Depeche Mode
Construction Time Again

THE REVIEW

Or the album of Disenchantment.

After witnessing the contrasts and injustices of the world during one of their first world tours, a more mature phase begins for Depeche Mode.

The year is 1983, and the band, increasingly annoyed by the part of the press that labels them as New Romantic, presents this album with political and protest lyrics. The sounds are more aggressive as Gareth Jones arrives at the production (previously behind the console of Einstürzende Neubauten) along with his samplers loaded with industrial sounds and coarse salt. But let's analyze the most representative songs of this album: we start with "Love in Itself": "There was a time / when all on my mind was love / Now I find / that most of the time / love's not enough / in itself". And here is the aforementioned disenchantment; Mr. Gore discovers that love alone is not enough. The track is a contrast of synthesizer riffs and jazzy parts of piano and acoustic guitar from some unknown piano bar.
Following closely is "More Than a Party": "lot of surprises in store this isn't a party is a whole much more!!!". Depeche Mode conceptually pick up Kraftwerk's locomotive and turn it into an accelerating loop on which this electro-ballad unfolds, characterized by Dave's dark and melancholic voice. The bass line is beautiful, and the synthetic dissonances are ingenious.
"Pipeline": the noises of the assembly line create a mechanical and repetitive rhythm. The sampled sounds of metallic objects irregularly bouncing but still part of the chain give the whole a suggestive effect. Unexpectedly, marimba arpeggios and ambient layers enter to soften the siderurgical sounds and trigger a sense of hope in the listener… as if to say: not all is lost, perhaps. The verse "Taking from the greedy / Giving to the needy" repeated ad libitum further underscores the band's focus on the social inequity of modern times. And we come to "Everything Counts": "the grabbing hands grab all they can", the ugly faces of capitalism grab all they can. This track begins with a beautiful drum machine pattern followed by a triumph of synthesizers; here too, Dave brilliantly sings the ingenious rhymes written by Martin, delivering to history one of the band's most successful singles.
"Shame" is a sort of electronic rumba, while "The Landscape is Changing" composed by Alan Wilder seems to whisper: take care of your world, who else if not you? "And Then", which beautifully closes the album, reminds us with its long acoustic strums and particular vocal arrangements of the refined pop of the early Tears for Fears.

The album is still relevant in content, considering what is happening today in a China devoted to Western economic models with workers paid very little (practically without rights), and an environmental emergency polluted by emissions. The sound is excellent, the synthetic sounds always appropriate, Dave's voice is stunning. An album to rediscover (if only for ideological reasons) but which reveals within it very valuable tracks. The most Industrial album by Depeche Mode.