Sublime Strangelove
A Depeche Mode tribute band branches out on their own
Strangelove: The Depeche Mode Experience are very likely the most popular tribute band in the world.
They are continuously selling out shows across multiple continents and amassing more than 150,000 followers on Facebook and other social media.
As their name implies, they meticulously recreate Depeche Mode concerts down to the last detail, focusing on that group’s late ’80s/early ’90s heyday with hits such as “Enjoy the Silence,” “Policy of Truth,” “Personal Jesus” and dozens more.
But Strangelove are also a formidable band in their own right, as they prove with their first studio album, Rendition (released in mid-March via Harmony Records). On it, they offer up nine reinterpretations of Depeche Mode songs — from the well-known (“Shake the Disease”; “A Question of Lust”) to much deeper cuts. They also include their own exceptional original song, “Sublime,” along with two remixes of that track.
“We didn’t want to mirror what we do in the live context, which is to try to sonically and visually emulate Depeche Mode as closely as possible, and so the recorded versions are all, in some way, different,” says Brent Meyer, during a recent video call. In his role emulating Depeche Mode member Martin Gore, Meyer plays keyboards and guitar, and also does backing vocals (and occasional lead vocals).
Meyer is also the band’s de facto leader and musical director, and he is pleased that, nearly twenty years after founding Strangelove, the band is taking this bold new direction — especially because it is, he says, something that is basically without precedent.
“The closest thing that has happened historically to this is Steel Panther, which started out as essentially a genre tribute, a cover band to the entire hair metal scene, [who] started adding originals in,” Meyer says. “Their first proper album was all originals, [but] very firmly tongue in cheek. What we are doing is a bit different because we’re dipping the toe in with originals, and a lot of renditions of Depeche Mode songs.”
Strangelove first recorded together in 2020, creating an acoustic version of the Depeche Mode song “Shake the Disease.” For it, they posted a montage video of each member in his home, and the instrumentation included acoustic guitar and piano. They soon followed this with another video for the DM song “Useless,” this time with a heavier rock approach. Both were meant appease the thousands of fans who had bought tickets to their shows that had been cancelled due to the pandemic.
VIDEO: Depeche Mode’s “Shake the Disease” by Strangelove
But, according to Julian Shah-Tayler, the keyboardist who emulates Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder, this was also intended to quell the naysayers who question if they are actually “real” musicians. “I was like, ‘We’ll do something acoustic, just to prove to everybody that we can do that, because being in an electronic tribute band, the obvious criticism that we face is, ‘Well you’re not really playing, it’s all on [pre-recorded] tracks.’ And Brent and I, along with Leo [Luganskiy, lead vocalist], have been longstanding session musicians for a long, long time on multiple instruments. So we just wanted to show, genuinely, that we could do that.”
As amazed as some people might have been to realize that these are truly accomplished musicians, even the members of Strangelove themselves were taken by surprise by how this experiment turned out: “That was the first time I’ve actually witnessed Leo play an instrument, and it was great,” Shah-Tayler says. “Leo is a very talented young man.”
Brent agrees, adding, “It was nice for the public to get to see some of those otherwise hidden talents because Leo is seen as ‘merely’ a vocalist when he’s quite a cracking engineer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. As well as, Julian and I do a lot of [musical] things that we’re not doing in the Strangelove context.”
Straying from the original song arrangements also allowed Strangelove’s members to inject their own artistry into the parts. That, along with the warm reception the YouTube videos received, encouraged the band to explore more opportunities to record together – and that, in turn, eventually led to the creation of Rendition.
The most notable inclusion on Rendition is the original song “Sublime,” which Shah-Tayler and Luganskiy began writing together, and then they brought it to the rest of the band for completion. “I have hundreds and hundreds of pieces of music in my hard drive that I’ve never used that haven’t ended up as songs, so I sent a few through to Leo,” says Shah-Tayler. “He sent back a vocal for this initial idea and I really loved it. Then we both said, ‘This would be great if we could make this a Strangelove song, because we’d love to have Brent’s input. We’d love to have Chris [Olivas] on drums. We’d love to have James [Evans, keyboardist].’ So everybody adds something to the song and to the arrangement.
“So we finished most of the song together with Chris,” Shah-Tayler continues, “and then sent it to Brent, who put in a load of really, really cool guitar arrangements, synth arrangements, vocals, all that sort of stuff. So it really flourished into a Strangelove song. It was quite exciting when it finally came together as a finished product. It was like, ‘This is actually a band!’”
They expect that some fans of their live shows will be startled by “Sublime,” which is an edgy guitar-based rock song. “What will be surprising is, there are no obvious Depeche Mode touchstone references, sonically or anything like that [on the song],” says Meyer. “If people are expecting us to sound like a facsimile of Depeche Mode, it is decidedly not that.”
For one thing, Luganskiy’s soaring tenor on this track is radically different from when he’s imitating Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan — but all of the members bring in diverse and unexpected touches. “Julian, Leo and myself have all worked in various musical capacities, producing other artists and working as artists ourselves,” Meyer says. “There’s a Venn diagram overlap of Depeche Mode in what we all love, but outside of that, it branches out completely into this giant network of other artists. And so there are other influences at play that naturally occurred.”
Beyond Strangelove, the members have also been extremely busy lately with solo endeavors. Shah-Tayler just released an album, Honne/Tatemae, on March 7. Meyer is also currently working on a solo record.
VIDEO: Strangelove “Useless”
Shah-Tayler and Luganskiy contributed lead vocals and songwriting (to “Kiss Me (Goodbye)” and “Echoes and the Angels,” respectively) on Dancing with Angels, the latest album by the L.A.-based music collective Beauty in Chaos, which was released in 2024 to much critical acclaim. Shah-Tayler also contributed four tracks, and Meyer provided one, to an associated remix version of that album.
But Strangelove remains their day-to-day focus — and for Meyer, that has been the case since he founded the band in 2006, after working in various capacities in the music industry (including performing as a classically trained opera singer). The band truly flourished after the current lineup was solidified in 2018. “That’s when it really started kicking off in an exponential fashion, and a lot more international touring and that sort of thing,” says Meyer.
The decision to make this band specifically a tribute to Depeche Mode came about because Meyer was a huge fan of their work, and he also saw how fervent their fanbase has remained through the decades.
“They have a cult following that’s akin to the Grateful Dead,” Meyer says. “Their worshippers follow them around continents, and there’s just a deep well of love and appreciation for the band. Also, they have this giant catalogue [of songs] — they’re going on 45 years of new music now. So that keeps it interesting, as well. We can occasionally add newer songs into the set to keep it interesting, but the primary thing is earlier and classic era material, just because we’re trying to do that as fan service, and as fans of Depeche Mode ourselves.”
Shah-Tayler agrees: “I realized that if you dig into Depeche Mode’s catalog, the songwriting, irrespective of all the pots and pans clattering noises, is just impeccable. [Depeche Mode keyboardist and main songwriter] Martin Gore is a genius, one of the greatest we’ve ever seen.”
Fans around the world will get a chance to check out Strangelove for themselves when the band tours across Europe and North America through the rest of the spring, plus a show in Santiago, Chile on May 17. They are currently working on confirming dozens more shows, in multiple countries, which will be spread across the rest of the year.
“We want to share our love for Depeche Mode with everybody that comes to see us,” says Shah-Tayler, “and I’d like to think that people recognize that when they come to see the show, that it is a shared love fest, and not a money grab or cynical use of the music. That’s what a lot of tribute bands get criticism for: ‘Oh, you’re parasites. You’re using somebody else. Why don’t you make your own music?’ And hopefully with this record, we can answer those questions and say, ‘Look, we are making our own music.’”
VIDEO: Strangelove: The Depeche Mode Experience 60 Second TV promo
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