Musica come Antidoto

OK, after a four-day ordeal I post this here. Always unsolicited opinions. If you find mistakes or various oversights, it’s because if I read it again I’ll correct it again and in a month we’ll still be here.

Eh nothing, today there is little work, I cannot study, my mind is occupied by other things.

There is a fixed thought that won’t leave me alone, and this thought is called “Speak to me”.

Why this song, you may ask?

For several reasons.

Let’s start.

Dave said that this is the song that convinced him to continue making another record with Martin. Before writing ‘Speak to Me’ he was in a period where he was enjoying life with his family and wasn’t sure if he wanted to make another record with Depeche Mode. He was looking for an answer as to why he was writing.

He gave several keys to interpreting this song: a spiritual force that he felt when he asked himself what he should do, a set of metaphors about loneliness, emptiness, wanting to be part of life and people and at the same time not, the search for a new relationship with Martin.

These are all things that in my opinion are part of Dave’s duality: The wanting to be a father, a husband, a friend, and the need to shut himself away. The wanting to be a person beyond music and not being able to live without it. What is it that always brings him back to Depeche Mode in the end?

There are songs that particularly strike our hearts because they arouse emotions in us that we can share or at least understand.

I tried to describe ‘Speak to Me’ in this way.

A slow melody, solemn and sad at the same time. A keyboard taking the parts of an organ. An image comes to mind of a person sitting in a pew in a church, looking straight ahead for some kind of answer. Dave’s voice is subdued at the beginning of the verse, but a glimmer of hope appears at the beginning of the bridge, confirmed by the resolute and confident tone of the second verse.

Speak to me, I will follow

I heard you call my name

Lying on the bathroom floor

No one here to blame

There’s a message I know can be found

I’m listening, I hear you, your sound

We moved from the dirty sticky floor (Dirty sticky floors, Dave Gahan, Paper Monsters) to another floor. The growth path Dave has taken is clearly visible here: He is no longer under the influence of substances and, instead of blaming others, he has realised that there is no one to blame. He is able to come to terms with himself and listen. There is something good to come out of this life. It is a message, a sound that he can hear, and I believe that for Dave this sound can be music.

Speak to me in a language

That I can understand

Tell me that you’re listening

Give me some kind of plan

Give me something, you’d be my drug of choice

You lead me, I follow, your voice.

What can this verse represent? It may be a request to a higher entity, to listen to us, enlighten us and show us the way forward at a time when we feel unsure of how to proceed. The question was: Enjoy life with the family or make a new Depeche Mode record, with Martin?

Dave is asking someone to speak to him in a language he can understand, to listen to him and point him towards something. He is also trying to establish a new relationship with Martin, one in which the two can communicate without Martin shutting himself off in his usual silences, without Dave speaking before his brain connects. Perhaps it is from him that he wants to feel heard, as he also states in an interview talking about the complicated studio work for Spirit? (or whatever in many others but I’m not going to list them)

It’s strange that as stubborn as Dave is, he actually feels the need to be guided by something or someone. He does not return a comparison to drugs by accident, because he needs something to give meaning to his existence, to which he is willing to give everything. He is willing to follow this voice, to be guided by it.

I will disappoint you

I will let you down

I need to know you’re here with me

Turn it all around

I’d be grateful, I’d follow you around

I’m listening, I’m here now, I’m found.

Dave knows that he is not perfect and that he will probably fuck up and let someone down, but he needs to know that this something/someone is there beside him. He is grateful. He is listening, he is here now, he is where he needs to be.

What could this force he wants to serve, this thing he needs?

Music, that allows him to express himself, to feel himself, to make emotional contact?

Martin, who despite decades of complicated relationships, always writes something he can identify with?

I have my own opinions on the subject, which I do not wish to share, but what is most important, what ultimately comes out of this piece, is that Dave is present and is aware of what he wants to do.

That’s where the lyrics end. Is the song over? Absolutely not.

A rhythmic beat like a beating heart, these repeating loops and these reverberations created by Marta Salogni’s tape machines envelop us like a wall of sound, like a march in crescendo that makes us get closer and closer to a gigantic explosion… Like the masterful crescendo beginning of “Black Celebration”, which introduces you to the first chorus… “Let’s have a black celebration…”

And instead…

Silence.

The tape cuts out. The song ends here. No explosion, no fade-out. The curtain falls.

The curtain falls on Memento Mori, but this ending sounds like an interruption, a “To be continued” like those in the movies.

If it doesn’t, ‘Speak to Me’ will be an epic finale to an album that brought Depeche Mode back to the heights of Ultra, both in sound and fame. It will also be an epic finale for a career that has very few equals in terms of quality of lyrics, sound and vocal performance. A band that has been able to enter the hearts of millions of people, expressing fears, desires, pain, sex, love, making us feel understood and less alone, creating sound atmospheres that are sometimes poppy and romantic, sometimes industrial, futuristic.

Dave has written, together with Christopher Eigner, a wonderful lyric, moving, full of urgency and cathartic at the same time. He makes us feel the importance of this text for him and all his emotions only palpable: the melancholy, the hope, the resolve. He is an extraordinary performer, there is nothing to say.

The production did a great job on this piece and the result is extraordinary. Martin, Christian, Peter, James Ford and Marta Salogni all participated in the piece compositionally.

I hope with all my heart that the Depeche Mode adventure does not end here, because ‘Speak to Me’ sounds to me like the conclusion of one chapter and the beginning of another.

I sincerely hope that this marvellous wall of sound will continue in some way, maybe always with Marta Salogni’s tape machines next to it, who has made a distinctive contribution to this record, giving that sonic creativity that has been missing for so long.

I am sure that Dave and Martin still have a lot to give, especially now that they seem to have reached a balance in their relationship. Who knows, maybe the success of ‘Memento mori’ and the associated tour won’t hold some surprises for us in the future.

In any case, thank you for giving us this gem of a song.

“I’m listening, I’m here now, I’m found.”