1) Which song would you lose from the album?
2) Which song is the most radical on the album (he's using the vinyls as masters; I'll use the complete CDs with the bonus tracks, i.e. B-sides as the masters myself; although they won't be eligible for answering in #1)
3) Which song have you listened to the most?
4) What is your favorite song on the album at the moment?
5) How would you rate the album overall?
Depeche Mode used to be really hard-working. They put out albums in 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984—a compilation with two new singles in 1985, a new album in 1986 and 1987; and then a huge worldwide tour and a live album in 1998. A lead single from a new album appeared late in 1989, and then early in 1990 they came out with Violator. Their pace slowed down considerably after that, especially after the somewhat disastrous recording sessions associated with 1993's Songs of Faith and Devotion, Dave Gahan nearly dying of a drug overdose, Martin Gore essentially turning into an alcoholic, Andrew Fletcher checking out to deal with anxiety or depression or other mental/emotional issues, and Alan Wilder quitting the band due to tensions and a feeling of being the overworked, underappreciated one (which at least some of the band members have hinted at in interviews that he was almost certainly right in feeling that.)
In any case, Violator was obviously a huge commercial success, and although Depeche Mode had been growing in popularity for some time (witness the numbers present at the Rose Bowl show in 1988 which became the 101 live album and documentary) I think everyone was a bit surprised by the fact that Violator became the huge hit that it was (Fletch certainly confirmed that the band was caught a bit off guard by it.) I'm often a bit surprised by people that I meet online who are Depeche Mode fans; if they're a little bit younger than me, Violator is often their first exposure to the band, and everything else was back catalog (unlike my own experience where I heard a few tracks, People Are People and Just Can't Get Enough first, and then later really delved into them following the release of Music For the Masses.) I think this experience, vs my personal experience may be part of my disconnect with the project compared to everyone else. I didn't think Violator was better than the last three albums had been; in fact, I was highly disappointed in it at first, and it never grew on me to the point that it surpassed most of their earlier work. To me, Music For the Masses, Black Celebration and Some Great Reward represented a highly evolved, definite, and matured sound (the earlier three albums were gradually working on becoming that, I think I could fairly say and most fans and even the band itself and the team associated with them at Mute and elsewhere would probably agree.) Violator sounded like it was taking it's inspiration from Pleasure, Little Treasure, the odd bonus track from the Masses era, which was one of my least favorite of the tracks from the era in general. The polished electronic sound was replaced with a much more "scuzzy" electronic sound in an attempt to get it to sound more organic, or something. This wasn't necessarily a bad move, although I do miss the more precise, "colder" sound of the earlier work, which I think fits the style and themes better than the scuzzier sounds do. The guitar work was also overly broad and hoaky; almost as if the band were yelling in your ear; "hey, did you hear that? That's a guitar! A guitar in your ELECTRONIC band song! Hahahaha! Did you hear it? Let me make it bigger, longer, and louder just to make sure you don't miss it!" Then again, Depeche Mode was never really all that big on subtlety anyway. Master and Servant, anyone? Blasphemous Rumours? The grabbing hands grab all they can?
So anyway; yeah—I was disappointed in Violator, but that's not to say that I didn't like it, merely that I didn't like it nearly as much as their previous three albums, which I had built up in my mind as the pinnacle of modern pop music (at least electronic pop music) or something. Part of this is no doubt due to the unrealistic expectations I'd set in my head, part is no doubt due to the fact that I had a sound in my mind that was Depeche Mode's sound, and Violator departed somewhat from it. But there were some other issues with it too; other than Some Great Reward, it was the shortest album the boys had ever done; only nine tracks (and two brief instrumental interludes which were tacked on as codas on the same track as Enjoy the Silence and Blue Dress respectively. Another one is that the album versions of the tracks often felt a little flat and lacking in emotion compared to at least one or another of the single versions (this is especially true for the two biggest singles, which predated the album itself; Personal Jesus and Enjoy the Silence. Because I had the maxi singles for both of those, with all of the remixes and b-sides, hearing the album versions of both tracks was disappointing and flat. On the other hand, the next two singles, World In My Eyes and Policy of Truth (can't remember which order they came out in. Probably the opposite of what I just wrote) were decent songs that a good remix or some new production could have really made great. Sadly, and although this isn't a reflection on the album per se, I think it needs to be mentioned, the remixes at this point in history were really bad. There was a style that flourished briefly right at the very end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s of taking the vocal track, putting a little echo and reverb on it, and then replacing everything else with a generic, somewhat minimalist house song. This was particularly bad because the chord progressions in these house remix bass lines didn't even match up with the chord progression on the vocals, so they quite obviously didn't fit, and the whole point of the remix eluded me. The Pet Shop Boys Introspective is another example of the same.
Like I said, that didn't directly have anything to do with the album itself, but of course, when I was already a bit disappointed by the album, having disappointing single releases that didn't improve on the album tracks was frustrating. To add a tiny bit more insult to injury, there were at least a few b-sides from the era that were better than most of what appeared on the album too; why could Dangerous and Sea of Sin have been on Violator, when it was so short anyway? (The instrumental b-sides like Memphisto and Kaleid, on the other hand, deserved to be b-sides, and Happiest Girl is hardly brilliant.)
All that said; well, Enjoy the Silence (and to a lesser extent, Personal Jesus) are two of the most iconic Depeche Mode songs ever written. Waiting For the Night and Blue Dress are stand-out slow songs, and Halo is a pretty good track too. None of the tracks are really all that actively bad (although Sweetest Perfection comes closest), and even World In My Eyes, Policy of Truth, Clean, etc. are just a bit bland rather than really terrible. It's certainly the best post-Music for the Masses album Depeche Mode did, with the possible exception of Playing the Angel. But let's not get ahead of ourselves! I've got many disappointing years and releases to cover before we get to Playing the Angel.
Anyway, I see some fans, who are especially fans of Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion, suggest that the three that I like are their "teenaged years" in terms of maturity of theme and sound. In reality, Depeche Mode's themes have never been as mature as some fan apologists have made out, including past versions of me. Martin Gore has commented about the themes of many of the lyrics on this album that he admits that he's kinda promoting all kinds of immorality, but then he also expresses the theme of guilt about it too. Sigh. Being a little bit edgy and tweaking the prevailing social morality isn't a mature thing to do. Although at least the prevailing social morality still had a lingering element of actual morality back in the 80s and even early 90s; today, the prevailing social morality is completely backwards anti-morality. In any case, it's also not mature or deep to tweak the morality, but then express guilt about it in the lyrics themselves; a little subversion of expectations and playing both sides of the field doesn't make it deep or thoughtful or mature, it just makes it indecisive.
1) Of the songs on the album, the easiest one to cut is Sweetest Perfection. Of course, it's a weird Martin Gore ballad. Almost all of the ones I'd cut from all of the albums are.
2) Violator got a lot of praise overall for being radical; I think the production and the samples used apply to the entire album much more than they do to any particular, single track. Their contemporaries, such as the Pet Shop Boys, for example, which I remember specifically seeing addressing this in an interview, that Violator had raised the stakes and that they were jealous of it. I'm not sure where to put a single track as the most radical; I guess maybe I'm too used to all of the tracks to think any of them are radical sounding to me anymore, and I didn't particularly think that it sounded very radical compared to their past work anyway. Enjoy the Silence, probably the most iconic track from this era, and probably their biggest hit, was in many ways the least radical; in fact, Mark Ellis (Flood) has stated in at least one interview that during the production of it, he and Alan Wilder literally swiped some elements of it from some other songs, modified them, and laid them in quick and dirty. Curiously, Martin Gore strongly resisted the idea of making Enjoy the Silence a dance song, and in fact got kinda whiny about it. But I have to pick something. Sigh. I think maybe Halo, just because it's a dancy song, such as it was during the Violator era anyway, but obviously was strove to be quite a bit more musically and artistically too. It made the many Depeche Mode imitator bands, like Red Flag or Camouflage, or Seven Red Seven or Cause & Effect, etc. seem a bit shallow in comparison; they put out some great, dark themed dance anthems with Dave Gahan-esque vocals, but they weren't anything more than that.
3) Enjoy the Silence. Absolutely.
4) Enjoy the Silence. Still obviously the best song from the entire collection. I also, for whatever reason, have tons and tons of remixes for it, both official and bootleg, in part because pretty much everyone recognizes that this is the best song of the collection, and everyone wants to play with it.
5) Seven out of ten. Their most commercially successful, without being sellout, somehow, and yet disappointing compared to most of their past work, and comparable to their first three in terms of overall enjoyment. (Keep in mind that with possibly one exception, the rest of their albums go downhill from here...)
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