Songs of Faith and Devotion is the eighth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode. It was first released on 22 March 1993 in the United Kingdom by Mute Records and a day later in the United States by Sire Records and Reprise Records. The album incorporated a more aggressive, darker rock-oriented tone than its predecessor Violator (1990), largely influenced by the emerging alternative rock and grunge scenes in the United States.
Upon its release, Songs of Faith and Devotion reached number one in several countries, and became the first Depeche Mode album to debut atop the charts in both the UK and the US. It became one of the band's best-selling albums, with sales over 5,000,000 worldwide. To support the album, Depeche Mode embarked on the fourteen-month-long two-legged Devotional Tour, the largest tour they had undertaken to date. Live recordings from the tour were released on the concert video Devotional and live album Songs of Faith and Devotion Live, both released in late 1993.
A fan posted the album in its entirety online a few months before the album's official release, representing one of the first music leaks in the music industry.
The album was recorded while lead singer Dave Gahan was suffering from a heroin addiction, and the album and subsequent tour exacerbated growing tensions and difficulties within the band, prompting Alan Wilder to quit Depeche Mode in June 1995. This album is the final one with Wilder as a band member, and also the final Depeche Mode album to be recorded as a quartet. The ordeal had exhausted their creative output following the enormous success they had enjoyed with Violator, leading to rumours and media speculation that the band would split. Depeche Mode subsequently recovered from the experience, and released Ultra in 1997.
Background
Depeche Mode had released their previous album Violator in early 1990 and had supported it with a world tour that lasted through the end of that year. The band, coming off the "peak high" of their successful album and tour, wanted to take a year off before returning to work together. In August, Wilder married his long-time girlfriend, Jeri Young.
Songwriter Martin Gore considered working on a new solo album to follow up his 1989 solo effort Counterfeit EP, but he and his partner Suzanne Boisvert instead had a daughter in June, with Gore saying "that had a really positive effect on me. ... You see a life being born and growing, it's just wonderful, it moves you."
In August, bandmate Andy Fletcher had a child with his partner Grainne Mullen, and around the same time he opened a restaurant, Gascoigne's, in north-west London.
In mid-1991, the band were lured back into the studio to record a new track, titled "Death's Door", for Wim Wenders' upcoming new film, Until the End of the World (1991). Although billed as a full-band effort, Gahan chose not to fly to London to record the vocals, preferring to stay in Los Angeles, so Gore sang vocals for the song instead.
In late 1991, Gore had demos of new songs ready to share with the rest of the band, and they agreed to meet up in early 1992 to start the recording sessions for their new material.
Recording
Demos
A [[Roland System 700, like the one used to record songs for the album.|thumb|right|upright|alt=A picture of an electronic keyboard in front of a wide bank of knobs and controls, several feet wide and a few feet high. The case itself is black, and tiny white writing or hash marks are visible next to virtually every knob and button, of which there are hundreds.]]
Gore brought in demos for everyone to hear, and Flood said that they felt like they had a good set of songs to work from. Gore was feeling tremendous pressure as the group's songwriter, coming off the success of Violator. Co-producer Flood, who had worked with the band on Violator and was returning for the new album, had just worked with rock band U2 on their album Achtung Baby. He had seen U2 produce a great album by working and living together for several weeks, and so suggested that approach to the band, saying that they could also rent a house and convert it into a working studio space. Despite having done something similar for the recording of their album Black Celebration in 1985–86 and having seen tensions rise within the group, the band agreed with Flood's suggestion. A villa about thirty miles from Madrid was rented for a few months starting in January 1992. Steve Lyon, who was the sound engineer for the album, arrived in January to start setting up the space for recording. As the villa wasn't designed for recording, Lyon chose rooms "ad hoc" to be production or recording rooms. The recordings from the kits could then be processed through synthesizers, such as the large Roland System 700 the band had shipped to Madrid. wanted to make harder music, also like he'd heard from Nine Inch Nails or Nitzer Ebb, bands that in his words "had a kind of harder and bluesier edge to them. I felt like I wanted that at the time – I wanted to rock!" Wilder agreed that they wanted to do something different, saying "we needed to push the boundaries a bit, and try and do something completely different to Violator. I'm sure, subconsciously, there was a big pressure to repeat that success, and the obvious thing to do would have been to make a very similar record. None of us really wanted to do that, and I think particularly Flood, Dave [Gahan] and myself wanted to make it as different as we could, and surprise people with it." As a result, according to Wilder again, "After some discussion between myself, Flood and the others, we agreed that our approach should be more towards performance whilst trying to push ourselves into areas we hadn't explored. Some of the songs like 'I Feel You', 'In Your Room' and 'Rush' suggested a looser, more 'live' feel and it's probably fair to say that myself, Flood and Dave [Gahan] were the main instigators of this open and fluid sound. This more performance–based style of working threw its own spanner in the works which some of us found hard to come to terms with." This desire to make a rock record led to creative differences within the band, Wilder, Flood and Mark "Spike" Stent completed the final album mix at Olympic Studios in December 1992. When asked by the Depeche Mode fan club magazine Bong in early 1992 about whether or not he saw himself still with the band in ten years, he said no.
Equipment
To record the album, the band used the "latest model" of Akai stereo samplers as well as a S1100 sampler alongside a Mini Moog, ARP 2600, Oberheim Electronics synthesisers, and the Roland 700. They tried to avoid using more modern equipment like the Yamaha DX7, preferring the sound of older models for the album.
The band avoided using any drum machines, instead preferring to sample live drums and loop them back for the songs. Gore and Gahan disagree on whose idea it was to have Wilder play drums live, both claim it was their idea and that the other approved. Additionally, Wilder said that for the album, the band switched to running Steinberg Cubase on a computer, which allowed them to assemble some of the tracks digitally.
Guitar parts were typically processed through devices such as Leslie tone cabinets, originally designed for organs, to achieve different sounds. sex,
For the gospel-like Also in January, some radio stations in the US received illicit advanced copies of the album and played some of the tracks on air; a fan posted a copy of the album on the Internet service Prodigy, prompting a legal takedown. at a time when they posed merely a "conceptual thread to the record industry", according to Eric Harvey of Pitchfork, who noted that the songs existed as "MPEG Layer-2" files that would have each taken a lengthy time to download, adding "it probably felt like nothing short of magic [to fans] that they could get [the new Depeche Mode album] through an AOL connection."
On 16 January 1993, Fletcher married his long time girlfriend in London; Gore was his best man and guests included Wilder, Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet.
Tour
Work for the supporting began by Christmas 1992 when Wilder and Lyon started to assemble the backing tracks to be used on tour. During the tour, relationships between the band members continued to fray, leading to Fletcher pulling out of the tour completely, Gore having two seizures, and both Gahan and Gore were arrested on separate occasions for assault and a noise complaint, respectively. By the end of both legs of the tour, the band had visited twenty-seven countries and played to over two million people and 156 shows. After the tour completed, Wilder left his wife Jeri Young, whom he had married in 1991, for Sessa. Wilder also was not sure if he would stay in the band, saying later that "I took some time out after the tour [in late 1994] to be absolutely sure that I was thinking clearly. And I told myself that if I felt the same in six months' time or as with the last album, then I should stop."
Gahan and his wife Conroy returned to London for a few months, during which time his heroin habit got even more "completely out of hand." Said Gahan later, "the bottom line is, I didn't want to get clean [at the time]." Around September, the couple moved back to Los Angeles and continued to party and use drugs. In LA, Gahan had reached a point where he withdrew to the point where he "had a closet under the stairs. That was plenty enough room. I was in there with my candle and my spoon, and that was it." On one of the rare occasions that Gahan did leave the house, he ran into Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who was so alarmed at Gahan's appearance that he called their mutual friend Corbijn to try and get him help. In late 1994 Gahan was caught by his mother with his drug paraphernalia out while he had his young son over for a visit. Confessing to his mother that he was an addict, he went into rehab around Christmas 1994, but continued to use drugs and went in and out of rehab through the first half of 1995. In early 1995, when he told Conroy that he was trying to get clean, she refused to stop using drugs, and left him. As a result, Gahan slid further into his addiction, saying "when Teresa [Conroy] left I was then given the excuse to go out and get even more fucked up. I was hell-bent on going the whole hog. My wife had left me, my friends were disappearing, so I was surrounded by a bunch of junkies. I knew exactly what was going on. I had money, I had drugs and that was why they were around me. It fueled my anger even more."
Wilder's departure
By early 1995, Wilder had come to a decision to leave the band. Citing frustration with the band, the process of creating the album, and unequal workload, Wilder reached out to Gore, Fletcher and Gahan to let them know his decision. He met with Gore and Fletcher in London to deliver the news in person. Of all the members, Wilder was closest to Gahan, but was unable to reach him due to Gahan's addiction. After trying to reach him over the phone, in the end he could only send a fax to Gahan saying roughly "Look, I've tried to call you, Dave. I can't get a hold of you. I've just had a meeting with the others to say I've left the group. Good luck." The official announcement to the press and fans was made on 1 June 1995, in a statement by Wilder that said,
Gore later said,
Miller understood Wilder's decision, saying "I've always thought [Wilder] was underrated by the others. Or rather, Dave valued what he did. Fletch played down what he did and Martin was just off in his world and really didn't think about it. It wasn't just the musical element. Alan was the one who took the trouble to check things and listen to the cuts. He looked at the artwork, and so on. He took a lot of interest in all the aspects of [the band and its business]."
Gahan's suicide attempt
On 17 August 1995, Gahan checked out of another stint of rehab and returned to his Los Angeles home to find it ransacked. Gahan called it an "inside job", since the thieves had turned off his home alarm and even changed the code. Among the items stolen from his house were tapes of songs that Gahan had been trying to record. At this point, Gahan returned to one of his fellow drug users, "got loaded and drank a lot of wine, and took a handful of pills", called his mother, and then slit his wrists. His friend called 911 and paramedics were able to save Gahan, but the story made it to the press and Gahan was checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for a few days. Gahan returned to using drugs shortly after his suicide attempt.
In October 1995, Fletcher and Gore persuaded Gahan to join them in London for a six-week recording session to try and record new material. Although Gahan was still using heroin and barely able to participate, this marked the beginning of the sessions for their next album, Ultra (1997).
Reception
Songs of Faith and Devotion became Depeche Mode's first studio album to reach number one on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200. David Quantick praised it in NME as a "more obviously emotional and mature" work than the band's previous albums and concluded that "Depeche Mode are much too interesting to avoid now that they are grown up."
Calling the record "gloomy, pretentious and winning", Rolling Stone reviewer Arion Berger felt that Depeche Mode's strengths continued to lie in "style" rather than "concept", and thus commented that "wisely... the band forgoes new concepts and does its tinkering musically" instead. Entertainment Weeklys Bill Wyman was less enthused, summarising the album as "thinking-teen's pop" for "tortured suburban youth" while finding that Depeche Mode "don't really have much to say" and that "their computer-based soundscapes are too limited".
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Ned Raggett wrote that apart from Alan Wilder and Flood's "new sonic tricks", Songs of Faith and Devotion "sounds pretty much like a Depeche Mode album", yet "works incredibly well all the same" and "continues the Depeche Mode winning streak"; Uncut journalist Stephen Dalton called it a "widescreen experiment in soulful self-laceration" that "lifts the Mode to a higher musical level and defies the traumatic circumstances surrounding its conception."
Wilder stated he felt "In Your Room" and "Walking in My Shoes" to be some of the best works the band had ever done, a sentiment agreed upon by Flood, who commented that "many people" involved in the project shared such sentiments. Fellow musician Gary Numan also stated that Songs of Faith and Devotion was the album that saved his career, noting, "[after listening to this album] [my] music changed dramatically. It became much darker. At school I was excused from religious instruction because I had no faith and Songs of Faith and Devotion suddenly gave me something to write about and something to be bothered about. [...] I love Depeche Mode, always will." In 2001, Gahan called the album "one of my favourite albums of ours."
Depeche Mode
- Andrew Fletcher
- David Gahan
- Martin Gore
- Alan Wilder
Additional musicians
- Bazil Meade – additional vocals
- Hildia Campbell – additional vocals
- Samantha Smith – additional vocals
- Steáfán Hannigan – uilleann pipes
- Wil Malone – string arrangements, strings conducting
Technical
- Depeche Mode – production, mixing
- Flood – production, mixing
- Mark Stent – mixing
- Steve Lyon – engineering
- Chris Dickie – engineering
- Paul Kendall – engineering
- Jeremy Wheatley – engineering assistance
- Marc Einstmann – engineering assistance
- Shaun de Feo – engineering assistance
- Volke Schneider – engineering assistance
- Kevin Metcalfe – mastering
- Daryl Bamonte – album coordination
Artwork
- Anton Corbijn – visuals, art direction, sleeve design
- Area – sleeve design
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+ 1993 weekly chart performance for Songs of Faith and Devotion
! scope="col"| Chart (1993)
! scope="col"| Peak<br/>position
|-
|-
|-
! scope="row"| Belgian Albums (IFPI)
| 1
|-
|-
! scope="row"| Danish Albums (Hitlisten)
| 4
|-
|-
! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)
| 1
|-
! scope="row"| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)
| 1
|-
|-
! scope="row"| Greek Albums (IFPI)
| 4
|-
! scope="row"| Italian Albums (Musica e dischi)
| 6
|-
! scope="row"| Japanese Albums (Oricon)
| 31
|-
|-
|-
! scope="row"| Portuguese Albums (AFP)
| 1
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+ 2017 weekly chart performance for Songs of Faith and Devotion
! scope="col"| Chart (2017)
! scope="col"| Peak<br/>position
|-
|}
Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+ Year-end chart performance for Songs of Faith and Devotion
! scope="col"| Chart (1993)
! scope="col"| Position
|-
! scope="row"| Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)
| 21
|-
! scope="row"| Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)
| 34
|-
! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)
| 14
|-
! scope="row"| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)
| 19
|-
! scope="row"| Spanish Albums (AFYVE)
| 42
|-
! scope="row"| UK Albums (OCC)
| 56
|-
! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| 89
|}