Depeche Mode, Violator

A veritable oil slick of a disc, black and sleek and smooth on the surface but with iridescent flows and transitions that really grab on to you. It's a little, uh, unrefined in parts and the first couple tracks ("World in My Eyes," "Sweetest Perfection") are thematically banal, but the melodies cover its rougher moments and set up the finer ones to come, especially "Enjoy the Silence," the ominous "Policy of Truth" and "Blue Dress," admittedly a little pervy, but featuring a lovely emotive bridge to the final track. And hey, dig the Floyd "One of These Days" callback in "Clean," and "Personal Jesus" gets points for being conceptually memorable even if the erratic beat isn't exactly a religious experience. A landmark for the twilight of new wave, this album is where they most lived up to their talent. The 2006 reissue adds four bonus tracks on the DVD companion disc, though the two remixes that follow them feel more perfunctory than innovative. (Content: Adult themes in "World in My Eyes" and "Blue Dress.")

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Depeche Mode, Spirit

I have to confess I don't understand this album. I know why they made it, and it's at least somewhat listenable, to the extent that it sounds a bit like their earlier output and puts on the same post-New Wave artistic pretenses. (And I'm favourably disposed to their earlier output, mind you. Violator was excellent, one of the best albums in my vault, and "Somebody" was the song that I swooned to my high-school crush over.) But like so many comeback attempts it feels more like a band vainly trying to remember how they played, and they spend too much time on technique than music. Dave Gahan mercifully still has his vocal chops (contrast with, e.g., Roger Daltrey), and the group gets it together in a few places like the insistent and refreshingly creepy "So Much Love," plus the more typically styled "No More (This Is The Last Time)," with enough get-up-and-go to carry the second half until its sudden flatten-out at the end. But there are too many low points along the way like the wan and crufty "Scum" with its obnoxious distortion and insipid beat, "Eternal" in which we lower our standards for love and passion, and the end's strangely appropriate "Fail." It's slickly produced by half with the possible exception of the weak cover art and that smudged logo, but by the end I felt like nothing ever really shook loose, and nothing really stood out. "We have not evolved," sings Dave solemnly in the first track. "We're going backwards." And I certainly concur this album didn't move them forwards. (Content: a couple F-bombs.)

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