The opening notes are pure synth-funk, and isn't it great? The straight percussion sound might be a breath or it might be a drum. The lyrics are as banish-the-world-outside as it gets. David Gahan is emoting in ways unexpected from anyone who had only ever heard "Just Can't Get Enough," say. Martin Gore is adding sweet harmonies just so. Alan Wilder, helped by Flood, constructs something at once perfectly, ultimately clinical and crisp, Kraftwerk for a newer generation, and passionate, involved, present, of the now, synths rising and falling, storming down the chorus, everything perfectly in place. "World in My Eyes" is such a good way to start, for such such such a good album.
Violator, 1990's album, pinnacle, statement for me, by a long shot. The big pop albums of the year were MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, but right behind them was this. Wonderful, really, that the three big albums were so defiantly not rock. But whereas Hammer and Ice slotted into something in its own particular way, Depeche were finding themselves at a particular pinnacle where nobody else was. The early synth eighties were long lost and the participants were either blanded-out morons or future influences waiting to happen on further bands. Depeche offered up at once huge and utterly close and personal statements of romantic turmoil like "Sweetest Perfection," at once Gore's almost sing-songy confession and a massive pound and electronic tapestry, and not only did the world buy it, the world ran riot.
Literally. A signing session for Violator in LA turned into a full scale riot, there were just too many people there. Headlines on the local news, noteriety. Everyone who pretends they were always listening to NWA back then was actually probably here. Then a few months later they played Dodger Stadium over two separate nights, plus another local arena show. Somewhere over 100,000 people, Springsteen-like levels for a band which all the Springsteen-loving bastards in the rock crit establishment kept calling a synth-pop flash in the pan. Oh, how sweet it was to foist it back in their faces. Vengeance was ours. No bar-band anthems here. World-conquering anthems? Oh yes. Oh yes yes yes.
"Personal Jesus" was so compelling that when it started getting airplay the previous fall, I think KROQ melted down from all the requests. I know I sure did from all the listens. A stiff, bizarre breakbeat created from stomping on travel cabinets, a bluesy guitar line intentionally sequenced and looped, bass stabs just so, Gahan reverberating down with something that played up the ultra-messianic tendencies of any huge band as much as it elaborated boy-meets-girl into salvation. What turned out to be even more astounding was the way how on the album this was followed by "Halo," perhaps even more danceable on the one hand and even more commandingly orchestral, theatrical, world-destroying on the other, huge string arrangement playing around as Gahan crucified himself and the unspoken beloved on Gore's crown of lyrical thorns. Goth never got quite so perfectly, simply big.
"Waiting For the Night" rides in on gentle keyboard tones, the slightest of shadings, an odd little centerpiece for the album, a pretty sparkle in the middle, strange rumblings beneath, pure dark beauty that shines. Then "Enjoy the Silence" starts. Need I say more? On a whole album of turning romantic feelings into one apocalypse after another, something that outdoes Armageddon at its own game. Gore originally wrote it as a simple ballad, then Wilder and Flood said, "Wait, what if…?" See, this is why Alan Wilder is the unheralded arranger of his time. I doubt anybody else could even have come slightly close to what he did with this.
"Policy of Truth" revisits a slow Motown beat just enough in ways that apparently all the purists never thought of (and still don't, if the Make-Up are any indication…garg), and the way that the guitar added at the end just turns into its own epochal roar without trying is all the more part of the fun. "Blue Dress" lets Gore indulge in some fetishes, but then "Clean" wraps it all up on the most dour note imaginable, everything stretched to various breaking points, Gahan brooding over a creeping pulse, percussion noises firing off as need be, distorted synths playing up against crackly spoken word bits, perhaps their blackest of black celebrations.
A key moment? How about the untitled piece after "Enjoy" where synth and strange guitar noises combine in odd, alien ways, and then a distorted voice says halfway through, "Crucified." Depeche set out to create the most invigorating declaration of personal obsession ever and did it in their own way. Simply, wonderfully, purely astounding.