Music / Hourglass

"So in your infinite wisdom, show me how this life should be."

Hourglass is the second solo studio album released by Dave Gahan, the frontman of English Alternative Dance band Depeche Mode. It was released on 22 October, 2007. The album takes on a more Industrial style compared to other material, with a dirty energy to boot. During the promotion of Playing the Angel, Dave Gahan was motivated to write some songs, and decided to collaborate with touring members Andrew Phillpott and Christian Eigner (Das Shadow) to create songs together. Dave had also created his personal website in coincidence with the creation of the album.

The first sign of the album was when "Kingdom" first released on the 8th of the same month, preceding the eventual release of the full album. The single reached a 44th UK Singles chart position, gaining traction for the album. The song was released with a music video, on Dave Gahan's website and YouTube channel.

Dave had previously collaborated with Andrew and Christian on Playing the Angel with "Suffer Well", "I Want It All" and "Nothing's Impossible", serving as co-writers, and in the following album, Sounds of the Universe, they also co-write "Hole to Feed", "Come Back", and "Miles Away/The Truth Is".

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Tracklist

1. "Saw Something" (5:14)
2. "Kingdom" (4:34)
3. "Deeper and Deeper" (4:34)
4. "21 Days" (4:35)
5. "Miracles" (4:38)
6. "Use You" (4:48)
7. "Insoluble" (4:57)
8. "Endless" (5:47)
9. "A Little Lie" (4:53)
10. "Down" (4:34)

I trope and I wait, and I trope... still wishing for a divine intervention, to trope me from my chair:

• Air Quotes: In written form, what is implied to be air quotes are included on Dave's handwritten title for "A Little Lie".
• Album Title Drop: In "Endless":
  Watching the hourglass
  On that night
• Alternative Dance: All the songs on the album are high-energy, electronic dance songs, with a dirty, raw, intrusive Alternative Rock twist, exaggerated and Played for Horror regarding the sound. "Miracles" and "Insoluble" not accounted for.
• Ambiguously Christian: The chorus of "Kingdom" refers to God in Christianity, but it's unknown if it's meant literally.
  "If there's a kingdom beyond it all, is there a God who loves us all?"
• Angst: As per the usual with Depeche Mode, there is a lot of angst in Hourglass, mostly resulting from Dave feeling his age.
• Ax-Crazy: Dave, the singer, sounds especially violent in his tone during "Deeper and Deeper" and "Use You". Compared to the other songs on Hourglass, where he sounds either neutral or heartfelt, he is motivated by violent tendencies during the aforementioned songs.
• Brutal Honesty: Of Dave himself, being an indie release when he felt the most in-tune with himself. Each song on Hourglass is notable not just for what is stated by the narrator, but how it's stated too, that being with an overwhelming sense of internal honesty, with there being songs about religion, lust, and death without any lyrical or musical filter.
• B-Side: "Tomorrow", the B-side of "Kingdom", and "Love Will Leave (Das Shadow's Rewerk)", the B-side of "Saw Something".
• Cabin Fever: The verses of "Use You" are majorly about the stress of being trapped somewhere with someone for an extended period of time. "It's killing me, to be in this room, I've gotta get out, I've gotta get out soon. Hurting you, with everything I do, it's too long, too long in this place."
• Central Theme: The album's general theme is how to savor the individual aspects of life.
• Color Motif: Primarily black/dark grey or silver/white with the burning gold of the hourglass symbol. This gets inverted as white with a red hourglass due to negative colors.
• Continuity Cameo: In a right pan shot upwards to the house in the music video for "Kingdom", Mr. Feathers from Playing the Angel, the album prior to Hourglass, briefly appears in the window, looking down at the viewer.
• Cool Shades: Dave wears double-bridge sunglasses as an accessory motif, donning them on the album's front cover and various pictures in the lyric booklet, as well as the back cover. Christian Eigner also wears a pair in one of the booklet pictures.
• Darker and Edgier: The album as a whole is notable for its darker style, overwhelming with despair and sadness, as well as some degree of loathing in the sound. There's a lot of distortion, but also a lot of energy in the sound. The album particularly stands out amongst other Depeche Mode-related works due to its distinctive darkness.
• Deadly Euphemism: The chorus of "Down", the last song, refers to the narrator presumably dying of old age, alone in the snow of winter, as evidenced by mentions of "feeling old" in the pre-chorus, and "ending up on the ground by morning".
• Death Song: Fitting the theme of Dave's seniority angst at his 40s by the time of making the album, "Down" is seemingly about the idea of slowly dying while in someone else's care, and it's a very melancholic song for sure.
• Downer Ending: "Down", the final song on the album's main songs, takes any sense of the melancholy from the opening song, "Saw Something", and makes it cut even deeper than the aforementioned ever could.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: For the album as a whole, "Saw Something" features a minute of inquisitive, dancing synths, playing a catchy, sonic tune.
• Epic Rocking: The longest song on the album is "Endless", clocking in at 5:47.
• Eternal Love: "Endless" appears to discuss the concept, as the protagonist refers to himself and his lover being "endless", as the title suggests.
• Excellent Judge of Character: The antagonist referred to by the narrator in the story of "21 Days" apparently "reads all his victims like a book."
• Face on the Cover: Dave is depicted on the cover for the album as a whole, though his actual face is blocked out by a stain, as well as the European release for "Kingdom" (which is the same image as the album cover with different text and imagery), and his face is blended into the cover for the single release of "Saw Something".
• Fading into the Next Song: The echo at the end of "21 Days" fades into the synths at the beginning of "Miracles", and the echo at the end of "Insoluble" fades into the white noise at the beginning of "Endless".
• Fake Loud: The chorus of "Use You". With all the shouting and deep cutting of the bass sound, the chorus dynamics are actually rather light, with somewhat-soothing sound design.
• Feigning Intelligence: "I'm still pretending I'm not a fool." Though there are many negatives, the overall meaning is to continually feign intelligence, or, in his words, "pretend one isn't a fool." To make it less confusing, to pretend one is a fool is Obfuscating Stupidity, which the line doesn't refer to.
• Handwriting as Characterization: All of the text (besides the copyright markers) is handwritten by Dave Gahan himself, including the lyrics, with the lyric booklet itself containing the lyric sheets he wrote on. The amount of revisions alongside his very concise method of writing lyrics demonstrates his level of precision in arranging songs, and his aggressive handwriting style shows his cynical side.
• Harsh Vocals: Dave takes this trope to a great extreme, making his vocals sound as angry and harsh as possible, with audible growling.
• Hotter and Sexier: Somehow manages to be a mashup of this and Darker and Edgier, but Dave clearly did not hold back on trying to make Hourglass sound as smooth and intimate as possible. It even rivals Depeche Mode's other albums in how far it goes, especially with "Deeper and Deeper", which is the most straightforward Dave has arguably ever been about lust in his career.
• "I Hate" Song: "Use You". Though not specific, it's a general expression of hatred for others.
• Intercourse with You: The third song, "Deeper and Deeper", revolves around Dave's intense lust for someone. He wants this person no matter what it takes, and wants them by his side at all times, in order to do questionable things with them, no matter the partner's desires. This is especially shown in a lyric like "You can't tell me, that you don't want it, you know that I like it when you put up a fight."
• Last Note Nightmare:
  • "Kingdom" ends with an audio loop of the screeching of electric guitar feedback.
  • "Use You" ends with an isolated "robotic" synth melody, abruptly following the madness of the song's final section, before the song cuts out entirely.
• Lighter and Softer: Though the angst is strong on Hourglass, it's most certainly a downgrade from Playing the Angel before it, especially in its more soothing and emotionally-driven sound design.
• Love Hurts: "Love Will Leave", pretty much the entire song is about love being a disappointing pursuit full of lies and betrayal.
• Madness Mantra: Besides "Kingdom" and "Miracles", which are arranged differently, each song includes a certain phrase that is repeated almost ad nauseum by Dave:
  • "Saw Something": "I saw something in your eyes, maybe I saw it, I wanted it for myself."
  • "Deeper and Deeper": "I want to love you, I want your love."
  • "21 Days": "Building a tower of fear by the river, building it up, build it up."
  • "Use You": "We have each other, you are my brother, sitting here beside of you, I just want to use you."
  • "Insoluble": "You have nothing to fear."/"My angel."
  • "Endless": "Now I am still forever, endless, your body is endless."
  • "A Little Lie": "Calm down people, it's just a little lie, you know it doesn't mean nothing and I realize you could be right."
  • "Down": "Down on the ground..."
  • Regarding B-sides, "Tomorrow" features "One last kiss, one last time, tomorrow will come."
• Manipulative Bastard: What the protagonist in "Use You" admits to being, repeatedly.
• Metal Scream: Dave does one before the instrumental bridge of "Deeper and Deeper" and at the very beginning of the second chorus of "Use You".
• Misspelling Out Loud: "Disappear" is misspelled as "dissapear" on the album's lyric booklet, which also features the lyrics handwritten by Dave himself, not just transcribed. The two songs that feature this error in plain sight are "21 Days" and "Endless".
• Mondegreen:
  • "Kingdom": "If there's a kingdom beyond it all, is there a God who loves you so?"^explanation The true line is "loves us all", but the enunciation causes it to sound like "you so". "Us all" is meant to refer to all of humanity, while "you so" refers to the listener.
  • "Use You": "I'm staring at my cuticles."^explanation The true line is "tearing". "Staring" implies to merely be staring at one's cuticles (part of the nails) for no particular reason. "Tearing", however, implies a self-destructive insanity, as if to physically tear at one's cuticles out of blind desperation and uncertainty.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Going from the allegedly religious and incredibly spiritual "Kingdom" to the aggressively sexual and lustful "Deeper and Deeper".
  • Similarly, going from the soft and serene "Miracles" to the aggressive and ranting "Use You".
• Nervous Wreck: The protagonist in "Use You" is definitely stressed out.
• One-Word Title: Hourglass, "Kingdom", "Miracles", "Insoluble", "Endless", and "Down".
• Phrase Salad Lyrics: In particular...
  • "Miracles": "I don't believe in miracles, and they happen every day. I don't believe in Jesus, but I'm praying anyway."
  • "Use You": "We have each other, you are my brother, sitting here beside of you, I just wanna use you."
  • "A Little Lie": "Calm down people, it's just a little lie, you know it doesn't mean nothing and I realize you could be right."
• Please, Don't Leave Me: "Tomorrow", the B-side of "Kingdom". The song is about the narrator's desperation for their love interest to stay with them. The chorus' lyrics consist of the phrase "one last kiss, one last time, all too soon."
• Power Ballad: "Saw Something", a notably sad, wistful song with an energetic rock beat to back it up.
• Rage Against the Mentor: The second verse of "Kingdom" appears to be about the narrator believing that whoever is teaching them about life is faking said wisdom.
  So in your infinite wisdom
  Show me how this life should be
  All your love and glory
  Doesn't mean that much to me
• Remix Album: Hourglass Remixes, released in 2008.
• Small Start, Big Finish: "Saw Something" and "Endless". The two songs have a softer introduction, before the middle point introduces a dramatic, emotional atmosphere. Though a more downplayed form, "Use You" can also count, as the song gets far more intense following the repeat in the second chorus for the climax.
• Sssssnake Talk: Any time Dave pronounces an "s" in any song on here, expect him to exaggerate it.
• Special Guest: John Frusciante from Red Hot Chili Peppers plays the guitar solo on "Saw Something".
• Suddenly Shouting: "Use You" is this in song form. Surprisingly, it's the only song on the album that does sound like Dave is truly shouting out about his agony from within, while the others that surround it sound more melancholic or lustful.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: "Miracles", involving absolutely no harsh sounds whatsoever, and Dave singing lightly and carefully. "Insoluble" is not the same, however, due to the extremely haunting sounds.
• Surreal Music Video: The music video for "Kingdom" is... quite the trip. To sum up what it is, flashing lights in an urban city environment as Dave walks into a "door to heaven" with a light in his mouth. Yep.
• Title Drop: The title appears at the beginning of the second verse of "Endless", as to reference the time measurement tool itself metaphorically.
• Uncommon Time: "Use You" has a 3/4 time signature than 4/4.

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