Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Zagreb / Arena / Croatia
Concert date: 23.05.2013
Attendance: 15,000
Ticket price: 400.00 HRK / 500.00 HRK
Depeche Mode are today considered one of those bands whose groundbreaking artistry reshaped the very foundations of popular music. Their revolutionary conversion of rock n’ roll into a strictly electronic ritual of expression, in all its brilliantly provocative glory, changed how we see music as an art form forever. In the eighties, Depeche Mode were the heralds of a new age. They are the definition of that time. Its embodiment.
With their thirteenth album in the bag, Depeche Mode hit the road on a new world tour. After North America this April, it was the old continent’s turn. The album »Delta Machine« (RockLine review HERE) has now brought the band to the Croatian capital for the second time in their career. The guys first played Zagreb in February 2010, when they were presenting the album »Sounds Of The Univese« (2009). Anyone who remembers those days will tell you that part of that tour got pushed back by almost a year. The Zagreb show was caught up in that shuffle too: Depeche Mode were originally supposed to play in May 2009, but the dates had to be postponed to the late winter of 2010 because of singer Dave Gahan’s serious illness.
This time the Zagreb Arena didn’t pack 20,000 people under its roof. The floor was completely sold out again, though, and the stands were seriously full. At exactly nine in the evening the lights went down, and, as expected, the band began unveiling the face and substance of their latest studio effort, »Delta Machine«, through their musical ritual. The awakening, wrapped in veils of violet light through the opening Welcome To My World and then Angel, really jolted the crowd to life for the first time with the standard Walking in My Shoes. That splendid artistic milestone of Depeche Mode’s originality, fusing electronics and techno with the blues, was followed by the lighter Precious, which eased the gloomy, solemn overture of the spectacle, but also exposed a few minor blunders in Dave Gahan’s first verse, where he »accidentally« slipped out of the ideal melodic line with his vocals. Those in the crowd, and there were plenty of them, who spent their teenage years during the band’s rise, meaning the eighties, surely experienced a little biblical revelation when the first peak of the concert spectacle unfolded in front of them. The performance of Black Celebration.
The stage production at a Depeche Mode show is of course a chapter of its own. In fact, it’s the key element that, combined with the band’s stage presence, co-creates that infectious atmosphere. It hypnotizes and intoxicates everything in front of it. The combination of film projections on giant screens (in the back) and lighting effects is a flawlessly thought-out and crafted component of Depeche Mode’s concert spectacles, and this time around it once again delivered perfection.
The trio of Dave Gahan (vocals), Martin Gore (vocals, guitar, keyboards, backing vocals) and Andy Fletcher (keyboards, backing vocals), along with touring support Christian Eigner (drums) and Peter Gordeno (keyboards, backing vocals), did their jobs just as expected. The only figure on stage squeezing out a serious dose of kinetic energy, with a mix of dance-y twirling, macho exhibitionism, and a deep, manly, distinctive voice that’s surely set up to be fatal to the ladies, was the one-of-a-kind silhouette of the sweat-drenched and (also) bare-chested Dave Gahan! Ultimate!
Depeche Mode really spiced up the way they played the repertoire. It’s a sensible summing-up of the band’s maturing, carried over the years onto the classic Depeche Mode standards, which keep getting upgraded in performance. The mega hit Enjoy The Silence featured an eye-catching lesson in percussive intros and outros. The set also included a cunningly rearranged A Pain That I’m Used To and, in the encore, (yet another) »Violator« classic, Halo (honestly a huge surprise on the set list). Both drew on the reworked versions of Depeche Mode originals directed by Jacques Lu Cont and Goldfrapp (the album »Remixes II.« from 2011). In that same spirit, the »bluesy«, slowed-down opening of Personal Jesus wasn’t overlooked either, nor was Home, draped in a blanket of acoustics (in the obligatory encore).
Depeche Mode keep maturing through their arrangements. The live sound is full, and the rhythms are defined to the max. They’ve worked out the effect of those compact beats that push you into a dance step down to the finest detail, and the grip of the low tones combined with programmed sampling is a major generator of the goosebumps at their shows. Martin Gore used this gig too to show off his rich collection of semi-acoustic guitars. He’s obviously in love with models with f-holes. Mostly, though, he holds Gretsch Falcon models, as well as the Bo Diddley version of the box-bodied guitar. The guitar is a sonic seasoning for Depeche Mode, and it’s genuinely fascinating to watch Martin Gore play, as with his “stacked” single-note melodic motifs he looks like a complete beginner. But with Depeche Mode, the situation with guitar arrangements, at least as the rock n’ roll world would expect them, is simply turned upside down.
The set list was heavily loaded with new songs. Despite the abundance of »Delta Machine« material, and two consecutive numbers that Martin Gore sang entirely by himself with a guitar in hand during the regular set (Higher Love, When The Body Speaks), the band kept the atmosphere exceptional through a full two hours and five minutes of concert. Thanks above all to a run of ultra-igniting standards, the “folk-song-famous” evergreens Barrel Of A Gun, Personal Jesus, Enjoy The Silence, Walking In My Shoes, Black Celebration and Queston Of Time. In the same way as those, I Feel You »lifted« the dreamy start of the obligatory encore, followed by the »prehistoric« hit Just Can’t Get Enough and, above all, the cataclysmic peak of the new concert experience with Depeche Mode, one of the best compositions in their entire discography, Never Let Me Down Again. That one got every single hand in the Arena waving. So multiply the roughly 15,000 heads by two and you get a rough idea of how many “tentacles” were reaching for the sky! That’s why the concert hit a true atmospheric crescendo right in the closing stretch! It’s hard to put into words. You simply have to be part of it. The only less fitting choice in the band’s current concert repertoire is the decision to end the regular set on a restrained note. With the new Goodbye. That’s where the obligatory evergreen should have gone, and a band like this surely has no shortage of them in its discography.
Depeche Mode remain a machine! The new songs work superbly live, alongside the band’s standards, even if »Delta Machine« will never be written down as an album from the band’s »golden era«. The live version of the new song Soothe My Soul is so expressively strong that the band can safely keep it in the repertoires of future tours.No matter that ticket prices get mercilessly steeper from year to year, a Depeche Mode spectacle lasting a good two hours is worth every cent you’ll count out of your (»recession-induced«) shrunken wallets. Simple as that. This is years, knowledge, experience! This is Depeche Mode! No less, no more!
Setlist
1. Intro
2. Welcome to My World
3. Angel
4. Walking in My Shoes
5. Precious
6. Black Celebration
7. Policy of Truth
8. Should Be Higher
9. Barrel of a Gun
10. Higher Love
11. When the Body Speaks
12. Heaven
13. Soothe My Soul
14. A Pain That I’m Used To
15. A Question of Time
16. Secret to the End
17. Enjoy the Silence
18. Personal Jesus
19. Goodbye
—encore—
20. Home
21. Halo
22. Just Can’t Get Enough
23. I Feel You
24. Never Let Me Down Again
Photo Gallery
