Depeche Mode's "Golden Age"

I've often assumed and been told that the formative years of your musical taste sticks with you. I crystalized my musical tastes in the mid to late 80s, at least with regards to pop music, and therefore the "Golden Years" to me of Depeche Mode were always the three albums that had a more or less consistent sound (more or less) and tone from that era. Violator, their first big hit (in 1990) didn't sound right, because it was 1) too short, and didn't have enough good tracks, 2) too hoaky and dirty, with a lot of fuzz and big hoaky steel guitar sounds, 3) just wasn't as polished, and certainly wasn't even the same sound or feel at all—on purpose. Songs of Faith and Devotion was an even further departure, and the Depeche Mode that made slick, stylish electronic pop music with a dark edge was replaced by this weird bluesy pseudo-industrial rock band that had only a vague resemblance, honestly, to Depeche Mode that came before. It was very much a product of its time rather than something that comes across as more timeless. Although, to be fair, maybe the mid-to late 80s timelessness is an artifact of the fact that that's when my musical tastes crystalized, and they crystalized around that sound, so I'll always like it and feel that it sounds good. It's hard to say; 80s pop culture is going through a bit of a renaissance lately with the kids, but that may be more a fad rather than a recognition that 80s music is really timeless. Especially Second British Invasion New Wave 80s Music, which is really my favorite 80s music. 

In any case, my ranking of Depeche Mode albums, based on purely personal subjective criteria for the most part has always been as follows—mostly always, I should say. I added Memento Mori a couple of years ago, and finally decided between Music for the Masses and Black Celebration, which both had valid claims of being the best of their repertoire. 

1. Music for the Masses
2. Black Celebration
3. Some Great Reward
4. Violator
5. Construction Time Again
6. A Broken Frame
7. Speak & Spell
8. Memento Mori
9. Playing the Angel
10. Ultra
11. Songs of Faith & Devotion
12. Sounds of the Universe
13. Delta Machine
14. Exciter
15. Spirit

I ended up going with Music over Black Celebration because it was produced almost entirely by Depeche Mode themselves. Dave Bascombe was the credited producer, but even he claims that his involvement was more like an engineer than a traditional producer, and that Alan Wilder really was the director of the sound of the band there. Black Celebration was the last that Daniel Miller still forcibly contributed to the sound, and the last of three that Gareth Jones was involved with. Ergo, Music is the most "pure" Depeche Mode of the Depeche Mode albums, especially of that trio of my top three albums from the "Golden Age", which I think is sufficient to get it the top spot over Black Celebration. 

I should point out that Violator is still a great album, in spite of my disappointment with it. "Personal Jesus" and "Policy of Truty" are good singles, "Halo", "Waiting for the Night" and "Blue Dress" are great album tracks, and "Enjoy the Silence" is possibly the best single Depeche Mode song of them all. "Dangerous" and "Sea of Sin" from the Violator era b-sides are also pretty great tracks, and equal to many of the album tracks. Getting shunted off to b-side was a bit ignominious for those two in particular. Instrumental b-sides like "Memphisto", "Sibeling" and "Kaleid" on the other hand, feel like that's an appropriate place for them, but they're really good.

Songs of Faith and Devotion, on the other hand, belongs to the bottom third of albums, and most of the rest that follow it feel like they're retreating that sound, only not as good. Don't get me wrong; there are good tracks from albums in the bottom third; "Wrong" in particular comes across as a top tier DM song, no matter what era it was released in, for instance, but Playing the Angel and Memento Mori are the only post-Songs albums that surpass it, which is sad, because those are part of the amorphous middle third of albums that are mostly quite different from each other, and which often shift positions in my esteem, because they're honestly all a bunch of albums that I like (or don't) equally to each other, albeit for different reasons, given how different they are to each other. 

This isn't to say that there aren't a lot of kind of cheesy moments in the top three albums of my Golden Age, of course. "Master and Servant" and "Blasphemous Rumours" feel like they're trying too hard to be transgressive, subversive and edgy, and therefore come across as immature and sophomoric rather than profound or meaningful, although as a teenager I was myself too immature and sophomoric to recognize that. I never liked "Dressed in Black" at all, and "New Dress" also comes across as pretty shallow. The band themselves never thought it appropriate to have "But Not Tonight" as part of the Black Celebration album, but being in the North American region, I never had a version of the album that lacked it; even the vinyl version included it. (Not that I had vinyl. I had the cassette tape and then replaced that with the CD, which I still have.) "I Want You Now" is the only album track on Masses that I didn't like, but at the time, I just noted that every Depeche Mode album had at least one track I didn't like, and it was usually a weird Martin Gore-sung ballad. Honestly, even with the tracks that I don't like, those three end up being good "listen through" albums where I can play the entire album beginning to end and enjoy it like a pop music symphony of sorts. Although I'm less pretentious about it than I used to be when I was more young and arrogant and said that I thought Depeche Mode albums were as good as a classic music symphony in terms of artistic and musical merit. 

But that isn't to say that they don't have real artistic merit, however. I do find that more recently, instrumental, orchestral music is more what I'm in the mood to listen to. Not necessarily always "classical", although Classical certainly has more artistic merit than, say, music or video game soundtracks, or the unofficial soundtracks on YouTube that I listen to like Graham Plowman's Lovecraft unofficial soundtracks.