Live: Depeche Mode

It’s easy for a band to rest on their laurels and become their own covers band, Oasis spring to mind immediately, they did it for 14 years, raked in the cash whilst re-visiting the glory days when they were influential and throw out another forgettable rehash of their good stuff and dare to call it their best album since their debut or whatever.

Depeche Mode are a different proposition. Their influence on rock and electronic music can’t be questioned and despite losing pivotal members; Alan Wilder being a departure they never truly recovered from, their well documented dislike for each other and occasional flirtings with death and illness; (this tour was cancelled due to lead singer Dave Gahan having a malignant tumor removed), they have excelled in doom riddled electronic pop for almost 30 years continuing to perform new music live regardless of diminishing CD sales.

As the O2 bristles with excitable Goths, techno heads and European rock fans, the excitement is immediately put aside when they start their set with the first three songs from their twelfth album ‘Sounds of the Universe.

The brooding warmth of ‘In Chains’ sets the scene nicely but the turgid ‘Hole to feed’ and non-descript ‘Wrong’ immediately turn the crowd cold so they turn to their more popular past but bizarrely play only one song released before 1987 where they were at the height of their powers leaving the set prone to being filled with more recent less popular tracks such as ‘Home’ or ‘It’s No Good’.

Being around for so long means they are able to make glaring omissions to the set such as ‘Barrel Of A Gun' or even later tracks such as ‘Suffer Well’ but the luxury of still being able to create new music means we get new music despite the fact no-one really wants to hear that much of it, this results in a mass exodus to various parts of the overwhelming O2 arena to songs such as ‘Miles away’ from the latest album.

Favourites such as ‘Policy of Truth’, ‘I Feel You’ and ‘Walking In My Shoes’ however are welcomed like an old friend but the huge video wall backing the band is overbearing that you forget there is a band performing on stage and find yourself staring at the wall, almost as if you’re watching the inevitable live DVD at the Imax. This however isn’t a problem when you’d rather avoid seeing a man nearing fifty twisting, turning and mincing while grabbing his crotch singing the lyrics from ‘A Question Of Time', (played tonight under the guise of a thrilling Soulwax style mash up) “You’re only fifteen and you look good”, it would look dangerous and exciting during his mid 90’s rock pig phase but at the O2 tonight it looks more like desperation tinged with inevitability.

Sometimes the video wall compliments the music perfectly, during an emotional ‘Precious’ the wall turns into a huge piece of paper with a typewriter writing prose onto it, a breathtaking ‘Enjoy The Silence’ shows the three members of Depeche Mode as dead eyed spacemen and an ice-cool ‘Stripped’ shows the band in black and red monochrome effect, all three songs had the crowd in a mass sing-along finally getting the gig going despite it being almost over.

‘Behind the Wheel’ and ‘Personal Jesus’ finishes off a job well done from a well oiled machine, it’s just a shame their mechanisms couldn’t be slightly more human, still, they put on a great show.

Words by Chris Todd