Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on world news
“Time is fleeting, look what it brings”. These are the words that accompany a mysterious countdown started on the site of Depeche Mode. The countdown should end at 18 on Friday 3 February, time in which we will probably finally be able to listen for the first time to an excerpt (of which only the first seconds have been leaked for now) from the new album Memento Mori. A record that has become a reflection on the disappearance and bitter relativity of time, even more after the disappearance of Andy “Fletch” Fletcher.
An album to remind us to live the best we can
Depeche Mode have surprisingly lost their glue, the man who united the different souls of the band, just when the work that would have marked the return of the group was ready to take shape in the studio and there was already even the title for the album. That Memento Mori which arose from an expression revealed a Martin Gore from a friend and which, especially after Fletch’s departure, has taken on new meanings that are not necessarily negative: “I know that a title like this can have a depressing meaning but, as we saw it, we thought of using it with a positive. As if to say: live all your days to the fullest,” explained Gore. On the other hand, all the songs on the new album hint at death but only to make sure that this inevitable specter pushes us to live to the fullest the time we are allowed on this Earth, as he also highlighted Dave Gahan.
Depeche Mode are left without their glue
It is precisely the singer himself who points out how much the fifteenth album will be a completely different work from the previous ones, especially due to the disappearance of his friend right in the middle of the process of building the songs: “It’s the first time we’ve done this thing without Fletch, We had wrote all the songs before he died, but when something like this happens, such a big event, the songs take on a different shape, take on another meaning. When I sang them many things went through my mind and surely Fletch was one of the recurring ones”. It wasn’t easy for Depeche Mode to understand what would have been right to do after the sad event and they seriously considered the possibility of giving up everything, only to then decide that getting back to work immediately would have been the best way to metabolize the mourning. “Andy has always been considered the glue that held us together. He wouldn’t have accepted knowing that it was his death that ended the band,” Gore said Rolling Stone. Dave Gahan recalled the calm and irony that his friend knew how to instil in a press conference in Berlin: “Fletch was the quietest of us, he didn’t have excesses. We were all convinced that he would have lived much longer than us, and instead he didn’t. I really miss his irony. I can hear his voice saying, ‘Dave, but the songs of Memento Mori do they all necessarily have to talk about death?’”. In the meantime, the new single will probably revolve around this burdensome theme, which according to well-informed people should be entitled Ghosts Again and would have already been preview remixed during a couple of festivals by the British DJ duo camelphat. The first seconds of this piece should also be those heard in the post announcing the countown on the band’s social networks, announcing a disc with electronic sounds and in any case faithful to the band’s identity.
There will not be another Fletch
An album like this will probably represent the perfect tribute to the English musician but the question mark remains as to how Depeche Mode, now reduced to a duo, will make up for the absence of Fletcher live on the next tour which will also touch Italy . For now, neither Gore nor Gahan have given clear indications on the matter, while making it clear that they do not want to bring an “exact replica” of the third Depeche Mode to the stage: “We will not replace Fletch: there is no reason to do so”, he commented Gahan. “It would be impossible. Fletch was unique, that’s for sure.” Depeche Mode will look for alternative solutions, perhaps making the most of those musicians who have been enriching the band’s formation in concerts since the 1990s. On the other hand Andy Fletcher will still remain in the band: his soul is in every piece of the group’s repertoire, even in those of Memento Mori. His companions know this best of all: “He will be with us in spirit form and he will judge us, I’m sure of it,” said Dave Gahan. Even the band’s frontman is confident that Fletch’s “Personal Jesus” will let him check out what his friends are up to below as soon as necessary.
Source-tg24.sky.it