Depeche Mode at the Sportpaleis: the perfect concert

What a slap! Dave Gahan (60) and Martin Gore (61) undoubtedly gave one of their best Belgian concerts of their entire career this Saturday evening at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp as part of their Memento Mori Tour. The sound, the setlist, the staging, the emotion, the new dynamic that they managed to put in place the day after Andrew Fletcher’s death, the tribute to him rendered on a magnificent version of World In My Eyes. Everything was perfect.

Emotion and thrill

Forty-two years after playing Just Can’t Get Enough for the premiere here (September 28, 1981, at Disco Rojo, rue Blaes, where the Fuse is located today), Depeche Mode brought out this classic synth-pop. We were then on recall. And the Antwerp bunker turned into a new-wave dance floor. A few minutes earlier, Gore and Gahan, Gahan and Gore, came to the far end of the stage advance. In the middle of the audience, side by side. They delivered a two-voice, quasi-acoustic version of Waiting For The Night taken from the album “Violator”. Dave in awe of Martin. Martin smug when Dave took over the chorus. At the end of the song, they fell into each other’s arms. Hug, embrace. We have rarely seen that with Depeche Mode. Affection, emotion, great thrill. We are back again. This is the most beautiful image of this service. One that fans will never forget.

Tribute to Andrew

There were, however, many dead moments. When we interviewed him exclusively in London, on the eve of the release of “Memento Mori”, Martin Gore told us that he had thought long and hard with Dave Gahan and the faithful Anton Corbijn about a way to salute the memory of ‘Andrew Fletcher, keyboardist and co-founder of the band, died on May 26, 2022 at the age of 60. They had the right idea. Simple, touching, effective. The ratings of World In My Eyes, another excerpt from the album “Violator” visited four times this Saturday. On the big screens, crossed out with the DM logo, a photo of Andrew dating from the early 80s. Glasses, rebellious hair, the gaze of innocence… Too handsome.

Like The Cure, Depeche Mode has the repertoire needed to lay out an intense, contrasting but always subtly balanced setlist on each tour. This Memento Mori Tour is no exception to the rule. Five new songs ( Ghosts Again, My Cosmos Is Mine, My Favorite Stranger, Soul With Me, Wagging Tongue), classics and also tracks for hardcore fans. We think of A Pain That I’m Used To in the late night disco version as remixed by Jacques Lu Cont or in electro blues John The Revealer from “Playing The Angel”. In the hymns, we still never tire of this tide of arms and these thousands of voices on Never Let Me Down Again. Whether Personal Jesus closes the reminder, it is with Enjoy The The Silence the concert closes. Also very nice versions of Question Of Lust (sung by Martin as Dave left the podium), from WrongofI Feel You and D’Everything Counts.
Where other bands are one-upmanship, each time seeking to offer a more impressive production than during the previous tour, Depeche Mode has chosen to highlight its music and play the card of sobriety. No female singers this time, a group reduced to its bare minimum (Dave, Martin, a drummer and a multi-instrumentalist), no deluge of images like last week with Roger Waters in the same room, few spoken interventions between the pieces. But everything that was offered this Saturday was high art. Yes, a slap.