Depeche Mode
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★★
The passing in 2022 of Depeche Mode keyboardist Andrew Fletcher has galvanised his surviving bandmates into a remarkable new lease of creativity. They aren’t quite raging against the dying of the light at 3Arena – there is lots of humour to go with the angsty rumblings as they embark on a maniacally macabre hike through their hit parade. But this is nonetheless an extraordinarily ferocious performance by singer Dave Gahan and guitarist/keyboardist Martin Gore.
Together, they honour their fallen comrade with two hours of irresistibly pugilistic pop. A thread of existential doom ripples through the concert, starting with opener My Cosmos Is Mine from last year’s Memento Mori LP. The album, which partly predates Fletcher’s death, is a powerful reflection life and loss, Gore and Gahan’s own advancing years (both are in their early 60s) and the question of whether, in the final reckoning, they’ve done right by the world.
It sounds more funereal than fun. Yet with Gahan stomping about in his extravagant waistcoat, a mix of arena god and 1980s snooker player, the effect is irresistible. But then, the ability to be simultaneously ridiculous and po-faced was always Depeche Mode’s great gift. It was the quality that elevated them above synth-pop peers such as The Pet Shop Boys and New Order, and continues to serve them well in this heritage rock stage of their career.
After a slow, dignified start, Gahan, Gore, augmented by a drummer and second keyboardist, hit their groove as they rewind to the Thatcher years for Everything Counts. Gore’s zippy keyboard line combines with lyrics decrying the greed-fuelled 1980s – the “grabbing hands” that “grab all they can”. If serious, the tune is also supremely catchy and prompts a mass singalong.
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Gore is the band’s chief songwriter, the musical core of Depeche Mode – and perhaps the emotional one. Framed by a giant “M” at the back of the stage, he takes lead vocals for sweet, emphatic ballads Strangelove and Somebody. These are hugely moving though there are no repeats of the tears he shed when singing at Malahide Castle last summer. (Perhaps he had been due to take the Dart back into town and was weeping at the prospect.)
Gahan, by contrast, is a rampaging rock behemoth. He lost his way at the height of the Mode’s success, morphing from a shy Basildon boy to a duke of debauchery whose heart stopped beating for two minutes after a heroin overdose.
That excess was part of the group’s evolution from tinny synth merchants to Southern gothic overlords. It is that latter incarnation that comes swinging through on I Feel You and John the Revelator, where Gahan resembles Hieronymus Bosch’s idea of Freddie Mercury.
The hits arrive in a molten cascade at the end. An excited mega-fan is invited up by Gahan for the start of Enjoy the Silence. Then, during the encore, there is the ludicrous onslaught of Just Can’t Get Enough - original keyboardist Vince Clarke’s parting gift to Depeche Mode – and the monstrous one-two of Never Let Me Down Again and Personal Jesus.
“On my gosh ... so much better than England,” is how Gahan compliments the crowd as the night hurtles toward the finish line. He’s right: it’s been a seismic evening – a meditation on death that trembles with life.
