Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The Austin Chronicle
Pitchfork Media	7.5/10
Record Mirror
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Sounds
The Village Voice	C+

Speak & Spell is the debut studio album by the English electronic band Depeche Mode, released on 5 October 1981 by Mute Records. The album peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart. This is the band's only album with Vince Clarke and as a result, was much lighter in tone than future Depeche Mode albums.

This was the only Depeche Mode album with Vince Clarke as a member of the band. Clarke wrote most of the songs for the band, before departing to form Yazoo and later Erasure.

The album is significantly lighter in tone and melody than their later work, a direction which can largely be attributed to Clarke's writing. After he left, Martin Gore took over songwriting duties, writing almost all of the band's material. Later albums written by him would explore darker subjects and melodies.

The album title alludes to the then-popular "Speak & Spell" electronic toy.

When interviewed by Simon Amstell for Channel 4's Popworld programme in 2005, Gore and Fletcher both stated that the track "What's Your Name?" was their least favourite Depeche Mode song of all time.

Melody Maker praised the album, saying the singles "New Life" and "Just Can't Get Enough" "sound as fresh and unflagging as every new number" of their time. Although reviewer Paul Colbert noted that there are a few songs like "Nodisco" that tend to "repeat earlier thoughts and feels", he praised "the gleefully untroubled surface" of "What's Your Name", [...] "the moody whisper" of "Puppets" and the tautly sketched around octave-leaping bass lines and dark vocals of "Photographic".

In a five-star review, Record Mirror noted that the album is composed by "eight sparkling songs and one instrumental, much to admire and little to disappoint". Reviewer Sunie particularly praised the track "Photographic" and wrote: "Photographic" is "like [Gary] Numan at his best, but better; all the sinister phrases, both lyrical and musical, but with a rapid, danceable beat instead of the solemnity that Gazza always laid on with a sequinned trowel."

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Wikipedia