Depeche Mode: Songs Of Faith And Devotion era

The album(s). The singles. The songs. The tour(s).


I Feel You

First single, February 1993
Earlier, I claimed that Personal Jesus was "probably the most shocking release in the band's history", this one is surely a close runner-up though. The heavy guitar riff, the very live-sounding drums, and Dave's new look were all things that took time to get used to, but somehow under the surface it still felt like Depeche Mode.
There were 6 remixes on the different formats of the single, 5 of them are quite good - a great, sort of old school extended version (throb mix), a quite enjoyable, more dance orientated version (Babylon mix), two atmospheric versions created by Brian Eno (life's too short mix and swamp mix), and an interesting instrumental take by Renegade Soundwave.

One Caress

In stark contrast to the A-side, this beautiful song features Martin on vocals backed by a 28-piece string orchestra. Inspired by their love of Massive Attack's hit Unfinished Sympathy, they asked Wil Malone, who was responsible for the string arrangement on that song, to work with them, and the collaboration - a first of this kind for the band - resulted in this song. Absolutely stunning, a favourite ever since, and it was such a pleasure to hear it live during Tour Of The Universe.

SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION

March, 1993
This was their first album I eagerly anticipated as a fan. My initial reaction to it was a mixture of feelings that keep coming back each time they release a new album: it's weird at first, because they always change their sound, and it takes a few listens to get used to it, but the essence of the band is always there. Although the change here was quite radical, I took to it surprisingly quickly, and the "Depeche Mode's rock album" label always seemed wildly innacurate to me. Luckily.

I Feel You

Without much hesitation, they pretty much kick the door in with the screeching intro and a very loud opening track that also served as a lead single. Although I always liked it, I'm not too happy about its status as a live staple, the live versions seem to lose the electronic undertones of the studio version, and it gets closer and closer to a "standard" rock track with a bombastic ending.

Walking In My Shoes

This masterpiece is probably the band members' favourite song collectively, which is perfectly understandable. It's utterly brilliant from start to finish, and in this case, I'm glad they keep playing it live, it's easily in my top 10 DM songs.

Condemnation

Both Dave and Martin are clearly very fond of this one, but I'm not. Whatever genres they bring inspiration from, their songs always still end up sounding like Depeche Mode, with this being the first exception in my eyes - it sounds more gospel than DM to me, and that's not my thing. Still, a stunning vocal performance from Dave on this one.

Mercy In You

A great album track with yet another superb vocal performance. The live version, while far from being disappointing, somehow failed to match the energy of the original.

Judas

It seems odd now, but I didn't like this one at all first. I was OK with the guitars, the drums, the hip-hop beats, the string orchestra, even the gospel thing to a certain extent, but the uillean pipes were just too much. When I finally got used to the weird instrumentation, I started to appreciate the song's beauty, and it keeps getting better with every listen.

In Your Room

What can I write about a perfect song? This is six and a half minutes worth living for. The slow start, the build up, the singing, the chorus, the intensity, the emotions, the lyrics, everything about it is so cathartic I can't even begin to describe. It's such a thrill that they finally returned to playing it in - pretty much - its original form this year.

Get Right With Me

This odd gospel-hip hop hybrid is probably the least remarkable song on the album, which gives us the opportunity to return to this mundane world from musical heaven. Making an impression after In Your Room was an impossible task anyway, the only thing to do in this situation is to come up with something radically different, and they succeeded in that regard.
The song is followed by a hidden track, a short snippet from Brian Eno's swamp mix of I Feel You.

Rush

Should have been a single. Probably the catchiest song on the album, and it worked perfectly live as well, such a shame that it never returned to the set ever since.

One Caress

My guess is that this song was meant to be just a B-side at first, but it turned out so well that they put it on the album as well, and even shot a video for it and sent it out to radio stations to promote the US leg of the tour.

Higher Love

A beautiful and uplifting song to close the album, yet another highlight. Could have been a single. The way they used it as the opening song to their live shows in 1993 is just unbeatable, and it was spine-tingling yet again 20 years later when Martin brough it back to the set.

*

Walking In My Shoes

Second single, April 1993
Oddly enough, the lowest charting single of the era in the UK - the only one that didn't make the top 10. I still remember the first time I caught the video on MTV (Music Television at the time), and I was so thrilled that this was the next single. (The video is also one of their best, by the way.) The song was slightly edited and remixed for the single, and there were several remixes by big names, my particular favourites being the grungy gonads mix by Johnny Dollar & Portishead, the random carpet mix by William Orbit and the ambient whale mix by Mark Stent, but nothing beats the original album version of course.

My Joy

A very enjoyable song on the B-side, although not particularly remarkable. The slow slide mix is also quite good.

Condemnation

Third single, September 1993
Unlike the previous single, I wasn't too happy about this one. It's just not enough DM-sounding to me, and I don't think it's that suitable for a single either, especially when you have songs like Rush or Higher Love on the album. It's also weird that while this was their most American-sounding single with its gospel elements (hightened even more in the single version with the addition of backing singers from the tour), their US label chose One Caress instead at the time. The fact that there was only one remix of the song - the single version, which was named Paris mix, because the additional work was done in a studio in Paris while the band were on tour -, and it was created by a band member (Alan Wilder), while Rush was given to multiple artists to remix, seem to suggest that they originally intended that song to be the A-side (which would have been a much better choice in my opinion), but I don't think they did - I seem to recall Dave even wanted Condemnation to be the first single, he loved it so much and was so proud of it.
There were 2 distinctive maxi single releases on CD and 12" vinyl. The first included remixes: the Paris mix of Condemnation, the long version (jazz mix) of Death's Door, which was originally released on flexidisc the previous year with the official fan club magazine Bong, and various versions of Rush (2 on CD, 3 on vinyl). The second release included 4 live tracks recorded in Milan on the current tour, starting with Condemnation (obvioulsy), followed by 3 extremely popular tracks from the previous album, Personal Jesus, Enjoy The Silence and Halo. I suspect that the surprisingly high chart position (#9 in the UK) was heavily influenced by the inclusion of the first ever officially released live versions of these massive hits.

SONGS OF FAITH AND DEVOTION LIVE

December, 1993
When I first heard that they were going to release a live album, I was over the moon - the show was fantastic, the live versions were brilliant, and based on 101, I expected a full show to come out. When I finally held it in my hands, it was really disappointing that this album actually replicated the tracklist of the studio album, only in live versions. I really missed hearing the older songs (luckily, all of them appeared either on the singles or on the live video, and on both in some cases), and it was odd to have it finishing with the opening song of the live shows. The sleeve lists 4 cities where the recordings originate from, but they didn't actually use anything from Milan (they released 4 tracks on the Condemnation single plus Death's Door on a Mute Records promotional cassette compilation from that show), they used all songs available from Lievin, and the 2 songs that weren't performed there came from Copenhagen (Get Right With Me) and New Orleans (One Caress).

In Your Room

Fourth single, January 1994
Quite an obvious choice, but I can't complain about it. At this point, it was quite usual for the band to release a more radically reworked version as a single this late in an album campaign (see A Question Of Time and Behind The Wheel for earlier examples), but they went really far from the original this time. Being probably my favourite song ever, it's a minor miracle that I don't hate the zephyr mix that was released as a single. As a matter of fact, it's actually really good, and if you ignore the brilliance of the album version, it becomes perfectly enjoyable. Production and mixing was done by a guy called Butch Vig (quite famous at the time for producing some well-received records), guitar was played by Duke Erikson, and the engineer was Steve Marker - these three American gentlemen would soon become a great band called Garbage with the addition of an irresistible Scottish singer, Shirley Manson.
There were 3 CD releases this time, the first included 2 versions of the zephyr mix and 2 live tracks (Never Let Me Down Again and Death's Door), the second one had 4 more live tracks (In Your Room, Policy Of Truth, World In My Eyes, Fly On The Windscreen), and the third one played 3 remixes by artists returning in this role: Johnny Dollar & Portishead's jeep rock mix and Brian Eno's apex mix of In Your Room are both terrific, Francois Kevorkian's adrenaline mix of Higher Love is the only one from the whole package I'm not too fond of. The same 11 tracks were released on two 12" vinyl singles, one with the 5 remixes and the other with the 6 live tracks.
The video is yet another great one by Anton Corbijn, and with multiple references to earlier videos, it hinted towards things coming to an end. 23 years later it's safe to say that the band got through this, but things did change quite dramatically soon after this.

Devotional Tour
Higher Love
Policy Of Truth
World In My Eyes
Walking In My Shoes
Behind The Wheel
Halo
Stripped
Condemnation
Judas / A Question Of Lust
Death's Door / One Caress
Mercy In You / Get Right With Me
I Feel You
Never Let Me Down Again
Rush
In Your Room

Personal Jesus
Enjoy The Silence

Fly On The Windscreen / Somebody
Everything Counts

Europe May - July 1993
North America September - November 1993
Ireland & UK December 1993

This tour brought some massive changes for the band. It was the first time they had someone else with them on stage: Hildia Campbell and Samantha Smith sang backing vocals on certain songs. The stage setup was absolutely massive, 2 huge and 9 smaller (but still quite big) movie screens, metal cut out figures representing the band members. The songs were all reworked, with some earlier tracks quite radically updated to fit in with the new sound. 3 songs in the middle of the set changed quite regularly. On the first (European) leg, Martin usually started with Judas - occasionally replaced by A Question Of Lust -, and then sang Death's Door on all but 3 shows: One Caress made an appearance in Dortmund and Paris (where the band played 2 nights) and at the last show of the first leg in London, each time featuring a string quartet on stage. At the start of the tour, Martin's bit was followed by Get Right With Me, but after a few gigs, the band switched to Mercy In You, which stayed for the vast majority of the remaining dates. On the US leg, Martin usually sang A Question Of Lust and One Caress (which was a single there at the time, featuring live strings only in selected cities), and Judas and Death's Door (and Get Right With Me in the place of Mercy In You) were kept almost exclusively for the occasions of playing multiple nights at the same venue.
The only other place with changes was the first song of the second encore. Very early in the tour, on the second night in Brussels, they tried Something To Do instead of Fly On The Windscreen, but they probably weren't too satisfied with it, since it's the only known live performance of the song after 1988 to this very day. Much later, at the end of the US leg in November, they started to rotate Fly On The Windscreen with Somebody (probably to give a breather to Dave), and then stuck with Somebody for the closing Ireland/UK leg in December.

This tour was my first ever time seeing the band live, and it's needless to say how impressed I was.
The start of the show is still the best opening I've ever seen: the stage was covered by multiple curtains, with the band members shadows projected onto them by being lit from behind while playing Higher Love. Dave came out to the front for the last verse, and the curtains all fell down as they finished the song. Fletch, Martin and Alan (from left to right from the crowd's perspectve) were standing behind their keyboards on the upper level, while Dave had the whole stage downstairs to himself when they went into Policy Of Truth. After greeting the crowd, they started a wonderfully reworked version of World In My Eyes (still my favourite live version of the song). The next song, Walking In My Shoes also started with an intro created from remixes, and introduced the 9 smaller screens with some film footage, the first time I ever saw such a thing on a concert. It was also the first song with guitar in it, and Martin moved from his center spot to the left side of the upper level, then switched sides and guitars for Behind The wheel, which - of course - sounded quite different from earlier versions. Back to the all-keyboards line up with Halo, followed by the next highlight, a new version of Stripped, and the first use of the 2 large screens at the back of the stage with a typical Anton film. Condemnation brought the first appearance of the backing vocalists, Martin moved to the side again (this time only to sing backing vocals), and Alan left his place of upper right to appear on the lower left, playing a piano. He stayed there to play synths when Dave left the stage and Martin came down to the front for Judas, which was followed - shockingly - by a song I didn't know at the time (and completely different originally anyway): Death's Door with piano-only backing. In my defence, this song was only available on a movie soundtrack and on a fan club only flexidisc at the time. Martin stayed downstairs to play guitar alongside the returning Dave in Mercy In You, Alan went back upstairs for just this song, to appear - after a long intro to I Feel You - behind a proper drumkit (for 5 consecutive songs) downstairs on the right hand side. With the live drums and the band members' silhouettes videos, it was another iconic moment. Martin returned to his keyboards for the remaining 3 songs of the main set, a surprisingly short Never Let Me Down Again - the usual highlight of every DM concert, not standing out too much this time but still great -, a fantastic rendition of Rush and the closing and - obviously - completely ecstatic In Your Room. It had to be the last song of the main set, there was nowhere to go from there, it was time for a short break.
The first encore included 2 of the band's biggest hits (both with Martin on guitar): Personal Jesus (the last song with Alan on drums) and Enjoy The Silence. When they left the stage after these, I started to wonder what could be next. Knowing the band's history, I knew that there were probably only 2 songs left, and they haven't played a lot of hits like Strangelove, A Question Of Time, Black Celebration (OK, this wasn't even a single but was a live staple up to this point), Shake The Disease, People Are People, Master And Servant, Just Can't Get Enough... So they came back on stage, Fletch, Mart and Alan upstairs behind their keyboards, the ladies there with their microphones, Dave downstairs, and launch into... I have no idea what this is... I hear some scratching, but it can't be Get Right With Me, they never play new songs in the encore... wait a minute, it starts to get familiar... WHAT? FLY ON THE WINDSCREEN? I can't believe this! And an incredible version! After that, Alan and Andy moved downstairs to play keyboards beside Dave for the last song, a heavily updated version of Everything Counts, which still ended with a big singalong like it had done on 101.

I've been lucky enough to see the band 30 more times since (and will see them twice very shortly, with hopefully many more to come), they always put on a great show, they are an incredible live act to this very day, and I had so many unforgettable moments watching them play, but the combination of me being so young, knowing nothing about the show in advance, seeing such a huge production for the first time in my life, the use of rearranged versions of almost every song, and them performing so fantastic (while knowing that the show itself wasn't a standout one, probably just another day at the office for them) made it a unique experience, something that cannot be repeated.

A live video - titled Devotional - was filmed during the first European leg and released at the end of 1993. 3 songs - Policy Of Truth, Halo and Death's Door - were not included on the original release (though Death's Door was played over the ending credits) and the US version was even shorter. The audio was taken from the Lievin show, but film footage was used from Barcelona, Frankfurt and Lievin, so it doesn't always match perfectly, some of Dave's shouts were muted out (to fit the visuals), but some of them can be heard faintly in the background through the crowd noise. The video was re-released on dvd in 2004, with some extra footage, now including Policy Of Truth  and Halo (though not in their original place in the setlist, only as extra tracks separately). Policy Of Truth is quite noteworthy, because Dave didn't sing the chorus in Lievin, so you can only hear Martin and Alan singing, but see Dave as if he was miming (which he wasn't, it's just footage from a different show, where he was singing). 16 songs of the usual set (plus One Caress and Get Right With Me) were made available on the live album and the singles, and with the 3 missing tracks all appearing on the video (Behind The Wheel, Stripped, Everything Counts: all tracks that also appeared - in different versions though - on the previous live album 101) you can listen to the whole set in great quality.

Exotic Tour
Rush
Halo
Behind The Wheel
Everything Counts
World In My Eyes
Walking In My Shoes
Stripped
Condemnation
A Question Of Lust / Judas / Somebody / One Caress
I Want You Now / One Caress / Waiting For The Night
In Your Room
Never Let Me Down Again
I Feel You
Personal Jesus

Somebody / Fly On The Windscreen
Enjoy The Silence

Policy Of Truth / Clean
A Question Of Time

Africa, Asia, Australia & South America February - April 1994

Lots of changes compared to the 1993 dates! Most of those shows took place in indoor arenas, while 1994 dates were mostly outdoor venues starting before it went dark, where the Higher Love opening wouldn't have worked, so a new intro (with elements from remixes) was created to Rush, the new opening song. A heavily trip-hop influenced, and absolutely sunning new version of I Want You Now was created, A Question Of Time returned as set closer with a new rock version (with guitar and live drums), some changes were done to the arrangements (with Alan now also playing drums in Halo and Stripped for example), the song order was also changed, and the stage set was simplified: gone were the multiple screens and the upper floor, so Anton also had to re-edit the film footage to fit on one screen.
This leg of the tour mostly visited places where the band never played before, and they haven't returned to Africa, the Far East or Australia ever since, not even to Japan which was a regular stop for them since 1983.
The setlist above suggest a lot of changes, but Martin usually sang A Quesion Of Lust and I Want You Now in the main set, and Somebody in the first encore. Clean, Fly On The Windcreen, and Waiting For The Night (sung by Martin alone, with backing from Hildia and Samantha), were only played on a few occasions. During the Australian dates, Condemnation was occasionally dropped from the set, and when it returned, Martin took the lead for the remaining dates (singing 3 songs in the middle of the main set on this leg). After the 2 Hawaiian dates at the end of March, Fletch left the tour and was replaced by band assistant and long time friend Daryl Bamonte (younger brother of Perry Bamonte, a member of The Cure 1990-2004) on stage.

US Summer Tour
Rush
Halo
Behind The Wheel
Everything Counts
World In My Eyes
Walking In My Shoes
Stripped
Condemnation
I Want You Now
In Your Room
Never Let Me Down Again
I Feel You
Personal Jesus

Somebody
Enjoy The Silence

A Question Of Time

North America May-July 1994

Probably the least enjoyable leg of the tour, the shortest setlist (only 16 songs), no changes whatsoever, no Fletch, the other 3 not really being in their best shape. Still, what I would have given to see it...

I'd also like to mention that this particular setlist represents something that the band was frequently criticised for in recent years, showing it's not exactly a new development: as such a long tour goes on, the setlist gets shorter, the brave song choices and recent album tracks start to disappear from the set to give way to some returning live staples, not necessarily in their best form, with the occasional treat thrown in here and there.

The best quality audio recordings from the 1994 dates are from Honolulu and Mountain View, they're worth checking out for the incredible new version of I Want You Now, Martin on lead vocals on Condemnation and a not-that-good-but-interesting-at-the-time version of A Question Of Time.

*
The time after the tour was probably the darkest and most trying for every Depeche Mode fan. We didn't know much about what was going on behind the scenes, but it was quite obvious that Dave had serious problems, and they didn't feel like people who belong together anymore. When Alan announced his departure in 1995, it felt like another nail in the coffin. After that, for a while, there were only these weird news, with Dave slitting his wrists, Alan getting almost killed by a crashing plane, then Dave's overdose... The other thing was, we didn't know if they wanted to continue as Depeche Mode anyway. All of them were in their mid 30s with kids, they'd achieved pretty much everything there was to achieve, they'd been around the world and enjoyed life to the fullest, so was there any point of going on? Apparently, there was.