Depeche Mode: Speak & Spell [LEGACY RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

This remastered reissue comes in a gatefold jacket. Speak & Spell reached No. 10 in the UK, and "Just Can't Get Enough" has been a synth-pop staple ever since.

This edition

• Remastered
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Depeche Mode started out as four lads from Basildon who carried their synthesizers to gigs under their arms, which was rather the point. Vince Clarke liked that a keyboard didn't need its own amp, so the band went all-electronic, recruited Dave Gahan as frontman and landed a residency at a club in Essex. Daniel Miller signed them to his Mute label, and Speak & Spell followed in October 1981.

Clarke wrote most of the album, and his gift for bright, bouncing hooks is everywhere. "New Life" climbed to No. 11 and got the band onto Top Of The Pops, "Dreaming Of Me" was their first single, and "Just Can't Get Enough" is pure, giddy pop. Martin Gore chips in with "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and the instrumental "Big Muff," early hints of the darker band to come.

It was Clarke's one album with the group before he went off to form Yazoo, and Gore took over the songwriting from there. The rest, as they say, is several stadiums' worth of history.

Also at Kops: more Depeche Mode on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Mute / Columbia (cat# 19802887691), a reissue of the 1981 album.