BLACK CELEBRATION

Depeche Mode (album)

If you own a copy of Black Celebration on CD, as a fan of Depeche Mode my humble advice to you is to chuck it in the bin. Seriously. Do it. It's worthless. Now, once you've done that, you'll need a replacement copy so if I were you I'd nip down to the local record shop (go on, don't let the online retailers win) and pick up the new remastered version. The packaging's much nicer for a start, it's got embossed symbols on the cover, a proper booklet with lyrics to not only the album but the extra tracks too, and a DVD. Of course, if you're not a fan, you're probably wondering why I'm recommending a 21 year old LP. Well, that's probably because it's one of the greatest albums ever made, but more likely because it's one of the greatest albums ever made and it's never sounded anywhere near as good as this. I've got the original pressing of the CD and the sound quality is shocking in comparison to the remaster. In particular, Black Celebration and Fly On The Windscreen - Final, which plodded along with a series of dull thuds on the original, now sound so much clearer – they may not sound any more cheerful but there's certainly a lot more life in them than there ever was before. You see, what they've done is to dismantle every track and then rebuild them bit by bit in both stereo and 5.1 and by heck the care and attention shows right from the off. For a change, this isn't a cynical cash-in, it's not a Star Wars style special edition where things have been moved around or replaced entirely, all the sounds are exactly where they were before, but the difference is they've given a proper valeting with technological gimmickry that wasn't available in the mid-eighties. Now then, you're probably wondering why I think this album is so great. Well, for one thing, I hate love songs unless they're done with a bit of originality. There are a few on Black Celebration, there's A Question Of Lust for one thing, and although it's the most obvious on the album, even this contains the line "I need to drink more than you seem to think before I'm anyone's". There's the secret, then – Martin Gore's songwriting. He's right at the top of his game here and he's wallowing in misery, cynicism, love, lust and God knows what else. Black Celebration's all about simply getting through another day unscathed, Fly On The Windscreen's as fatalistic as the title suggests, Sometimes is world-weary, even now I've got no idea precisely what A Question Of Time's all about, Stripped is a masterclass in sampling car and motorbike engines (I bet Top Gear'd love that) and a damned good song to boot, but then we come to New Dress. Sounds nice and romantic, doesn't it? Not a bit of it, sunshine. If anything, the lyrics are even more true today than they were in 1986. Dave Gahan's reading headlines from newspapers relating to all the bad things in the world ("Earthquake terror, figures rise", "Bomb blast victim fights for life", and so on) and then comes the hook – "Princess Di is wearing a new dress" – sung as if that's supposed to be far more important. Of course, these days you could switch Princess Di's name for Posh Spice or Kerry Katona or someone like that, and it'd be right back up to date. That's not all – in the chorus Dave says that you can't change the world, and then goes on to describe, point by point, how actually you can change the world to your own ends if you only use a little media manipulation. A lot of albums become less relevant over time, but Black Celebration hasn't dated, it still reflects the world we live in and life in general – and the fact that you can now hear the tracks as they were probably originally intended is just the icing on the cake. Great isn't the word. Immense is more like it.