And I thought, It all depends on what music Dave is going to give me. Of course, it’s a pop star’s prerogative to “retire” and then “un-retire,” but why did you and Dave finally decide to record new Soft Cell music in the wake of that O2 show?īMG, where I’m signed as a solo artist, asked, “Would you be interested in doing a Soft Cell album?” Because Soft Cell is a bigger name than Marc Almond. In a far-ranging Zoom talk from London, Almond animatedly spoke about the new album’s themes of age and memory - elaborated in songs that sweetly reference Marc Bolan and Andy Warhol - the radical shift in society’s views of sexuality over the last 40 years, and his evolving attitude toward mortality. The same show will come to America in August. The road to the Soft Cell reunion dates back to 2018, when the pair staged a sold-out show at London’s O2 Arena advertised as their final concert. Two years later, they wound up touring Britain again with a show that re-created Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret in its entirety. In the years since, Almond has been furiously busy, releasing no fewer than 25 solo albums that have made him a significant star in the U.K. And, though Almond wasn’t open about his sexuality during that benighted time, he kicked off the conga line of gay stars who came to dominate British pop in the 1980s, cracking the charts before Boy George in Culture Club, Andy Bell in Erasure, George Michael in Wham!, as well as the guys in Bronski Beat, Pet Shop Boys, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Soft Cell was the first of the ’80s synth-pop duos, releasing music before Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, and Eurythmics. That was hardly the only prescient move by the group.
A concept album, Cabaret captured the frustrations and dreams that fuel the excesses of nightlife, highlighted by the global smash “Tainted Love.” The single, released at the very start of the AIDS crisis, later became a sad anthem, expressing the complicated feelings gay men had about sex in that fraught era. Wryly titled Happiness Not Included, Soft Cell’s new set mirrors the mix of darkly sardonic lyrics and electro-minimalist music that made their 1981 debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, a louche classic. This week, he and his musical partner in Soft Cell, Dave Ball, will release the first album under their storied brand in two decades. The way Almond has processed the past in his latest music has both reenergized his career and unearthed a wealth of experience that speaks eloquently to the present. Everything I write at this point is a retrospective.”īut there’s an irony at play.
“There’s not a lot to look forward to, as opposed to what there is to look back on. He likens it to the bars that measure the power left on a mobile phone. Marc Almond of Soft Cell has an apt metaphor for life at his age.
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