Sunday night I went to see the masters at work - Depeche Mode, live at the newly refurbished and rotated Wembley Arena. I’ve seen Depeche Mode live a whole bunch of times now - and so I always have very high expectations of their shows. This one did not disappoint in any way.

We arrived quite early - to find the Wembley Arena has been rotated through 180 degrees - so we went for a long walk around the venus to find the main foyer entrance - huge queues everywhere, it was clearly sold out. Support act was The Bravery, who I really like…so I was a little disappointed that they seemed to suffer from poor sound. Their short set seemed to get better as it went on - Honest Mistake seemed to get lost in the huge space, but ‘Public Service Announcement’ went off well and seemed to galvanise the crowd a little.

Then a short break (with a pre-recorded DJ Set from Martin Gore - if anyone can get a copy of this - I’d love it, it was brilliant) whilst the stage was reset - and almost bang on 9pm, a typical low bass rumble filled the arena as Depeche Mode came on stage. Its difficult to review every track, but I think this was the set list:

Intro
A Pain That I’m Used To
John The Revelator
A Question Of Time - real crowdpleaser - rocked it
Policy Of Truth
Precious
Walking In My Shoes
Suffer Well
Home
I Want It All
The Sinner In Me
I Feel You
Behind The Wheel
World In My Eyes
Personal Jesus
Enjoy The Silence
Leave In Silence - superb acoustic Martin Gore sung
Just Can’t Get Enough - a bit weedy, but nice to hear
Everything Counts
Never Let Me Down Again - brilliant
Goodnight Lovers - superb ending duet

They truly are the live masters, a drummer that hit the drums harder than anyone I ever heard, great guitars from Martin Gore, great singing and stage presence from Dave Gahan, good sound, and superb visuals. The highlight for me was the ‘robot’ head which just had one or two words in its mouth the whole time…’lament, regret, ambivalent, symbiosis’ - all giving visual cues to the songs.

Brilliant live experience - one of the best I ever seen.

Some photos here
Some video (!) here