mode (the title itself suggests this change) says that Gore struggled with writer's block in this phase, and Gahan suggests that the whole band had just become bored with the process and output.  I think this shows on this album.

There really isn't anything on the album that I think is a real stand-out.  I mean, I'm not kidding.  There isn't a single good song on Exciter.  There's a number of mediocre songs, and some that I really don't much care for at all, but there's nothing that I think I would pick out as a standout track (it's going to make answering the five questions quite difficult)

1) What song would I lose?  Lovetheme and Easy Tiger are rather pointless instrumentals (not that instrumentals are always pointless, but these two certainly are) and the Gore ballads (quelle surprise) Breathe and Comatose, especially the latter, are pretty bad.  Of the whole, I think Comatose is the one that most deserves to be tossed.

2) Hmm... again, having Dave act like a lounge lizard crooner on a bunch of ballads wasn't a particularly radical move, although it was certainly different from what they'd done to date.  I think maybe I'll pick Goodnight Lovers, even though it's not radical really—if anything, it seems to be kind of a continuation of the direction Insight took at the end of the last album too.

3) What have I listened to the most?  (Can I pick none of them?)  Probably Dead of Night.  It was the most easily accessible, I think, although it didn't age well; it sounds really corny after a while, like a caricature of a Depeche Mode song, really.  In fact, I don't even like it very much anymore at all.

4) Favorite song now.  Oof.  Well, I've already said I don't think the album is very good and that it doesn't have any really, truly good songs.  I do think Goodnight Lovers is probably the best, though, and the one that almost rises to the level of, "hey, that song's actually kinda neat in a non-Depeche Mode kinda way."  Almost.

5) Two out of ten.  Easily the worse DM album; a nadir of their sound and vision, although it has a few bright(ish) spots here and there.  Although I think they improved again after this, they largely did so by simply imitating the past to a greater or lesser degree, and I don't find that newer Depeche Mode is wonderful.  I suspect the band themselves are kinda going through the motions to at least some degree, pumping out stuff that they know the superfans will buy and not be too disappointed with, and which will allow them an excuse to tour and sell tickets to their shows.

I dunno.  Maybe that's not really very fair.  And let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Still four more albums to do, and then this series is finished.  I'll top it off by ranking the albums, including fine gradations between the ones that have the same score.