Depeche Mode
Spirits In The Forest

Desolate Notes of Faith and Devotion.
Another Depeche Mode live... Should I buy it? Let's see, "Spirits In The Forest" is the title, I've read something about it, two live CDs and two video Blu-rays, one of which contains a film by Anton Corbijn where some characters, of various nationalities, tell their life and their pains, only to meet in a reserved section of the famous Waldbuhne in Berlin, at one of the group's mega concerts. The other video Blu-ray contains the entire concert. This, for the record, is the last concert of a tour that saw them headline another 112 performances around the world.
I can't wait. Or maybe not, I don't know, faced with the latest products from the acclaimed Gore & Co. company, since 2005 onwards, I've always had strange sensations, somehow I already know what type of product to expect and the standards it will adhere to. High standard, maybe, but always the same as the previous product, predictable from the cover art, high but predictably, almost boringly high, without any surprises or innovations... Then, looking at the tracklist on the back, I see very few recent tracks and loads of old stuff, and this, for some reason, intrigues me even more. But it might be normal, it's a live album... Mmhh, I thought the same when I bought, upon release, Live in Berlin and Tour Of The Universe, at least.... I'll buy it, okay, I'll buy it.
At home, wife and daughter downtown, three hours alone. System on, Blu-ray in the player but... sound quality at the limits of acceptable and certainly below the Depeche standard, who have always accustomed us to the best in audio. Here it borders on indecency, with an outdated and flat 5.1 Surround and a stereo sound, we'd say, stereotyped, really nothing special.
Direction and photography also below the usual, very high standards of Corbijn himself, missing are his famous blurs, what remains is just the raw recapitulation of events, yes, in his full style, with realistic and minimal settings, framing from the East Germany of the seventies, very Corbijn, indeed.
Here he is assisted by John Merizalde and Pasquel Gutierrez, young artisans of image and word.
Corbijn himself, then, has been responsible for the entire image of Depeche Mode since the Devotional Tour, the year of 1993, and anyone who thinks of Depeche today sees them with the iconic scenic elements typical of the visionary director's genius. But this whole work, starting from the very sparse packaging to the technical details, feels lazy, done because it had to be done. But did we miss another live testimony of the three from Basildon?
This writer has been obsessed with Depeche since Christmas of '81, when he first heard them on the Some Bizarre Anthology, where they appeared alongside other unknowns who would rise to glory, see Soft Cell and The The. I've followed them through every change, from dark to rock, to alternative dance and so on, with many highs (almost all) and some lows, from time to time. But, in short, I can call myself a fan, at times die-hard, and I no longer wish to settle, as I've been doing with them for at least fifteen good years.
In other times, at the beginning of a new life cycle for Depeche, I've always had an insatiable curiosity about what the next cycle would bring, and I've never been disappointed. After the second, transitional and insecure record, Gore took the reins of the group and Wilder, a new technocrat at the Court, armed his melodies and refrains with nervous beams of electronics, à la page, certainly, but the subtle minor-key sadnesses written by Martin for Dave's voice have always found worthy and very rich arrangements. And then the Great Rewards, the Black Celebration, and the Music for the Masses, and then the Violator that kicks off the decade and Faith and Devotion that reshuffles the deck, yet again... The newfound calm with Ultra and Exciter, the new, splendid sound standard that they pursued at the direct expense of inventiveness and the search for the New. Without Wilder, one could say, there was never again a search, and with very few voices ready to refute this statement.
But back to us. The "idea" of making a kind of "on the road" film with the fans, not the band as the protagonists, was already exploited in 1989, then called "101" and celebrated the one hundred and first date of their American tour that year, which consecrated them as new masters of "stadium" electronic rock, as it was said back then. In that film, directed by D.A. Pennebaker, no less, the director who filmed Bob Dylan, Bowie, Hendrix, and Little Richard, some young American fans embarked on a bus journey across the USA to reach the Rose Bowl in Pasadena for the last concert of the tour.
Now a bit tiredly the same thing is proposed, but today's fans are adults with the most diverse stories, the professional from Rio who discovers he's gay and comes out to his parents after years; the French woman who has an accident and comes out completely memoryless, doesn't know who she is, doesn't know anymore how to talk or write, she only remembers some Depeche songs, nothing else; the separated South American dad, whose teenage kids live in Miami and join him, and with them he organizes a mini-band on YouTube that performs DM covers using the most improbable and impromptu means... All united by their passion for the Band, singing their songs by heart at the concert and moved to tears as Gore sings his dark ballads with his voice always on the verge of breaking.
In short, the movie and CDs are yet another account of a more than triumphant tour, as usual, (that of 2018, mega-produced and very well cared for in every aspect, following the release of "Spirit", their latest work), except, already said, in terms of novelty. True novelties you won't find in this concert, except for the videos projected on the big screen that stage the old songs with new short films, just as they no longer appear on their records since, I'd say, "Ultra". Since then, great skills, top-notch technology and qualitatively superior show to anyone else's. The choice, also inevitable, in the case of a group celebrating this year the fortieth anniversary of its founding and still boasting three-quarters of the original lineup, is the same as virtually every other group that survived the decades and circumstances: that of releasing albums as "faithful to the line" as possible, without major stirs, without novelty, here we have it, formally perfect but empathically little, very little communicative, choosing thus the path that will take them to the end of their career, quiet, with an album every few years, followed by the mammoth tour, with few songs from the latest records and a good amount of greatest hits... To testify this, try asking a fan of The Three to mention at least four tracks from each of their last three or four records... it will be much easier to remember almost all of the track titles contained in the records from, let's say, '86 to 2001, let's say it. But, of course, this happens a bit with all such long-lived bands, the last albums become known, at best, for their leading tracks, those that, in another era, would have become the promotional 45s.
The three original DMs, in this film-concert, end up sadly, on the cusp of sixty springs, depicting a caricature of themselves, with David Gahan, whom we all admired as a versatile stage animal, lively, now reduced to a hopping figure, with repetitive effeminate moves and gestures, almost annoyingly so, to an adoring audience that still, in "Personal Jesus", shouts "Reach Out, Touch Dave" instead of "... Touch Faith", swaying on the edge of ridiculousness, with almost no hair left, and it's not his fault, maybe, who still unleashes a deep voice with which he can still extend properly but at the expense of tone expressiveness nearly falling to nothingness... one could say that live, Dave screams and croaks, more than unleashing the beautiful dark and deep tones we knew him for.
Martin Gore, on guitar and increasingly rare at the synth, with overly made-up eyes, with the air of someone questioning what he's still doing there, mechanically strumming the usual four notes of that sublime ode to solitude from his pen now thirty years past which is "Enjoy The Silence"... He still reserves a couple of solo spaces, and here his thin voice still finds an emotion, revisiting "I Want You Now", an old piece from "Music For The Masses" never performed again, now in an acoustic version for voice and piano, stripped of the electronic armor that Alan Wilder had imposed on it and returned to being one of the most successful anthems of desperation ever produced by the blond of Basildon.
As usual, remaining in the complete shadow is always the tall redhead, the company's accountant, that Andy Fletcher, founding member of the group, who, knowing himself to be less gifted and much more reserved than the others, has always stayed aside, playing few notes and even fewer chords on the synth at concerts, clapping his hands above his head to incite the audience and nothing more, not even in the recording studio where his contribution to the writing and realization was always little more than null. Now the old Fletch even struggles to bow to the audience after the last piece, at the time of farewells, galloping arthritis, they say, let's hope nothing else.
And then, and then... the waving arms during the final part of "Never Let Me Down Again" still send a shiver down the spine, just like there's still a tense atmosphere before the car engine starts at the beginning of "Stripped" and the silly notes of "Just Can't Get Enough" still make everyone, absolutely everyone present, dance without a care, but the sense of having chewed over something already tasted so many times, therefore not very flavorful indeed, remains.
And then again, hear hear, "Pimpf", with its martial gait, is played back in its original, recorded form, closing the event with the audience retreating and the band already showering... And this is indeed an absolute chill, an example of how Depeche used to take everyone by surprise when they were expected to present a danceable and hyper-technological track to nitpick and they produced a masterpiece without lyrics, with an electronic core and a metallic armor worthy of the most cunning noise-makers, servicing maybe a trampled melody but a melody nonetheless...
I finish the Blu-ray concert and listen to it again on the two CDs, I want to taste the whole soup, it's definitely been reheated, it's good, of course, but it is reheated.