1982 H JANUARY – MARC “I suppose, at the beginning, we were flavour of the month, the Marks the end of ALBUMS new, young, fresh … y’know. Everyone’s gone through that. Haircut One Hundred, ABC … we’ve watched them all get the same as we got – ‘Oh, they’re wonderful!’ and then suddenly, REVIEW ‘Oh, they’re bad!’ I think it’s disgusting. You spend three a beautiful dream months in the studio working as hard as fuck to put out a good 1982 album and…” MM SEP 25 Post-Vince Clarke, the “It’s like a year at work,” Andrew Fletcher intrudes, obviously agitated, “and you get your appraisal at the end of it from second Mode album receives a pasting someone who doesn’t really bother.” “I don’t think it does you any great harm,” reasons sole songwriter, Depeche Mode A Broken Frame gossamer sleight of hand, the Martin Gore, through his lop-sided grin. “I mean, you can’t say it doesn’t MUTE ponderous “Monument” may concern you because it does but I don’t think people decide whether to What a difference a year sound positively ugly buy a record or not on the strength of a review.” makes. The Depeche Mode of compared to the wry “Boys Say “The worst thing is,” badgers Andy, bitterly unassuaged, “say you’re in ‘81’s Speak & Spell seduced Go” but A Broken Frame is a pub or something and people shout ‘You’ve ‘ad it!’ – when that starts to their way into our hearts closer to Speak & Spell than its ‘appen, once you’ve become an established band, it puts so many and into the charts with tricky veneer might suggest. pressures on you. We shouldn’t have to put up with that. unblemished innocence; the The lyrics have matured from “We produce our music and we get criticised by people who are … synthesized soul brothers of wide-eyed fun to wild-eyed nothing really, people who’ve never done anything like we have, football cartoon punks, the Ramones. frustration, but the weary hooligans who don’t deserve to be on earth really. See whatI mean?” The role and execution were words of “Leave In Silence”, This verbal venting of bottled-up bad feeling is occasioned, not so much essentially simple: perfect pop just like the glib ones of by the fact that A Broken Frame has been panned inconsistently with no pretensions. Such “Just Can’t Get Enough”, as overambitious, underambitious, senseless and pretentious, as the fact (a)cute timing could scarcely are words and nothing more. that the band feel they’ve been wilfully misunderstood. be dismissed as contrived, such In attempting the balance “The thing you’ve gotta remember,” Andy insists, letting the skeleton sublime straightforwardness Yazoo get away with, the new out of the closet, “is that eight out of the ten songs on the last album were blossomed beyond all Depeche Mode overstep Vince’s and Martin doesn’t write like Vince. critical sniping. the mark. Vinceis adept at “The new album is different not because we’ve deliberately changed But, though conjuring but because Martin wrote the songs, not Vince.” in many ways musical “We’d been playing the songs on that first album for a year and a half,” ambitious and Sounds sadly moods and Dave reveals. “We went in and whacked them down – we knew exactly bold, A naked, deprived of Alf’s voice is what we was gonna do. It would have been so easy to go in and do Broken Frame earthy and that album again but you can play safe or experiment a bit more, – as its name the formula’s human and we experimented. suggests – enough to “I don’t play Speak & Spell at home any more. At the time it was our marks the end novelty con us there’s album but looking back, it was just a collection of songs and I’m sure of a beautiful emotion Vince would agree that what he’s doing now and what we’re doing now dream. Now Vince Clarke’s behind their candyfloss, are real albums. (selfishly?) split the market, but the Mode remain “It’s not false, it’s not overproduced, it’s just us – how we were feeling at A Broken Frame sounds sadly essentially vacuous. that time, how we’re feeling now. What we’ve done is natural and if naked, rudely deprived of the “Shouldn’t Have Done That”, people can’t accept that – well, that’s the way it goes – there’s nothing you formula’s novelty. the album’s most ambitious can do about it. Whereas past pilferings departure, proves beyond “I think the worst thing is if you do things to please other people, if you were overlooked as doubt that Depeche give them the obvious and make money from it. I don’t think any of us springboards towards an attempting to twist pin-up want to be big stars and have ten Rolls-Royces and all that crap. All we emerging identity, the appeal into nursery neurosis want is to be a successful band and for people to buy our records and larcenies of A Broken Frame is like asking the Banshees to appreciate what we’re doing.” sound like puerile infatuations play “Little Deuce Coupe”. “I think people have got over the fact that Vince has left now,” adds papering over anonymity. The boys’ pluck should be Martin, pensively, “and we have, too. At the time it put pressure on me What it also illustrates is that applauded and we should because I’ve never been a prolific songwriter and, when Vince was growing up in public is much be grateful that they refuse writing, I just didn’t feel the need, I was lazy about it. the same as it was in the ‘60s to tread water. “That’s dying off now. At the beginning, when “Only You” came out – that once established as a But the plain fact is, they’re and Vince was on every front cover, ‘Vince and Alf’, ‘Alf and Vince’, ‘Alf’s commercial viability, pressure, drowning. Steve Sutherland voice’ and everything – even going into the Mute office, everything was pride or self-opinionation Yazoo this, Yazoo that – it was hard. But we’ve faced the fact that they’re invariably pushes a band massive now!” Martin laughs. “And obviously beyond compounding we’re taking a big risk with this album – our their capabilities and fuels popularity might suffer because of it.” daft aspirations to art. “But we’re in a really weird position,” Andy To be fair, the one factor insists. “We’re a very young band, we’re only in favour of Depeche about 20... 19 when we made the first album, and Mode’s commercial we’re still growing up in certain aspects. decline, the sole grace “We’re not like most 30-year-old musicians in a that saves A Broken Frame band set-up – we’re seeing things we’ve never from embarrassment, is seen before, listening to different music all the that their increasing time and, as we grow, we’re sounding different. complexity sounds less “I mean we’ve only just started having to shave the result of exterior every day!” persuasion than an Fair enough. No one’s asking Depeche Mode to understandable, natural jog on the spot – very glad they aren’t, in fact – but development. what precisely these changes are that soured the It may lack Vince’s sweet simplicity of Speak & Spell into the clumsy 30 | HISTORY OF ROCK 1982.