Sylvain Chauveau’s acoustic tribute to Depeche Mode starts off well but soon plummets into a chasm of middle of the road yawns. Down to the Bone is less of a tribute and more of an insult.
DSA
While Depeche Mode may not be the most diverse band in terms of melodies, it is still easy to recognize a song the second it starts. Chauveau has stripped (pun partially intended) all the songs here of their character leaving only a bland mess. I applaud his intentions of taking one of the distinctive parts of Depeche Mode (the electronics) and covering the songs without it but his execution is flawed. It sounds like he learned to play one Depeche Mode song and instead of learning the music to other songs, he just plays the same bit of piano and sings the lyrics over it.
Ensemble Nocturne do pretty much the same thing but with different instruments. The opening track “Stripped” at first seems like a nice piano-led cover of the song. However in the context of the album it is lost as every track sounds the same. There is no song on Down to the Bone that I felt was distinctive or that sounded anything more than a musician with too much time on his hands.
Another thing that annoyed me about Chauveau was his singing. He seems to be just aping Dave Gahan in a particularly unpleasant way. Gahan may be dreary and interesting but Chauveau is dreary and dull. There seems to be no love or passion for the original material in his delivery. If I liked an artist enough to record an entire album of their songs I would hope I sounded a little more enthused with the work. Chauveau has less life in him than Gahan did during his overdose. The most prominent example of this is on “Enjoy the Silence” where Chauveau sounds like he’s enjoying the silence from a coma.
Down to the Bone was probably meant to be an attempt to make Depeche Mode sound more human and natural. The problem is Depeche Mode already sound human and natural. All Chauveau has done is make a record that is incredibly dull. It is far from a tribute, it takes an incredible amount of misspent energy to turn music by a band as catchy as Depeche Mode into such drivel.
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