As an aside, I've been re-watching the Clone Wars in preparation for the February release of the new Season 7 material. Starting with the theatrical release movie and then going through the 5½ seasons that were released earlier and which are available in HD on Disney+, which makes it easy to watch them. Not that I necessarily expect it to be great, but I expect it to be OK. I've found as I've rewatched the Clone Wars the last time or two, and that impression has been strengthened by this time through again as well even though I'm still in Season, that it actually isn't as good as I remember. It was good enough to both rehabilitate the franchise brand overall to me (especially when combined with the Knights of the Old Republic game) and it was good enough to rehabilitate to some degree the entire Clone Wars era of the setting, but that doesn't mean that it was all roses with this show either. To wit, I think it has the following significant—maybe even crippling—and recurring problems:
- It really wasn't a smart era to set the show in. Not only do we already know what happens, but we already know what happens specifically to most of the major characters of the show, because they're the same characters who showed up in Attack of the Clones (which predates the show) and Revenge of the Sith (which postdates it.) That means that there is relatively little that can be done to put anything in real peril or shake things up in a meaningful way, making the show much lighter on tension and excitement than it should be. It becomes little more than esoteric fan service at its worst. That said, when the show was at its best is when it was charting new directions that couldn't have been foreseen from the movies, like the story arcs of specific clone troopers, or the Darth Maul storylines.
- The Jedi philosophy is hoaky and weak and makes no sense, and the more that they explore it, the more farcical it appears. I just watched, for instance, the episode Jedi Crash, in which Annakin, Ahsoka, Rex and Aayla Secura crash on some grassland planet and go get some help from Scottish rolling lemurs. The rolling lemurs have a philosophy of pacifism, and even though they are asking truly stupid questions about bringing peace by not fighting aggressors, and diplomacy and whatnot. This is similar to the pacifism often bleated about by other supremely annoying characters like Padme and Duchess Satine, and the Jedi are shown conflicted by the messages, as if they were somehow compelling. I said earlier that thanks to the work of the Anonymous Conservative and his brilliant use of r/K-selection theory to make sense of socio-political stances that I wouldn't have the vocabulary to address this other than to call it imbecilic, historically willfully ignorant, and craven—the latter perhaps being the worst of the three. But by understanding that in spite of the K-strategist nature of a show about a conflict, the writers are r-strategists who can't function properly in a K-selected environment, I've been able to make sense of this major flaw in the show. Unfortunately, this seriously mars, if not destroys, the potential of many ideas that would otherwise be quite brilliant, in this show. To be fair, it's also not unique to this show. I made a similar complaint about The Old Republic's storylines, and the Clone Wars show is doing nothing if not reflecting the ethos of the prequel trilogy anyway. One could even easily make the case that this problem started during the Yoda sequences of The Empire Strikes Back and became seriously problematic in Return of the Jedi, but it wasn't until the prequel trilogy that it truly metastasized.
- Speaking of problems that were drawn from the Prequel Trilogy, in the Original Trilogy the Force was subtle and relatively low key. In fact, when Vader is lightsaber fighting Luke and also using the force to throw boxes and crates at him, we're supposed to be seriously impressed with his talent at using the Force, and when the Emperor starts blasting Luke with lightning from his fingertips, it's supposed to be shocking (no pun intended) because nothing that overt had ever been seen or even hinted at about the Force before. However, in the Prequel Trilogy and in the Clone Wars (and everything subsequent, quite honestly) the Jedi, the Force, and even their lightsabers are absurdly overpowered. The Jedi become ridiculous Mary Sues who wade through most combats like they're bored and entitled to victory just by virtue of the fact that they showed up, and the writers tend to accommodate that sense of entitlement, sadly. Only when the writers stop and remind themselves that, "oh, yeah—action scenes aren't actually exciting if there's no sense that the 'heroes' might actually fail," that the show manages to rise above being mediocre. Sometimes they do this in various ways, not necessarily combat, but it is especially galling to watch Jedi fight droids over and over and over and over again throughout the show and never once feel like it is in the least interesting, much less exciting. There are plenty of other issues (bypassing all security or armor by simply, easily and quickly cutting through the metal with your lightsaber is another pet peeve of mine) but George Lucas created a serious Superman problem for himself in the Prequel Trilogy, and sadly, the Clone Wars not only mimics it, but makes it even worse.
So, my expectations for the coming Season 7 are not necessarily super great. When Disney took over Lucasfilm and the Clone Wars was retired early in favor of Rebels, which had the same creative team but a greatly inferior product, my hope that they'll be able to resist the SJW direction from on top is seriously reduced. Even if Kathleen Kennedy truly has been sidelined and kept away from the product as much as possible as many rumors suggest. But with Star Wars, in spite of my better judgement, hopes springs eternal that they'll be able to fix the problems with the franchise. In spite of decades of various forms of abuse, its fans still want it to succeed, although they want it to succeed because its managed to be at least as good as they know it can be, not just because its entitled to by virtue of its brand name, or whatever.
Anyway, on to another topic. When I started this post, I thought to only make a very quick and even kind of oblique reference to Star Wars, and it ended up being nearly long enough to be a post in its own right. Sigh. PA said recently the following: "Someone said that the 2020s be the decade of 1990s nostalgia. Time to move on the from ’80s. Let’s go with that. Eighties music, described in one word: stylization. Nineties music: sincerity." I could not possibly disagree more. Then again, PA is probably a few years younger than me, so the 90s has much more nostalgia for him; to me, the 90s was a complete and utter wasteland of pop culture vapidity. What he calls sincerity, I call the bleating of pathetic and self-indulgent betas exploring their feelings and vulnerability in a way that is anti-masculine. Now, that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a point about the 80s, although I don't think its totally fair either. Where the 80s pretended to be frivolous and disposable, they've actually managed to stand the test of time and be memorable; the 80s started 40 years ago, and many elements of 80s pop culture, especially the music, is still memorable and has emotional and cultural resonance today that something like Stone Temple Pilots or Kurt Cobain never will. And underneath the apparent shallowness of much of 80s pop culture is the pathos of frantic fear of global thermonuclear war. Now, whether or not it really was very likely that the US and the USSR would blow each other up entirely, it was certainly drilled into our heads that that could happen, and it was something that we were brainwashed to fear. Probably because the r-strategists in the media industry, the education industry and the entertainment industry themselves had absolutely no understanding of peace through strength and were constantly bawling and crying about how we needed to show submission or something disastrous would happen. Such is their way, of course, but we didn't necessarily know better as kids in the 80s. In any case, that context gave the 80s a kind of artistic pathos that... I dunno, maybe you have to have lived through it to get it. But at the same time, most normal people didn't really go around stressing about nuclear warheads with a hammer and sickle painted on them dropping on our heads at any moment, which meant that the 80s was also a time when American culture and Western Civilization overall was much more confident in who they were than they are now. In fact, in part thanks to the cultural leadership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher bolstered by a robust economy, this sense of optimism and confidence, undergirded by constant reminders that it might not last forever, is a fundamental part of the 80s oeuvre. I will never be convinced that the wretched 90s will ever be able to compete with that.
All that said, my love of regular top 40 80s music is almost certainly driven more by nostalgia than by anything else; the music that I came to love during the decade was the more artistic, edgier stuff of electronic new wave. Granted, much of this had mainstream popularity during the 80s too, or otherwise I probably wouldn't have known much about it. If I hadn't been primed by the mainstream success of Duran Duran, a-ha, OMD, etc, I doubt I'd have discovered Depeche Mode, for instance—I'd just have a vague memory of People Are People being a pretty cool song back when I was 12 years old. Now, granted, Depeche Mode isn't synonymous with 80s music, but to me, at least, the Depeche Mode middle to late 80s output remains my favorite popular music of any kind whatsoever; Some Great Reward (1984), Black Celebration (1986), Music For the Masses (1987), 101 (1988) (a live compilation album) and even Violator (1990) although that's the start of the tapering off. With 1993's Songs of Faith and Devotion, Depeche Mode began a significant transition into a totally different kind of band. I'm at least somewhat gratified or vindicated in one sense for preferring their work that predates SOFAD, though—Depeche Mode is very often imitated, but as far as I know, not really anyone at all is imitating the SOFAD or post-SOFAD sound. What they're imitating is the late 80s smooth, electronic, European pop music that's aggressively dark, artistic and edgy without being noisy or industrial exactly.
Because there are a number of guys who are openly imitating this phase of Depeche Mode and DM have themselves completely reinvented their sound starting with SOFAD, it's fair to say that some of these albums by other guys sound more like Depeche Mode than Depeche Mode themselves do. I especially explored a lot of these guys in the 90s and maybe the first half of the 00s. I'm still into them now, of course, although I also have wandered more into other, different styles. Many of these artists have had evolution of their sound too, and the "core" of this sound isn't quite as late 80s Depeche Mode sounding as it used to be either; the influence of futurepop and trance and other electronic genres has been too marked for them to simply tread water for the better part of twenty-five or thirty years, after all. That said, even fairly newish examples of this sound still have a remarkable broad fidelity to what many earlier ones would have had. A relatively recent example like 2015's A Worthy Compensation by Beborn Beton or 2017's Null Kelvin by Eisfabrik would still sound like "Depeche Mode with sharper teeth" as one reviewer puts it unless you're so embedded in the scene that you make a big deal out of subtle and esoteric distinctions and differences.
However, three albums, all of which are earlier than these, merit special mention at this point as "better Depeche Mode than Depeche Mode these days" all of which date from my earlier obsession with finding a replacement for Depeche Mode that hadn't gone and become all 90s on me. All of these date from the days when I was a member of the listserv operated by A Different Drum and saw them as the hub of how to get music. Keep in mind that this was before iTunes, Amazon music, Spotify, or even YouTube having music on it; buying CDs was still standard. A Different Drum was not only a music label of synthpop, but also the distribution hub and place to get it, via mail order. While ADD couldn't keep doing what they were doing in today's environment, I have no doubt, I miss them. I miss having a hub where you can find stuff, and have stuff pointed out for you so you don't have to just wander around blindly on the internet hoping to stumble across the next great electronic music gem. Anyway, I bought CDs of all three of these albums directly from Todd's mail order store, and I still don't regret it in the slightest.
First up, from 1998, is Monosex by De/Vision. De/Vision had been around for quite a while already at this point, and had released, depending on how you count it, four studio albums already prior to this one, but this was their best release to date, and arguably still their best or second best even now. De/Vision were always a very competent Depeche Mode imitator, although I've gotten into plenty of arguments with fans about the degree to which they are "imitating" them as opposed to simply making... extremely similar music. Whatever. Where De/Vision isn't likely to be as good as peak Depeche Mode is that their English isn't as good (they are Germans) and their lyrics are often very awkward and sometimes veer into the laughably overly melodramatic. Although they've finally backed off from this vibe too, De/Vision also thought for a while that it was very edgy and cool to be dismissive and even insulting of religion, and a few of their earlier tracks dig deeper into this kind of topical material than they should—although to be fair, although he was subtler, Martin Gore didn't completely refrain from doing that too sometimes.
Standout faster or mid-tempo tracks include "Strange Affection", "Hear Me Calling" and "Slaves to Passion." The first two in particular are notable for the great remixes by Mesh, although they are somewhat difficult to track down, actually, based on the way the album was released. The best tracks are the slower ones, though—"We Might Be One For a Day", "Deliver Me" and "Drifter". The latter is particularly and sharply dark and poignant. Even the lyrics are much better than normal (although there is a bizarre grammatical error that is hard to ignore.) The rest of the tracks don't stand out as much (if they all stood out, they'd defy the definition of being "stand-out") but that doesn't mean that they aren't uniformly pretty good, with the exception of the first track, "God Is Blind" which is only mediocre musically and absurd topically and lyrically, and "Shoreline" which is a somewhat forgettable instrumental in the middle of the album.
Like I said, a couple of slightly smoother and certainly dancier remixes by Mesh of "Strange Affection" and "Hear Me Calling" are worth tracking down. The former is on a CD single of the track, although the planned CD single of "Hear Me Calling" fell through. You can get some of the remixes on the ADD compilation Mix, Rinse and Spin II, but the best one, EnTrusted to Mesh, can only be found on a promo-only release of "Hear Me Calling," as an extra track on a promo-only release of "Blue Moon '99" or as an extra track on the single release of "Foreigner".
The album itself is somewhat hard to find new, and it's not readily available to listen to on Spotify or YouTube even, but buying used CD copies doesn't seem to be too difficult, luckily.
By 2002, Mesh had been around for some time (they are the remixers I mentioned above, for one thing). In addition to compilations of gathered tracks like Fragmente, Fragmente 2 and Original 91-93, they'd had three "regular" studio albums and a live album prior to the release of Who Watches Over Me? Whereas De/Vision had had to claw their way up to a quality album; their first three aren't really all that good, although they do have a smattering of classic tracks between them, Mesh were good right from the get-go. They didn't necessarily set up to imitate the Depeche Mode sound; in fact, some of their earlier studio albums, like In This Place Forever and some of the tracks on The Point At Which It Falls Apart sound as much like they're trying to imitate Pretty Hate Machine era Nine Inch Nails as Music For the Masses era Depeche Mode. And after this album, they changed their sound some-what to a richer, fuller sound with lots of layering, more guitars and whatnot—although curiously they did what sounds like the same thing Depeche Mode had done earlier, but they managed to not do it in the same way as Depeche Mode at all, and after Who Watches Over Me? they actually sound considerably less like a Depeche Mode imitator in many respects. This is the album where their peak Depeche Mode imitation... well, peaks.
Unlike De/Vision, Mesh are British, so their English is at least flawless. Relative to peak Depeche Mode, I'd say that they somehow manage to sound slightly more poppy and accessible in some ways, even as ironically they're much more underground, because they post-date the peak of synthesizer new wave music. While they try to sound very dark and edgy the way Depeche Mode does, they don't somehow manage to sound quite as effortless about it, and occasionally veer into "trying too hard" territory. Only a few of their slow and medium tempo songs are really all that good, for instance (although when they are good, they are often extremely excellent), and Mesh's specialty seems to be rather the harder edged dance tracks. Mesh even have interludes tagged on to the end of a few of their tracks here, making their imitation of Depeche Mode even more obvious, if anyone were inclined to argue against the fact that they are doing so.
In the case of Monosex, I recommended you look up a couple of remixes. Here, I think the remixes are fine, but not necessarily worth seeking out on their own accord, although that doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't some great remixes. Rather, the b-sides for "Friends Like These" and "Leave You Nothing" are what are worth seeking out—"From This Height" and "Let Them Crush Us." The latter, in fact, is a contender for best track from this era of Mesh's output. And although I said in general the slower songs aren't as good as DM's, I actually think the slow album ender, "The Trouble We're In" is the other main contender here.
As with Monosex, however, it's a little hard to get your hands on this album. I don't see it on Spotify or YouTube, and you can buy it used as a CD from Amazon, but I don't see it available in other formats.
This isn't true for the last album I've picked, 2003's Sensor by Camouflage. You can find this one relatively easily on Spotify and YouTube, you can stream it from Amazon or buy it as CD or mp3, etc. This is relatively recent, though—for many years, it was actually really quite hard to find.
Although this is the most recent of the albums I've picked (although I'm not trying to imply I think 2003 is recent), the "lead single" "Thief" actually came out as early as 1999, and then curiously, we didn't hear anything from Camouflage for a long time. I'm not sure what happened, although I think there may well have been record label disagreements of some kind involved. Regardless, Camouflage was famous in the later 80s for sounding like a much less articulate Depeche Mode imitator, with many of the same issues that I highlighted for De/Vision in their first album, Voices and Images. And that's fair. They tried to go their own way a bit for a while, but as I remember reading on one review, the live oboe in "Love is a Shield" somehow made them sound even more like Depeche Mode, although to be fair, the album overall didn't necessarily. While they did a lot of wandering in different directions throughout several album releases in the 90s, this was after electronic new wave had fallen off the labels' collective radar, and many of them didn't even get domestic releases, at least not until much later.
Sensor may well be the Camouflage album that sounds most like it's trying to sound like Depeche Mode with the possible exception of their debut on Voices and Images, although Sensor is a much more mature and musically capable album, even if it lacks the earnest charm of that way back release. I do miss the "Thief" single mix and Opal Mix in particular, which are both excellent, and neither of which sounds anything at all like the album mix here. (The other older single remixes are more forgettable.) They are, however, extremely hard to get a hold of as near as I can tell, sadly, although there may be a remastered version floating out there somewhere (if so, it's not on Amazon at least. I didn't check everywhere. I think the 7" version at least is available on the Singles collection). Otherwise, this album is just all around excellent, and hardly anything on it is forgettable or skippable. It doesn't have much in the way of danceableness compared to some of the options I've held out, opting instead for more medium tempo songs in general, but the song composition quality is really quite high. (There are some exceptions such as "Me and You" and ""I Can't Feel You" which are both quite danceable in a traditional sense.) It's amazing to think that when they debuted, Camouflage's English grammar and pronunciation were both pretty bad; if you didn't already know better, you could be forgiven for assuming that they are native English speakers here.
But given how easy it is to listen to this (it's on YouTube and Spotify) rather than tell you too much what I think, I'd instead just encourage you to go listen to it yourself if you have any fondness for this type of music at all. I think it's just truly an excellent gem of dark, peak Depeche Mode like electronic new wave.
My favorite track is almost certainly the very dark and slow "Lost", although "Thief", "Me & You" and "I Can't Feel You" are also standout tracks. But as I said, picking standouts is a bit harder on this one, because the overall quality is very, very good across the entire album.
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