“Enjoy the Silence” – Failure
(Words/music: Martin Gore, available on For the Masses: A Tribute to Depeche Mode, A&M 1998)

For many different reasons, “Enjoy the Silence” brings me back to the late 1990s.  I discovered Depeche Mode through their Singles 86>98 collection, largely because a half hour infomercial ran on a local music channel non-stop.  I spent a lot of time listening to the first disc of this collection, which compiles almost all of Depeche Mode’s essential singles (save for a couple early ones found on the Singles 81>85 collection).  In many ways, this was my first introduction to 1980s alternative rock beyond R.E.M. and U2 and the handful of Cure songs I heard on the radio.  When I hear Depeche Mode songs now, I’m drawn in by how dramatic they sound.  The drums boom, the synthesizers sound dark and ominous, and there are some sharp dynamic changes (well, a fair amount of loud/soft contrast for the pre-Pixies/Nirvana world).  Dave Gahan sang these songs in a unique way by singing with a morose tone while still projecting to the back of the room – a sort of overblown bleakness.  His voice sounded like a fog filling an empty field – a dark charisma that seems unassuming until it surrounds you and demands your attention by obscuring everything else.  I ate it up at fifteen because I’d never heard anything like it, and I still appreciate it now because Martin Gore knew how to write songs that played up to his band’s strengths.  At his best, he hit the perfect balance of song and sulk, making these melancholy songs sound just melodic enough.

Still, I think my personal association linking Depeche Mode to the late ‘90s goes beyond my personal discovery.  Many of the bands getting airplay on “modern rock radio” bore Depeche Mode’s influence.  Appropriately, the For the Masses tribute album collects a lot of hard rock and electronic bands trying to channel Depeche Mode’s emphasis on musical atmosphere.  While the album achieves mixed results, Failure’s cover of “Enjoy the Silence” pushes the song to its logical limits.  While the original only has a slight shift in volume from verse to chorus (mostly from more elements entering the mix), Failure’s version relies heavily on these changes in dynamics, specifically by contrasting a quieter, tremolo-drenched guitar lines with the distortion-laden power chords in the chorus.  Ken Andrews’ sings in a similarly monotone manner, but uses a megaphone effect to change the quality in his voice in a way that almost sounds like a second character.  It’s grandly overblown and vaguely melodic, yet it pushes just enough to become anthemic.  This is the kind of dark, huge sounding song that many other bands strived to achieve in 1998, and perhaps Failure achieved this because they are a skilled band (admittedly, I don’t think I know any of their other songs – please let me know if I should fix this), but perhaps they achieved this because they were working with quality material to begin with.  Depeche Mode set the blueprint nearly a decade earlier, and Failure executed it in a way that their “Enjoy the Silence” rivals the original.

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