(#569: 26 April 1997, 1 week)
Track listing: Barrel Of A Gun/The Love Thieves/Home/It's No Good/Uselink/Useless/Sister Of Night/Jazz Thieves/Freestate/The Bottom Line/Insight/Junior Painkiller
One question I'm frequently asked by readers is: "Are you going to live long enough to finish Then Play Long?" As I have today turned sixty-one, my characteristically Aquarian response is: most likely not, but it will be fun trying.
The problem is the sheer number of albums still awaiting my attention and thoughts. This blog has now been running for almost sixteen-and-a-half years and, at the time of writing, has not even reached the halfway mark; the current running total for British number one albums is 1,385. And yet it feels as though I bought Dig Your Own Hole only the other week.
The real problem is with our old enemy, The Music Industry, which cannot stop releasing and marketing records. Long gone are the days of the mid-sixties where I could get through this blog pretty quickly since nobody got to number one back then except the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan and The Sound Of Music. But by the nineties we are in the fast-moving world where there is practically a new number one album every week, and that situation, by and large, has not subsequently changed. By the time I catch up with entry #1385 at the current weekly rate of posting, I'll be pushing ninety - if I even manage to make it that far - and of course by then there'll be nearly an additional thirty years' worth of albums to take into account.
Why, therefore, I hear you all cry, don't I step up the frequency of my posts? Well (predictable response alert), it isn't that simple. Not only do I have other blogs to look after but I also have a day job and an actual life outside the internet. There's only so much time available for me to divide.
In addition to that, however, is the fact that virtually every number one album isn't content with just being, you know, a collection of songs. They almost uniformly come to us as MAJOR STATEMENTS. It's no longer a case of two hits plus ten fillers. Album X is a MAJOR STATEMENT, album Y comes with a DVD you also have to WATCH, album Z is intricately linked to the artist's ten previous albums, conceptually and lyrically. When I consider the prospect of yet another number one album coming in with a running time of 60 or 70 or even 78 minutes, I can become moderately depressed. Oh, and some come back as "Deluxe" (a.k.a. rip-off) editions to entice mugs to fork out money for essentially the same thing twice over. Through what glorious times do we live.
Yes, I am aware that expectations have been raised (along with album prices), that people want quantitative as well as qualitative value for their money, hence just as films now have to drag on for three hours all the better to fit onto a DVD or Blu-Ray, albums need to be BIG and LONG and MULTILAYERED and, above all, MAJOR STATEMENTS. We are meant to worship solemn, stony statues rather than enjoy ourselves in the limited time that we're given - I enjoy the bore in the current London Review Of Books who states that "Critics are encouraged to be cautious about endorsing descriptions of literature as 'enjoyable'," which as we all know is not nearly as much fun as critics fulsomely praising literature designed to make us all feel as miserable as possible. But more about Depeche Mode in a moment.
What this means for me as a writer is that I can't just rattle off daily posts about each number one album. It takes me on average a week to evaluate each of these records as fully and properly as I can, to listen to them repeatedly and closely, to research the background behind each record and to arrive at a satisfactorily conclusion about it. One is otherwise in grave danger of issuing snap, one-listen judgements which one might later regret having made.
Take Ultra, for example (cue mass chorus of: "well, it's about bloody time you took it - this is why the blog's taking you ages, you just ramble on about irrelevant shit most of the time!" I know - I wish on an hourly basis that I could be a master miniatuarist. Not in my working vocabulary, I'm afraid. Irrelevant Shit, though - that would be a good name to have for a blog...). I initially groaned aloud at the prospect of needing to evaluate Depeche Mode's ninth studio album, particularly after having written so enthusiastically about the Chemical Brothers - all this new, colourful, lively excitement, and we are then compelled to dive back into this opulent pit of murky misery.
I wasn't keen on the record in 1997 either, mainly because its lead single "Barrel Of A Gun" was one of the most repulsive lead singles from an album I had ever heard. I knew about Dave Gahan's heroin addiction, suicide attempt and subsequent two-minute death from a speedball overdose, Martin Gore's alcoholism, Andy Fletcher's full-scale nervous breakdown and Alan Wilder unsurprisingly deciding to get as far away from them as possible (Wilder's own album of the period under the name of Recoil, Unsound Methods, tells the same story from his perspective, and track titles such as "Stalker," "Control Freak," "Missing Piece" and "Last Breath" perhaps speak for themselves).
But "Barrel Of A Gun" sounded ugly on purpose - yet more murky post-Achtung Baby treacle, with Gahan seemingly about to combust spontaneously; his repeated Woody Woodpecker snarls of "What-ev-AHHHHHHHHHHHH!," as though reaching like a cobra to snatch my head off, proved frightening enough to drive me away. Statistically it is the group's most successful single in Britain, along with "People Are People," but record company marketing strategies were not the same thing as genuine popularity; "People Are People" was an endearingly naïve ("awfully"; see also the "basically" in "See You" - Gore knows his Basildon talk) anti-racist song set to some storming electro which probably influenced "Mothers Talk" by Tears For Fears later the same (1984) year and to which everybody sang along, whereas "Barrel" was strictly For Fans Only ("People Are People"'s Top 40 form was 29-9-5-4-6-9-20-36; "Barrel"'s was 4-23).
I had to walk away at that point from Depeche Mode, a band I had hitherto liked quite a lot, sometimes despite myself. But it had been four years since the really rather good Songs Of Faith And Devotion. The story was that, before his overdose, Gahan had barely managed to struggle into the recording studio most of the time, and when he did manage it he was so off his head that only one usable vocal for the album was achieved; that was for "Sister Of Night," ironically the album's most restrained and contemplative song - and even that had to be cut and pasted together from multiple different takes. With equal irony, after he had completed his LAPD-imposed post-overdose course of rehab - which included taking singing lessons - he strolled back into the studio and laid down his vocal for, of all songs, "Barrel Of A Gun" as though nothing had happened.
With this in mind, you might understand why I was somewhat reluctant to listen to all sixty minutes and seven seconds of Ultra. An initial solo listen, on Monday afternoon of this past week, seemed to confirm my worst fears. The music sounded bloated, expensive, fatigued, entitled and inelegantly downcast. What a comedown from the Chemicals (in all senses). A second listen on Wednesday afternoon, with Lena, did not get us much beyond that first judgement - not to begin with, at any rate. However, Lena's ears perked up at "The Bottom Line" such that she remarked, well, it took Martin ten tracks to get there, but he's finally come up with an Actual Song! So I began to hear the record in a new light and by the time it ended I found that I wasn't wholly dismissive of it. Something was going on here - but what?
It took a third listen - alone, on headphones - late on Wednesday night for me to work out what this album was about; and Ultra is an album which is optimally experienced on headphones. The strategic position of "Barrel Of A Gun" at the beginning is deliberate, since it deliberately represents its singer at his absolute worst, struggling to breathe, never mind finding out what the world actually wants of and from him.
This is a question often posed about Depeche Mode; how come a snappy little electronic band from Essex ends up slavering would-be rock gods in the U.S.A.? Perhaps it's the difference between being thought of as "little" and as "gods." My feeling is that the group's colossal, if eventual, American success was an act of revenge on Britain, where they had been ceaselessly belittled and bracketed with glossy, shiny types of the early eighties, no better than Spandau Duran. I'm certain they must have snarled "we'll show you" under their collective breaths when they set to make Music For The Masses.
Whether Depeche were suited for giant stadia is another question. I think the ambition was slightly too big for them to take on, and they suffered personally and collectively as a consequence. Yet what was the alternative; stick around in Britain and continue to make cute-with-razorblades electro-bubblepop? That really hadn't been their ambition even in 1982.
What is clear, however, is that Ultra is the darkest album Depeche Mode had recorded since 1982's A Broken Frame - both records had seen the band down to a trio. However, the latter's air of bemused abandonment has been succeeded by a closeted rage - but maybe also some answers. "Barrel Of A Gun" is intentionally hard to take, but that was the record's point; begin at the bottom and see about digging your tunnel out of Hell, starting from where you are.
It did help that, for the first time, the band had sought an outside producer in Tim "Bomb The Bass" Simenon. It should be noted that this was not the eighties Tim Simenon responsible for daft bubblefunk brilliance like "Beat Dis" and "Buffalo Stance" (although, if you think about it, "Don't Make Me Wait" could easily pass as a Depeche Mode song) but the restrained, worthier nineties Tim Simenon of "Winter In July," "5ml. Barrel" and "Play Dead" by Squäwk. Nevertheless, he actually does a very good job, and on headphones the presumed murkiness re-manifests itself as clarity; the beats are pronounced in their purpose (and work to quite brilliant effect to counteract the otherwise meditative "Sister Of Night"). And he had been on Depeche Mode's case as a fan since the (superior) Some Bizzare "Photographic."
With no small relief on this listener's part, Ultra does not proceed to a succession of hardcore crunches exuding luxurious despair. "The Love Thieves" if anything sounds like George Michael's Older at a crossroad with Arto Lindsay's Prize, an exercise in avant-Tropicalia (as if Tropicalia hadn't been avant-garde to begin with). I still think that Gore uses twenty words to say what George could have said in just two, and that Gahan's would-be crooning voice doesn't complement or subvert the music quite enough - but it does represent a degree of progress.
The one-two hit of "You're No Good" and "Useless" - well, not exactly; they are bridged by an instrumental prelude "Uselink" which sounds like Vangelis warming up - demonstrates that the band's pop sensibilities (if such a thing were still relevant) had not been blunted. Gore's unforeseen chord changes remain sublime, but both songs fundamentally work as askew, bitter pop; note the wounded guitar figures, like Duane Eddy coming off worse in the Colosseum, which punctuate "Useless" (as do the beats of Tackhead's Keith le Blanc and Doug Wimbish, two of several guest players who drop by, not to mention the then-drummer for Simply Red). If you can get beyond the "they're trying to be Radiohead/Portishead/Nine Inch Nails" mindset - then again, no Depeche Mode to begin with, no Trent Reznor - there is plenty to "enjoy" on Ultra, even if Gahan's "Open up your eyes" on "You're No Good" momentarily conjures up the spectacle of Justin Hayward (then again, the Moody Blues never to my knowledge wrote any songs about resentful stalkers).
Even seemingly throwaway moments like the instrumental "Jazz Thieves," which superficially sound loungey in a Twin Peaks/oh-is-it-still 1990 manner, have their purpose - the arrangement is continually derailed by absentminded wanderings worthy of the more reflective Aphex Twin, and the track's elements reappear at different angles throughout "Insight."
"Freestate," nearly seven minutes long and underlined by Gore's cautious pedal steel-like guitar figures, is the album's key song, the one in which Gahan is clearly singing to and chiding himself - "Let yourself go," "Step out of the cage and onto the stage"; he is squarely facing his demons and calmly fighting to tear them off and away. It is Ultra's moment of emotional turnaround.
Beyond that shines the light to lead us out of the tunnel. I have left Martin Gore's vocal features until last because I feel they are Ultra's best and most important songs. "Home" is a great song by anybody's standard, although I have to remind myself constantly when listening to it that the voice singing it is not that of Alison Moyet (whose own album of self-catharsis, Hometime, delayed by dinosaurs at the time of the millennium, would eventually see the light of day in 2002) but of Gore himself. Richard Niles' strings do their sweeping best in a song which pitilessly describes what happens when a man truly is left to his own (toxic) devices.
"Home" might even be the most emotionally open song Depeche Mode ever created (1984's "Somebody," a live favourite, cops out with a pervy payoff); it is about somebody trying to destroy himself with alcohol but who is saved and brought back into the world by a lover, and I have to say it but this was me in late 2001 before my psychotherapist suggested putting all my pain and thoughts into writing, by means of a blog.
I am not going to deride or ridicule an album which is about a ruined man, or ruined men, who clamber his/their painful way, or ways, back to life because that would be saying I didn't matter. Ultra - an album, let us remind ourselves, was fortunate in ever having been made - has been quite deliberately sequenced and constructed to tell this story. "The Bottom Line," which includes actual pedal-steel guitar from B.J. Cole - possibly the only man to work with both Luke Vibert and the Two Ronnies - and restrained drumming from no less a personage than Jaki Liebezeit, sees Gore tackling the same subject matter as "You're No Good" but from a very different angle. I'm not sure if Gore is singing about a person as such, but more about pursuing the actuality of life as it is lived; however often his wings will get burned or singed while doing so, it is still immeasurably better than not doing it. In places - his two shivering, descending "The sun will shine"s - he sounds like Elvis, who should have lived to sing this song.
Finally - if you don't count the closing-down-for-the-evening signoff of the brief instrumental "Junior Painkiller" (the much longer, though still wholly instrumental, "Painkiller" can be found on the, ahem, "Deluxe" version of Ultra) - "Insight" is a really moving closer, with its great musical sweeps fully worthy of Sylvian and Sakamoto, where the two voices of Gahan and Gore finally combine, like the Everly Brothers floating in the Space Shuttle, ultimately to remind us, over and over, that "the fire still burns" (hey, look, we're still here!) and, more and more, "Give love/You've got to give love" as though to preach "we can, must and will make a new start." The tortured "What-ev-AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"s of "Barrel Of A Gun" are superseded by the "Whatever you do" which heralds the "Give love" entreaty. The two worlds have drifted together again. There is even a friendly nod to Tears For Fears ("Talking to you now") and is it just my ears, but in that long, satisfyingly patient ending, do I hear that other Basildon singer Andy Bell contributing to the harmonies? - the coda to what initially seemed like Depeche Mode's harshest record has them sounding like...Erasure. Which is a happy ending, of sorts, since this is where Then Play Long says farewell to the band. But what is it that the same band said, over and over, at the end of A Broken Frame? "Things must change/We must rearrange them." Ultra is where the rearrangements came to fruition. And I would never have thought of any of this if I'd only listened to it once. Life had better not be short.
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