Soulsavers: Dave Gahan Digs Deep for Collaboration, Reinvigorated for Next Depeche Mode Album

Dave Gahan didn't write Depeche Mode's best songs -- those irresistible '80s and '90s odes to strange love, tortured faith, shackling guilt and kinky sex -- but that's OK. He's probably lived them, and he's certainly the man to present them.

Like some kind of synth-pop Johnny Cash, Gahan has battled drug addiction, attempted suicide and survived a couple of serious illnesses. Come what may, "The Cat," as he's called, lands on his feet, ever ready to slick back his hair, throw on a black leather vest and sing bandmate Martin Gore's lyrics like a lounge lizard from hell.

With 2003's Paper Monsters, Gahan finally made the jump from mouthpiece to songwriter, and four years later, he returned with a second solo album, Hourglass. Now comes The Light the Dead See, a collaboration with the British duo Soulsavers, who opened for the Mode on their last stadium tour.

Working long distance, via email, Gahan put words and melodies to multi-instrumentalist Rich Machin's music, arriving at songs via a process he'd never tried before.

"I was never in a room with Rich, but there was something about it that, for me, was way more personal than the other two," Gahan tells Spinner from Los Angeles, where he and Gore are hard at work on Depeche Mode's next album.

"It was almost like I was writing with my shadow, or with my conscious, and struggling with trying to get the truth out of who this person was I'm trying to explain in the songs, the person I'm talking about," he adds. "Whatever that is, a love entity, something I feel is inside of me I haven't fully discovered yet, at first, it seemed to me was outside of myself. Very quickly, after four or five songs, I realized I was trying to discover something about myself and reveal it and notice it and write from that place."

In other words, you can take the man out of DM, but you can't take the DM out of the man. Thematically, The Light the Dead See follows in the grand tradition of Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion -- sensual, gospel-inspired Mode albums that spoke to Machin in his youth.


Machin says he and Gahan began writing together without any preliminary conversations or preconceived notions. If he and his Soulsavers partner, Ian Glover, were hoping for songs like "Presence of God," which sounds like something Gore would have written for Gahan back in the day, they certainly didn't ask for them.

"Without trying to guide somebody, you still have hopes and expectations of what they're going to come to the table with, and Dave not only met my expectations and hopes; he exceeded them," Machin says from his home in England. "I didn't feel like I had to guide him to that thing."

"I honestly wrote what came naturally into my head," Gahan says. "It's weird -- the gospel aspect of it really spoke to me somehow. I don't know if that was my upbringing, being forced to go to church. The only part I enjoyed about that, by the way, was singing. I enjoyed singing in the church. I always enjoyed performing, and the imagery as well. I liked all the icons and stuff like that. But most of the Catholicism basically terrified me, to be quite honest."

Gahan's boyhood musical education also included whatever records his stepfather, a saxophonist and clarinetist, played around the house. Looking back, he sees how some of those sounds might have affected the music he now finds himself listening to -- and making.

"I'd sit at the bottom of the stairs and listen to him, and he'd be playing jazz and big-band records," Gahan says. "So that big, lush sound I grew up listening to, and somehow I respond to it."

For Machin and Glover to produce the kinds of stately, somber backings heard on The Light the Dead See, they had to break with more minimal electronic style they'd favored on their past albums, two of which featured lead vocals from Mark Lanegan. The Light the Dead See is thick with with organ, acoustic guitar and strings -- instrumentation suited to, but not written expressly for, Gahan's earthy baritone.

"If I'm totally honest with people, it sounds like where I've always been going anyway," Machin says. "On each record, I hear the stuff I couldn't do on the last record. One of the main influences on me has always been [Italian composer Ennio] Moriccone-esque, big orchestral string sound. It's taken us to this point to really be able to realize that."

Ruminating over Machin's chord changes and guitar lines -- the basic ingredients he had to work with in his New York City home studio -- Gahan underook some serious soul-searching, contrasting the man he is with the man he wants to be.

"I'd like to be a better husband and a better father, but I know I fall short in lots of things," Gahan says, identifying one of the album's central themes. "Other people might say, 'You're too critical of yourself, but I know I can do better, and it bothers me. To be able to write about it and put it into melodies and songs was very liberating to me."

Machin and Gahan have continued writing together, and both say they'd like to see the partnership produce additional albums. Either way, the experience has affected the new music Depeche Mode is making, and as with the band's last two album, Playing the Angel (2005) and Sounds of the Universe (2009), the forthcoming set will feature material written by Gahan.

"It definitely freed me up to feel much more engaged in what I was trying to do with songs at this point in my life," Gahan says.

Gahan has even co-written one song with Gore, marking a first in Depeche Mode's 32-year history. At first, he didn't even realize it was happening, as Gore simply showed up in the studio with an unfinished piece he wanted to play everyone.

"He motioned toward me, 'What do you think?' and I was like, 'It's cool,'" Gahan recalls. "Ben [Hillier], who's producing the record, said, 'I think Martin was trying to see if you're interested in writing anything to that.'"

"I just let it absorb into me for a few days," Gahan says of the track, which he describes as more "abstract" and "electronic" -- and therefore more difficult to get a handle on -- than what he'd get from Machin. "I came up with something and recorded it, and Martin seemed very happy."

In addition to that work-in-progress, Depeche Mode has recorded about 15 songs for the next album, which Gahan says will be more "in your face" and less fussed over than Sounds of the Universe. Presumably, it'll be a reflection of both him and Gore -- two guys who, by Gahan's admission, aren't great friends but continue to pool their collective talents and beings into songs that resonate with the masses.

"It's strange, the relationship we have together," Gahan says. "I think Martin and I both realize it's beyond what we do individually, or even collectively, because it's become something that involves all the people that listen to the music."