All I Ever Needed Is Here In My Arms

Last week (6th), The Anchoress aka Catherine Anne Davies released the Versions album, accompanied by a single/video for her cover of Enjoy The Silence by Depeche Mode. 

Not your average video, in Catherine's own words, it's "a loving frame by frame re-creation to the original Depeche Mode video, featuring me, a crown and trying not to get arrested traipsing through the fields near Chequers…

While we may not have had the same travel budget as Depeche Mode, we more than made up for it with the ingenuity and imagination of one of the best young directors around". 

 

The director in question, JJ Eringa, has worked with Catherine previously on similarly striking videos for original songs Show Your Face and The Exchange (featuring James Dean Bradfield) as well as her rework of Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order.

The Versions album initially began when The Anchoress posted a series of limited release covers for Bandcamp Friday. Enjoy The Silence was originally released in May 2022, coincidentally a couple of weeks before founder member Andy Fletcher's untimely passing.

Catherine had this to say about the song at the time,

 

"I’ve finally reworked one of the most requested tracks by one of my all time favourite songwriters, Martin Gore. It’s Depeche Mode’s 'Enjoy The Silence' and I really hope you’ll enjoy my ethereal vintage synth-drenched take on this much-loved classic.

It remains one of my all-time favourite song lyrics so I feel quite trepidatious taking this one on as I know it means a lot to so many people in its original form.

The fabulous Charlie Cawood returns on guest acoustic guitar again bringing his beautiful voicings to the arrangement and I’m on production and mixing duties again."

 

If you're a fan of Depeche Mode as I am, then you'll know that Martin Gore originally composed the song as a ballad, with a harmonium-led demo appearing on the 1990 single release. There's an interesting video accompaniment (in two parts) by Hungarian artist Erdélyi Gergely available on YouTube, submitted for a competition as part of the Anton Corbijn exhibition in Budapest in 2009. 

 

Catherine's take is closer to Martin's original vision for the song so it's interesting to see/hear this juxtaposed with the mirror image video, which originally reflected Alan Wilder's inspired uptempo reconstruction of Enjoy The Silence. For comparison, here's Depeche Mode's video.

In finding this, I also discovered a 5-minute clip of Enjoy The Silence video outtakes, which is an intriguing watch. not least for Dave Gahan's frequent corpsing during the oh-so-serious black and white studio shots.

The Versions album contains 9 other covers by the likes of Radiohead, Halsey, Nirvana, All About Eve and Manic Street Preachers. The CD includes a bonus track with a second version of The Cure's Friday I'm In Love.

 

All of these were previously available on Bandcamp Friday, so I took the long and expensive route of buying the digital releases at £2.00 a pop at the time. Still worth every penny.

 

Luckily, the digital format of Versions will now set you back £12.00, the 11-track CD £15.00 or you can go for the rather beautifully packaged limited edition Eco Mix vinyl (1000 copies only) for £27.00. A perfect gift for yourself or the one you love, in other words.