Depeche Mode
Toyota Center
October 4, 2023
And then there were two.
Last night’s Depeche Mode show, their Houston stop on the Memento Mori World Tour, featured only half of the group’s original four members (five if you count Vince Clarke, who left after Speak & Spell). Alan Wilder departed the band in 1995, on the heels of the band’s infamous Devotional tour, while Andy “Fletch” Fletcher unexpectedly passed away in 2022.
Fortunately for the assembled Mode faithful, lead singer Dave Gahan and guitarist/keyboardist/main lyricist Martin Gore are still going strong. Even in their 60s, the pair (backed by pianist Peter Gordeno and drummer Christian Eigner) provided an energetic set chock full of Mode classics and sprinkled with cuts from the surprisingly powerful Memento Mori.
It was, in fact, the percussive intro track from that album (“My Cosmos Is Mine”) that opened the show, Gahan’s trademark seductive vocals enfolding an audience of appreciative goths and goth-adjacents from a stage highlighted by a giant “M” (Mode? Mori? Moog?). The next song, a sneering “Wagging Tongue,” was by contrast a synth-y drum machine throwback to the band’s earlier days. Albeit one talking about dying angels.
Next up: “Walking in My Shoes,” which was a definite highlight of the evening, as Gahan gradually starting to shed his suit, to the anticipation of many, leading into a fave from Ultra: “It’s No Good.”
But as Rob says in High Fidelity about mixtapes, you want to take the listener up and up and then drop them back down. The “back down” would be “Sister Night,” and that’s a shame for everyone who chose that as their beer break song, because it’s exactly that sinister old school Mode many of us knew and loved.
Older albums received varying amounts of attention. Violator, Playing the Angel, and Songs of Faith and Devotion were well represented, Music for the Masses, Sounds of the Universe, and Construction Time Again not so much. And Speak & Spell only made an appearance thanks to the Constitutionally mandated inclusion of “Just Can’t Get Enough,” arguably the weakest song of the night.
Only because they didn’t play “Somebody.”
I last saw Depeche Mode ten years ago, and while you might expect Gore and Gahan to have slowed down in that time, there’s not much evidence of it. Gore brought the guitar to the front for “In Your Room” and what I call the “rawk” section, which included “I Feel You” and “A Pain That I’m Used To.” Gahan especially performs like a dude who remembers that he almost died of an overdose, explicitly referencing it in MM’s “Speak to Me.”
If we’re being honest, and with all due respect to The Boss, Dave Gahan might be the best frontman working today. Dude is 61 years old and strutting the line between cheekily acting your age and outright lasciviousness. He had the Toyota Center crowd eating out his hand, and barely had to break a sweat doing it.
But it might be time to address the Some Great Reward erasure that’s been going on in recent years. Both last night and back in 2013, DM’s sets were wholly lacking in songs from their 1984 platinum-selling album, which was the gateway to the Mode for many of my generation. Hell, I’d even be willing to accept “Somebody” if it meant hearing “Master and Servant” live. Maybe.
The band fairly zipped through the 23-song set, dedicating “World in My Eyes” to the dear departed Fletcher before the encore, which began with Gore and Gahan bringing the room down a bit with a subdued “Waiting for the Night” before closing things out with a greatest hits trifecta of “Just Can’t Get Enough,” “Never Let Me Down Again,” and “Personal Jesus.” It was an encore showcasing both the band’s versatility and stubborn longevity.
Personal Jesus Bias: I realized, while dancing my ass off last night, that DM has had been just about as influential on me as any band. I still want “Walking in My Shoes” played at my wake.
The Crowd: Lots of you have forgotten how to drink, and an unforgivable number of you were wearing Red Hot Chili Pepper shirts.
Overheard In The Crowd: “No, she kept her pants on this time.”
Random Notebook Dump: “Gahan always wanted to look like Dave Vanian (from The Damned), and now he does. And Vanian looks like Michael Sheen in Underworld.”
SET LIST
My Cosmos Is Mine
Wagging Tongue
Walking in My Shoes
It’s No Good
Sister of Night
In Your Room
Everything Counts
Precious
Speak to Me
A Question of Lust
Soul With Me (Acoustic)
Ghosts Again
I Feel You
A Pain That I’m Used To
World in My Eyes (Dedicated to Andrew Fletcher)
Wrong
Stripped
John the Revelator
Enjoy the Silence
ENCORE
Waiting for the Night
Just Can’t Get Enough
Never Let Me Down Again
Personal Jesus
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
