In the Studio: Depeche Mode Go "Spiritual"

Before Depeche Mode began recording their new album, the group's guitarist and chief songwriter, Martin Gore, went out and bought a bunch of vintage gear. "It's helped to shape the sound of the album," says Gore. "The sounds we are making are more akin to stuff we did in the late 1980s, around Violator. That was a real creative high for us." The group has been recording off and on for nine months in New York and in a studio near Gore's Santa Barbara, California, home. On its last release, 2005's Playing the Angel, singer Dave Gahan contributed songs for the first time in Depeche Mode's 25-year career. So far, he's given four new songs to this currently untitled set. "I think it's natural," says Gore — who was the group's sole songwriter for most of its career. Gore says it's too early to discuss specific tracks, but he says the album has a strong "spiritual feel."

[From Issue 1066 — November 27, 2008]

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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