It won't be long until you do exactly what they want you to

Continuing my trip back through the 1986 album charts

23/03/86 : Black Celebration - Depeche Mode 

Our third visit with the boys from Basildon - I don't believe I've ever listened to this, so it'll be interesting so see where they are in their evolutionary timeline.

Well, they were certainly at an interesting stage - but I'm not sure I can describe it any better than that! There's all sorts on here with some great percussion and keyboard work - it doesn't all quite hit for me, but as a whole the album is an interesting listen which I enjoyed, with "A Question Of Time", "A Question Of Lust" and the title track being my favourites.

We're at #4 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of an eight week run - it feels like it deserved better than that. The rest of the top five were Hits 4 (a new entry starting a four week run at #1), Dire Straits, Whitney Houston and Hits For Lovers (which spent fourteen weeks in the chart, so there's really no justice for Depeche Mode) and the next highest new entry was Street Sounds Hip-Hop Electro 11, which I will not be searching out.

Wikipedia tells us this is their fifth album and has a load in there about the the recording process which I read a couple of times and didn't really understand! The critics were amusingly mixed on the album at the time, with them either loving it or hating it but it's generally admired now with the benefit of hindsight. Commercially it did well across Europe, getting to #2 in Germany and #1 in Switzerland but only made #90 in the US - they were a couple of albums away from hitting the big time over there.

"Customers also listened to" Erasure, Talk Talk, New Order and The Cure - some fine 80s bands there. Eventually though, Depeche Mode outshone them all - it wasn't clear that was going to be the case at the time of this album, but I enjoyed it and feel it would improve with multiple listens.

16/03/86 - A fun revisit
30/03/86 - Better than I was expecting