Depeche mode
Speak & Spell

THE REVIEW

1981 was a very important year for music in general; the first Depeche Mode album was released. I could stop here because I think everyone knows the rest: millions and millions of records sold, success, drugs, rumors of breakups, and everything that must happen to be significant in today's music business and beyond.

"Speak and Spell" I listened to for the first time at 15 (four years after its release) after having thoroughly listened to the following three DM albums; I was enchanted, first because it had nothing to do with what I had heard up to that day and then because it sounded fantastic.
I was on the train that took me to school every morning at 7, equipped with books and a cheap Walkman, I started listening to it; the first sensation was that of pure electronic delirium, I seemed to fly inside a rubber room and bounce from one side to the other of the room, hitting the walls violently but without feeling any pain, suspended in the void, but with simple and delicate melodies that filled the missing space, a mythical kr55 hammering at a military rhythm made me jump without a way to stop, one song after another from New Life to Any Second Now, passing through Photographic, Puppets, and Boys Say Go! I devoured that album without any more energy to think.

Those who have already listened to it will tell me that I don't understand music, indeed I don't want to praise this album too much because surely they have made better ones, but I think this album is the exception that proves the rule, a great group manages to make records that have nothing to do with each other and masterpieces of pure techno-pop like Just Can't Get Enough!