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when lobbying was a good idea, and why
it still exists – and is accepted – I don’t
understand, because it’s just so corrupt
and so… so wrong. It must happen in other
parts of the world, but nowhere near the
extent that it does here.”
Even the most sonically-uplifting Spirit
number, “Scum,” calls an unspecified
antagonist on the carpet for being ‘hollow,
shallow, and dead inside.’ Could it be a
Wall Street hedge fund manager who
bilked the middle class out of millions then
walked away, scot free? Gore snickers.
“That song is far more powerful if I don’t
tell you who my ‘scum’ is,” he elaborates.
“Because if I say, ‘It’s this person,’ then it
kind of detracts from it, because when a
listener hears a song, they put their own
imagination to work on it, and then it
becomes far more powerful.” But in the
“Black
Celebration”-ish
thrummer
think, and maybe somehow rediscover
that sense of spirit that we once had, but
now seem to have lost.” Mention that
DEVO predicted this – humanity’s atavis-
tic de-evolution – four decades ago, and he
laughs softly, almost to himself.
Everyone’s obsession with their personal
device is not only a mass distraction, he
believes, but an omen of some kind of
impending Apocalypse. “With all of our
technological advances and the way we’re
using them, it’s, uh, not turning out so well
for humankind,” he says. “The only thing
that’s headed in the right direction at the
moment is medicine. We are getting break-
throughs in medicine, although if we end
up in some nuclear holocaust, the medi-
cine’s not going to help us as much. So I
think that if we don’t destroy ourselves,
we could get to a point where we’re actual-
ly able to live for a lot longer.” He pauses
photo by Michelle Greco
“Poorman,” (“Hey, there’s no news/
Poorman’s still has got the blues/ He’s
walking around in worn-out shoes/ With
nothing to lose,” Gahan murmurs in his
classic catacomb-cryptic croon), he
demands more accountability. “Again, I
think the [financial] system is completely
screwed and flawed,” Gore says. “People
should have gone to jail, but instead
they’re getting called into the White
House. And the song “Fail” is kind of the
synopsis of the whole album, really.” As a
species – mistakenly thinking it’s the enti-
tled end product of evolution, “we’re not
doing a very good job. We need to start
finding the path again.”
Hence the ethereal album title, Gore
adds. Some naysayers might describe the
record as unequivocally pessimistic, but he
respectfully disagrees – pay close attention
to what Gahan is singing, and you might
fidget uneasily in your seat. “But Spirit is
quite realistic – I’m being realistic about
what’s going on at the moment, and kind
of pointing things out. And by naming it
Spirit, I’m hoping that it gets people to
26 illinoisentertainer.com august 2017
to let out a protracted sigh. “But I don’t
know what that would actually do for our
species, either.”
Fletcher is more optimistic. From an
almost scholarly distance, he analyzes
England’s recent Brexit snafu, wherein
non-London outliers were roiled into
enough of a xenophobic frenzy, they essen-
tially voted against their own self-interest
to leave the European Union. “The crazy
thing is, it was all the villages across
Britain – who don’t have any migrants –
who voted for Brexit,” he says. “And the
fact is, it was a 50/50 vote, and I think any
major constitutional change should be
more like 60/40, or even 70/30, not 50/50.
But I’m not that doom-y about all this stuff.
You get stages where things like this hap-
pen, so I don’t think the world is any clos-
er to coming to an end.” He has hope,
then? “I do, really,” he replies. I mean,
what wi