Two weeks at number one from 18th September 1982
“We’ve been running round in circles all year/ doing this and that and getting nowhere...”
Both 1982 and 1983 saw music critics thunderously dismiss two major synthpop bands for their latest albums, which were seen as confused and pretentious departures from the expected path. The first, in 1982, was Depeche Mode’s second album “A Broken Frame”, which was seen as indulgent, flimsy, pretentious and incoherent – flashes of bright pop surrounded by rainy adolescent sulks, an uneven listening experience from a band clearly on the wane.
Then in 1983, OMD released “Dazzle Ships”, which in turn was seen as indulgent, flimsy, pretentious and incoherent – flashes of bright pop surrounded by pseudo avant-garde nonsense. Another uneven listening experience from a band, etc. etc. etc.
“Dazzle Ships” has since been throroughly reassessed and reissued on multiple occasions, and is now regarded not as evidence of a band out of time and ideas, but a daring and coherent piece of work (something very few people said in its day). A masterpiece, in fact. The sleeve art, featuring flashes of colour and darkness akin to the camouflage World War I navy ships adopted, mirrored the work within and created the same sense of dislocation and uncertainty; one minute bright and visible, the next slipping into a deliberately jarring Cold War statement.
“A Broken Frame” received an award and praise for its Brian Griffin directed cover art, a photograph of a peasant woman ploughing fields under a gloomy sky with a scythe, while the rear of the sleeve showed sunshine breaking through on the right hand side. Its contents, on the other hand, remain ignored. The band themselves seem to see the album as an embarrassing learning experience from a difficult period, their fans seldom talk about it online, and if it comes up for discussion in Classic Rock retrospectives, critics still find time to have a chuckle at its expense.
So allow me to step forward and make a deeply contentious claim – “A Broken Frame” is one of my favourite albums of all time. It really doesn’t deserve to be ignored. Where you hear inconsistency and incoherence, I hear a record with deliberate, stark contrasts, the sunshine breaking through the dark clouds for occasional respite before being forced undercover again. Where you hear a confused group, I hear a band who knew that pop and post-punk were not mutually exclusive; that in the end, whether The Buzzcocks, Donna Summer or The Shangri-las were singing about the tight knots romantic relationships tie us in, they were still trying to communicate the same idea (the journey from soda pops to snakebite and black is really only a mere few years - nothing in adult terms).
Perhaps more importantly, where you hear a band trying and failing to be different, I hear them succeeding. There are moments on “A Broken Frame” they wouldn’t touch upon again – the frostbitten Siberian reggae of “Satellite”, for example, is a real anomaly (but no worse for it) – but also moments which set the stage for their future direction. The squally, epic “Sun And The Rainfall” is a rarely bettered track from the early stage of their career, offering hope and reason amidst a gloomy minor key. “My Secret Garden” is hushed and delirious, constantly teasing and threatening to rise its head above the fog before diving back down again. The much-mocked “A Photograph Of You” emerges bright, simple but heartbroken on side two, only for the sound of wind to blow immediately over it to introduce the minimal, marching childhood fascist Psycho Drama of “Shouldn’t Have Done That”. If the group didn’t understand how the handle the changeable mood they were trying to evoke here, the producer Daniel Miller surely did (as an aside, I should also say that even at the time I thought "Shouldn't Have Done That" sounded uncannily close to a late sixties Beatles studio experiment in places).
The first two singles from “A Broken Frame” doubtless wrongfooted the public and critics. “See You” and “Meaning Of Love” showed some artistic development, but were essentially playing safe, trying to operate within spitting distance of Vince Clarke’s original ideas on “Speak And Spell”; two straightforward feedbag fillers, steadying the horses and ensuring nobody was hoofed up the arse all the way home to Basildon.
“Leave In Silence”, on the other hand, is the last single from the album and the one that really seems to define its spirit best. It begins with an approximation of mournful monk chanting (at this point not the cliché it has since become), an apologetic, descending bong of a chime, and synthesisers which glint despondently. This is pop picked up, slit apart, and turned into an inverse image of itself. Elements which should be celebratory and joyous are used instead to signal dismay, impatience and defeat in a minor key. Chimes collapse. Speedy synth-wizard instrumental breaks meander and tumble and reach no conclusion. Spiritual chants are used to signal defeat, not mystery or joy. Melodic conclusions are hinted at then abandoned. Glasses smash. It’s like a track from “Speak & Spell” in negative, swapping bright lights for shady resignation.
It’s also bloody wonderful and fascinatingly inventive. Prior to its release I had already decided I liked Depeche Mode, but it was the first single I found genuinely exciting. The group claim they had the option of picking a more obvious track from the album to release as the final single, but deliberately went with “Leave In Silence” to show another side to their work. Not everyone was impressed – Paul Weller was moved to comment “I’ve heard more melody coming out of Kenny Wheeler’s arsehole”, probably missing the point (as critics also did) that the band were keen to use the single as a springboard to a different career in Vince Clarke’s absence, not produce a song the milkman could whistle. When “Leave In Silence” arrives on the “Singles 81-85” compilation, whose tracks are presented in chronological order, it feels like the key transition point despite being from the second album – the moment where they truly find their own voices and stop worrying about their ex-bandmate.
In common with many other tracks on “A Broken Frame”, it has clumsy lyrical flaws, the “spreading like a cancer” line tactlessly pre-empting Turbo B out of Snap (though at least they have the sense not to rhyme it with dancer). It was also given an ultra-New Romantic arty promo video directed by Julien Temple where the band stand beside a Generation Game conveyer belt of random items which they smash with hammers. This seemed like an interesting clip by 1982 standards, but the world of music videos has evolved significantly since and it now looks like it's trying far too hard to be clever. These are minor setbacks, though, and shouldn’t distract from the fact that this is a wonderfully unusual pop record.
The risk also paid off, to an extent. While “Leave In Silence” only reached number 18 in the charts, their lowest charting single since their debut “Dreaming Of Me”, it was successful enough to make the group realise that they could get away with testing their existing audience and potentially attract new listeners into the bargain. The Clarke-led Depeche Mode of old were now a dead concept, and the fact this change occurred so swiftly in the space of a mere year is shocking by modern standards.
As for “A Broken Frame”, there are occasional signs that at least some people are getting wise to its strengths. In 2015 the Greek synthpop duo Marsheaux released their own modernised version of the entire album, which in common with most tribute exercises contains surprising and fantastic interpretations as well as tricks which don’t quite cohere. It’s clear that the pair are handling it with love and admiration, though, seeing its bold shifts and changes in tone as strengths rather than weaknesses. It’s a small step, but hopefully further respect will follow from other quarters.
Away From The Number One Spot
14. Fad Gadget – “Life On The Line” (Mute)
Frank Tovey entering the charts in the week Depeche Mode take the top spot is a neat piece of symmetry – the group acted as his support act for their early London shows, which brought them to the attention of Mute label boss Daniel Miller.
The band namedropped Fad Gadget often and tried to ensure he got some column inches, but despite his use of synths, Tovey was operating in a different sphere; taut, harsh and occasionally disturbing. “Ricky’s Hand”, essentially a parody of a seventies Public Information Film set to buzzing synths, is darker and more comedic than Mode ever got, as well as probably being one of the first examples a PIF being dismantled and reappropriated artistically.
“Life On The Line” is more compromising, shifting closer to pop, but still doesn’t push the mercury very far up the thermometer. While other groups were showing that synths could be used to communicate other ideas besides alienation and futurism, Fad Gadget were having absolutely bloody none of that, and while the song offers the listener some bait, Tovey’s delivery never moves an inch beyond cold and uncommitted, like the Drimble Wedge of futurism.
It eventually peaked, perhaps appropriately, at number 13.