Some Great Reward

Performer: Depeche Mode
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Depeche Mode: Martin Gore (vocals, keyboards, synthesizer); David Gahan (vocals); Andrew Fletcher, Alan Wilder (keyboards, synthesizer, background vocals). Producers: Depeche Mode, George Jones, Daniel Miller. Recorded at Music Works, London, England and Hansa Mischraum, Berlin, Germany. Depeche Mode: Dave Gahan, Alan Wilder, Martin L. Gore, Andy Fletcher. Depeche Mode's U.S. breakthrough album, 1984's SOME GREAT REWARD, expanded the U.K. synth band's American following from a small cult of Anglophiles to the same sort of teenage adulation that the Cure had started attracting around the same time. Featuring the Top 20 U.S. hit "People Are People," along with cult faves such as the intensely mopey "Blasphemous Rumours," the fashionably S&M-tinged "Master and Servant," and the disarmingly earnest love ballad "Somebody," this is the album on which Depeche Mode finally shed the stigma of founding songwriter Vince Clarke's departure. SOME GREAT REWARD finds Martin Gore coming into his own as a songwriter, with Alan Wilder taking Gore's place in the George Harrison role, adding two fine tunes of his own. The addition of mechanical factory noise to several songs, as well as the more introspective tones and more intricate constructions, aligned the band more with darker industrial bands than with sunny technopop groups. Meanwhile, Gahan's vocals started hinting at a deeper, moodier tint, foreshadowing the gloomier, more complex, more angular path that was to follow.

Q (7/95, p.139) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...confirmed Martin Gore as a talent of real depth, creating music that could be both experimental and icily catchy, while combining this with ominous lyrics that hinted at much more than Robert Smith's callow pronouncements..." CMJ (1/5/04, p.16) - Ranked #3 in CMJ's "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1985"

Depeche Mode (French for "hurried fashion") was one of the first and best of the British synth-pop bands, combining breathless, melodic pop with perky electronics. With main songwriter Vince Clarke's departure for Yaz, Martin Gore took the reigns, and the band's sound became darker and harder, though still true to their trademark synth-driven accessibility. The post-Clarke band's moody dance-pop brought Depeche Mode worldwide superstardom in the second half of the '80s. The band survived overexposure, drug problems, and all the other traditional rock-star travails, and came out older and wiser, entering the 2000s as a fully functioning, mature unit.

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