Depeche Mode - Speak And Spell (Retrospectator #1)

Welcome to a brand new series here on my blog...

Every so often on my blog I'll be taking a look at a classic album from anytime over 15 years ago and seeing how it holds up today, as well as how important it was for its time and the influence it may or may not have had. I've named this series Retrospectator, and first up on the chopping block we have the English 80's synthpop group Depeche Mode. Although not every post in this new series will focus on this band, I will be doing a review for each and every one of their albums, and how else could I kick it off other than with their 1981 debut, the renown Speak And Spell.

I wanted to start things off with Depeche Mode for a few reasons, but the main ones boil down to three big facts. Number one is that they're a band I have very little familiarity with, and before listening to this album I believe I'd only heard three of their songs, each of which were singles featured here on Speak And Spell. Secondly, they're a band that have been repeatedly quoted as having hugely influenced many of my favourite modern synthpop artists, in particular CHVRCHES. Thirdly, I've heard some really great things about them as a band and in particular how they evolved over time to get progressively darker with each release. At the time of typing this, I have no idea where exactly they took their sound, as I've limited myself to only listening to each album one at a time until I've reviewed it, when I'll move onto the next. In this way, I'm trying to recreate the listening experience people would have had with the band back in the day, but with the contextual knowledge I have being in 2020 right now. I think this has been quite enough preamble, and I'm excited to get into the meat of the review...

One thing I definitely find odd about this first album of theirs is the execution, not from a musical standpoint but one of observation in terms of the influence and goals set by the band members themselves. You see, whilst the keyboardist Michael Gore has stated that their objective was to create soul music for an electronic age, it's often hard to hear the soul influence on the majority of these songs. There's a lot of the emotion that they strived to capture, a lot of that's very evidently down to the phenomenal pairing of Gore and Dave Gahan as lead vocalists, both having the ability to conjure a kind of grandeur much more adjacent to that of traditional folk than of soul, but it's a style that works on the album's more primal highlights such as the dark, shifting "Tora! Tora! Tora!", a solitary example of the band exploring a more experimental (for the time) sort of electronics with the incredible bassline easy stealing the show, the vocalists' aforementioned chorus notwithstanding.

The more I listen to this album, I just can't get enough (pun intended) of the twirling synths and their often playful qualities, constantly providing reasons to get up and dance to the fantastic rhythms, courtesy of the simplistic but earwormy drumbeats that come courtesy of not one but two synths. It's a fact that surprised me due to the time, but the band apparently used only the snare and hi-hats from their Korg Rhythm 55 drum machine, and their kick came from a synced synthesiser. Regardless of the specific kit, they created an immediately iconic sound that was as much a part of the time as it was their own, as the rhythms here on Speak And Spell often boast a subtly disjointed feel that's definitely juxtaposed by the simplicity, and it's a contrast that was well founded due to the tone it helps to set amidst the mechanical yet full of life synths that dominate each and every track, and it's a feature that helps to make the music that little bit more human and subsequently more likeable and unique.

In terms of the lyrics found on Speak And Spell, there's a point to be made that it's potentially queer-baiting and altogether a whole lot more lighthearted than their reputation would suggest, but assuming they do get progressively darker throughout their career then I suppose that was to be expected. That said, it's rather amusingly something that Rolling Stone magazine picked up on back in the day, as their initial review of the album criticised it for its "PG Rated Fluff". All in all, whilst I can appreciate that most of the lyrics aren't anywhere close to groundbreaking (neither for the time nor now), they're fun enough that I often find myself singing along and that's a fact not exclusive to the singles, which is always a worry when it comes to an album you've only heard the singles from before. One thing I have to admire is that in spite of the success of their single "Dreaming of Me", they chose to only include it on the deluxe version of this album (at least in the UK).

Something I did notice on first listen was the absence of a lot of the bass that plays such a fundamental role in modern synthpop, especially those groups who incorporate more danceable or trap elements into their music. Obviously this album predated any of that by decades, but it was still an absence I felt almost immediately. It isn't that the album lacks in bass per se, moreso that the album is mixed in a different way to that of a CHVRCHES, a Purity Ring or a 1975 album is mixed today, and the focus is much less on the magnitude of the bass as it is the fact that this was an electronic album; instead, it's the main synthesisers that dominate here, but it's the folding bass sounds on tracks like "Any Second Now" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!" that helps me to appreciate them as standouts. Perhaps that's a result of me living in a more bass-driven world, but then again both of those songs also stand out to me because of their well constructed melodies and great writing.

Overall, I have to say that this album definitely met my expectations. As far as a debut goes and with the recognition that 1981 was still early years for synthpop, I can see why this caught on so well due to just how rewardingly memorable and fun this album is from start to finish. It would never have been referred to as tearing up the rulebook, but it feels to me like they were on the verge of something that I presume was their own at the time. There's a lot of influence from bands like The Cure, The Human League and a whole lot of Sparks, but there's enough personality here to warrant the career they had, even if I currently have no clue of the quality of said career, but the intrigue of where they went next has been haunting me since I first listened to this album about a month ago. At times it can feel like they're flaunting some sort of faux-sci-fi filler (Puppets) and at other occasions they're delivering ironic nightclub mantras (Nodisco), but I think it's well worth a listen, and I'm excited to see where the band went next.

7.6/10

I've decided to rate albums on the Retrospectator series with a decimal score in the style of Pitchfork, simply because I can have more precise thoughts on an album with the context of much greater periods of time. If it were a normal album review, this would get a 7.5.

Best Tracks: New Life; I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead; Nodisco; Photographic; Tora! Tora! Tora!; Any Second Now; Just Can't Get Enough
Worst Tracks: What's Your Name?

Watch the video for "Just Can't Get Enough" 

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"Speak And Spell"
Depeche Mode

5th October 1981

Mute Records

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