LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, OLIMPISKI, MOSCOW, 25 FEBRUARY 2018

Hot on the heels of her Vilnius review, Polina Lipezina returns to give us her take on the last show of the third leg of the Global Spirit Tour - the show at Olimpiski, Moscow on 25 February. Thanks very much for this great review Polina and for the photos too. An excellent way to finish off the third leg of the tour

At first, it seemed that it would be awesome to write about the last concert of the European tour. About the concert though, I realised I am going to have a break from Depeche Mode for several months… No, guys, that’s not cool. After pondering this fact for 15 minutes long, I didn’t have a clue where to even start. 

I will probably begin with words of gratitude to the organizers. All of us, who have been at least once to the Olimpiysky Stadium knows what kind of hell goes on there! Seriously, always, with any concert! This time the organizers managed to launch the concert well. Yes, it wasn’t perfect and there is still room for improvement, but this small victory of common sense has planted a seed of hope for the future shows… I really hope that it will only get better later! 

As for the concert, it was somewhat strange itself. I feared I would be torn apart by emotions, as this time there would be no concert two days later where I could see the guys again, just as it had been during the past two weeks. But nothing of this kind happened. Yes, after Precious I had a little meltdown, but then I got myself together and tried to remember every second of the event, what I obviously didn’t do. How do people remember the concerts anyway? It’s impossible! 

Compared to the my previous concerts (Saint-Petersburg, Vilnius, Riga, Minsk, Helsinki), the Moscow crowd seemed like one of the best singing crowds. Maybe it was also the matter of the fact that we were one of the biggest crowds of the winter tour? 

The warmup pleased me again, I even regretted that I won’t hear Black Line again. But what can we do is wait to see in four years what Martin, Dave and Andy will prepare for a warmup… 

From the very start of the concert, or more precisely first 5 minutes before its started, we all waited for the photographers, as usual. What shocked me – there were only three of them! This is very weird, I have personal explanations to this, but I don’t want to spread rumors. But that was cool as during the first three songs you can finally wave your hands as much as you please, without any fear of knocking a photographer off :) 

It is one of those many concerts (probably starting with November) when on seeing Dave on stage in the distance I am bothered by only one question: what colour outfit does he have on and, in particular, what colour are the shoes? Some weird female stuff. In winter I was actually bothered by another question: where are his red shoes?! In the end, in Moscow, as in many other towns, I wasn’t lucky enough to see a red costume, but Dave wowed everyone with gold. 

Overall, nothing could disturb a smooth almost familiar concert, apart from those times when Dave’s microphone was far too quiet. Thankfully that was fixed pretty quickly. 

As for unusual things I could probably point out that Dave specifically called this concert “(t)he last.” I have no clue what he meant by that, but prior Cover Me he said the following: “This is our last show tonight, just for a little while. So hope you are all enjoying yourselves”. I hope he was only referring to the show being the last Moscow one on this tour. 

At the exit of the catwalk there was a surprise for Dave: there was a really large distance in Moscow between the catwalk and the barrier. So, with all the effort it was really difficult to reach out for Dave, barely with the fingertips. I cannot remember in any winter show distance that long. 

At the end right after Home when Dave presented the entire band, he said, that Moscow was the best of all! 

I also noticed that Dave was grimacing a lot towards Martin. The reason for this, as I understood after the bow, was a duo sitting offstage, Douglas McCarthy and Bon Harris (musicians from Black Line), to whom Dave rushed to give hugs. I think it was cute. I liked them as well, I’d hug them too, if I could! 

“See you some other place, some other time, thanks so much, goodnight!”– David told us as a goodbye. As for us, we will just say: See you next time!

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Thank you Polina!

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, SIEMENS ARENA, VILNIUS, 22 FEBRUARY 2018

Not that Depeche Mode fans are odd people or anything, but, like me, I'm sure you'll be delighted to see that this is Part 101 of the Global Spirit Tour Project. For this auspicious occasion, Polina Lipezina returns for part 1 of her 2 part end of third leg reviews. As you may recall, Polina reviewed St Petersburg in July  and, as well as Vilnius, she'll be reviewing the Moscow show for us too. Thanks very much for this and the pictures Polina and congratulations on being Part 101!

After the concert in Saint Petersburg, which to me was an exceptional one (not the best, but special) there was also Riga. It was exceptional in its way, too, since it was the first tour during which I was celebrating my birthday on the go. Very interesting experience. And here comes Vilnius - the penultimate concert of the European leg and my 16th concert of this tour. Honestly, I expected very little from Vilnius from the very beginning. But every concert is something unusual and new. And so I, as usual, am writing about my emotions. :)

The special songs of this concert for me were Going Backwards and, as is traditional, Personal Jesus. But we will talk about it later.

As usual in the frosty morning we stood outside the Siemens Arena in expectation. As with Riga, this concert was the first to Vilnius on the tour and I had an early entry ticket. In Riga the early tickets' organisation left me with a positive impression. What’s going to happen in Vilnius? 

I will tell you for sure, that if you didn’t enjoy standing in the queues in summer, you definitely haven’t stood there at -15 degrees! It’s horrible! It’s hard! It’s exhausting! Is Depeche Mode worth it? Absolutely!

Having suffered in the cold, at 17.30 we entered the arena. As part of the early entry merchandise specials, we received a tourbook, a silicone bracelet and a familiar laminate all packaged into a cellophane. Probably selling leftovers?

It was however great to be out of the cold!

To sum up, the entrance to the arena was a little worse than in Riga, but not bad overall. For the first time it was pretty decent.

However, enough about small details… Warmup! Yes, I like this warmup! Douglas –  straight from the Dave Dancing School! It seems the closer the tour gets to the last Black Line performance in Moscow, the more he digs it!

Before I begin my description of the most important concert, I really need to point out that in the winter part of the tour I  wanted to see a lot of Dave on stage… Sorry guys, I just can’t help it! :)

So what so special happened in Vilnius? Going Backwards –  it felt like my song for the first time, thank you Dave that you sang it for me. By the way, don't you just love those emotions you feel when Dave notices you amongst the others? I do. It was amusing. During the whole Delta Machine tour I wanted to get a high-five, but because of the short arms I couldn’t reach out… But at one of the concerts he reached out personally to me. Anything can happen, you just need to believe. :)

Alright, let’s go back to Vilnius.

The main specialty of the concert was Barrel Of A Gun. It was the first time I saw Dave so angry… One time he stood up on the stage, crossed his arms behind the back, seemingly looking ahead of him, but he was looking at one of the photographers and then his loud “Fuck you!” boomed across with a gesture saying “get the hell out of here”. Incredible! Was it real? But then, literally a minute after Dave stepped over the loudspeakers that were right in front of him and waved at the same photographer. If only you could see that! At the very end he moved angrily something on stage with his foot… I don’t know what it was, but it looked just as frightening as it was interesting. You can see it here:

However, it went on just fine: Dave was smiling, was doing his dance moves and was the same usual Dave who we all are used to.

In Riga Dave couldn’t sing Personal Jesus without making mistakes. But in Vilnius it was splendid.

Regarding the audience, I had a feeling that people could  bea little bit louder. Then again, I myself acted pretty lazily the entire concert, for some reason I only wanted to watch the show. It’s hard to say what the reason was. Maybe Dave’s mood affected that? During A Question Of Time when we need to sing along, Dave was extending his hand with the microphone to the audience, and waited, listened, in the end he gave up, implying that we sang really poorly… And I pretty much agree with him.

I can’t say that I didn’t like the concert, but it was lacking some fire, dear Lithuanians. But I suppose, next time it will be great. :)

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Thanks Polina

LIVE REVIEW: DEPECHE MODE, SKK, ST PETERSBURG, 13 JULY 2017

After a quick post festival break, Depeche Mode returned to live action at St Petersburg's SKK in front of a capacity sold out crowd of 25,000. Polina Lipezina was there and she wrote this great review for The Global Spirit Tour Project. Thanks very much to Polina for this and thanks as ever to Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group for letting me run riot with their hard work.

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos And Videos Facebook Group

It seems like there is more emotion than a detailed concert description down here! It’s a pretty strange contradiction: I don’t really like St Petersburg much, but the opposite is true when it comes to the concerts in this city. On the Delta Machine tour my favourite concert ended up right in this place. This Thursday, July 13th, it was really warm in St Petersburg and that was great news for all of us who came to the concert early in the morning. We were relaxing on the grass, talking about everything in the world, sometimes connecting things to what we all came for: Depeche Mode. Despite having early entrance tickets, we ended up really exhausted due to the slow and horrible delays getting into the venue. Eventually, we finally entered the concert hall, to be greeted by quite a surprise. Having entered an indoor area, no one would ever imagine that you might need an umbrella and raincoats… this time they were a must! The rain, that had started outside, had soaked through the roof into the concert hall 30 minutes after the crowd was let inside. The roof was leaking! It was embarrassing and it was scary because it could have caused the concert to be cancelled. I hope with their future tours Depeche Mode will never use this horrendous concert hall! I doubt there will be any repairs or changes done to it anyway. But let us return to the main part happening inside this piece of Soviet architecture…

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

After a wait of approximately 1 and a half hours after the crowd was let in, Maya Jane Coles walked onto the stage, playing on this tour for the first time. During the concert in this venue on the Delta Machine tour, the crowd kept shouting out “Depeche Mode!” during the warm-up, which was pretty disrespectful towards the warm-up band. This evening, they were better behaved. Maya was radiating with light and love towards everything she does. Whatever she did made you close your eyes and dissolve in sounds. In some moments, I caught myself thinking that I didn’t want it to end. On this tour I heard all the warm-up bands, except for Horrors, fell in love with Algiers, but Maya… I cannot state as a fact that Maya was better than Algiers, they are all different and cool, but on July the 13th she gave us 40 minutes of awesomeness.

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

Despite that, later on we had a much bigger thing to come. I know that for some people the centre of attraction is Martin. They cannot take their eyes off him for two hours straight, following his guitar swapping and his keyboard playing for the whole show.  For me though,  the hero, this center of attraction, unsurprisingly, is Dave. But St Petersburg has changed everything this time. This is the first concert where I saw not only Dave on stage, and this is surprising. It’s surprising for myself. I was standing right across from Martin and he looked incredible. Everything he was doing was with great love (yes, that’s a revelation to me). David was amazing of course. He was obviously in high spirits, I’ve never seen him smile so much!. But I have to point out that there were less pole dances and other wigglings… There was a tape on Dave’s lower back… Please get well! 

Courtesy of Depeche Mode Classic Photos & Videos Facebook Group

From the point where I was standing, I could also see Jez’s work, who diligently tuned guitars and additionally swapped them for Martin. At one point,  Kessler and then Jennifer showed up. Sometimes it’s really interesting to look inside the little corner of the band’s world, even though you’re just standing in a fan zone. The Setlist didn’t bring any surprises (could there be any on the final 6 tour concerts?), but is anyone upset by that? There were a couple of moments I’d like to point out. First was Dave’s catwalk scene during Everything Counts  where he was tapping with his foot to the rhythm of the drums, just like in Just Can't Get Enough on the previous tour. Has it happened even before this time? Sccondly,  in the fan zone there was a girl who that night came to Depeche Mode concert for the first time. She said, it was long awaited dream - during Going Backwards she was standing full of tears… Dreams do come true.


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Thank you very much Polina.