A bit of a devotional.

With Depeche Mode having so many terrific albums to their name, I think Songs of Faith and Devotion is sometimes under appreciated in the catalog of their work— of course I think Martin Gore is one the best song writers of the past twenty or so years, so I’m automatically biased. Still, I feel sometimes that it slips under the radar, and I’m not sure why this is. There could be several reasons, I suppose. For one, it was the last album before Alan Wilder (Oh, Alan Wilder) left the band to focus on Recoil, and he was considered by many to be the ‘musical brain’ of Depeche Mode, particularly since he was the only member to have classical music training. In many ways it was his arrangements and orchestrations that gave albums like Black Celebration or Music for the Masses their expansively bleak, future-industrial grandeur: that is to say, the signature Depeche Mode ’sound’. This album (and Alan’s departure) also ties in with the wider, near-mythical, disintegration of the band—Martin’s rampant alcoholism, Dave’s descent into a heroin addiction that actually killed him at one point, and Fletch’s seemingly continuous nervous breakdowns.

For another, it is a departure from the very synth-based sounds of earlier Depeche Mode records. Some critics like to call it a complete break from that tradition, but I wouldn’t go that far. Depeche Mode always made good use of guitars, blues and rock idioms in all but their earliest works, so I think calling SOFAD their ‘rock’ album is misleading. I would consider it to be a continuation of these things, an exploration taken to its furthest point, rather than a complete change in direction. Still, for people who cut their teeth on things like ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ or even ‘Enjoy the Silence’, songs like ‘I Feel You’, with its opening wail of gritty feedback, or ‘One Caress’, which borders on operatic pop, might be hard to accept.

I’ll admit that even I forget about Songs of Faith and Devotion from time to time, since I always find myself drawn back to Black Celebration. Still, when I do remember it, it’s always fun to rediscover how good an album it is. It has some of the most hard rocking stuff in the band’s oeuvre, great riffs, melodies and lyrics. And of course, Martin’s continued obsession with blending highly charged religious and erotic imagery, which has always been one of my favorite aspects of Depeche Mode. Mmm blasphemy.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few videos (of course!), particularly of the song that I’ve had running through my head since I woke up this morning, which put me on this train of thought to begin with.

‘Judas’ (live in Germany 2006a):

It’s quite a bit different from the strange and beautiful Celtic keening of the album version, but anything that brings Martin’s voice to the fore is alright with me.

And just for fun, here’s Tricky’s vaguely disturbing, slow-but-sexed-up version:

And of course, the above-mentioned blending of the erotic and the religious:

‘I Feel You’