Soft Cell
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret… And Other Stories: Live
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From his intimate cabaret solo albums to his wonky, almost-primitive electronic pop work in Soft Cell, Marc Almond has made warbling theatricality his best friend, re-defining the tortured drama of the torch singer into something as sensually cosmopolitan as it is resolutely melancholy. By mixing equal doses of Lotte Lenya, David Bowie, and Gene Pitney (with whom Almond would duet during his solo career) into his vocal and lyrical performance, with the deep reds of deadpan sarcasm for color, Almond has created a black-hearted, unsentimental aesthetic whose highs and lows can be heard on his litany of solo albums, his altogether too-few Soft Cell records with David Ball, and in any live setting he’s chosen to stage his leather bar litanies.
In pulling from his lengthily diverse solo career, across 16 years and 10 albums, and personified by the track “Vaudeville & Burlesque,” Almond elastically moved through achingly spare piano-only arrangements to gold-gilded full orchestrations as part of his recent Live Treasury of Song: 1992-2008 box set. Starting off somnolent and spare, live from the Liverpool Philharmonic, Almond allowed his voice to breathe easy on a gorgeous take at his “Stories of Johnny,” along with finding something more tension-filled and hammy on “Where the Heart Is.” Capturing his full band and its fullest flower (and the singer at his most full-throated) on its Royal Albert Hall disc, Almond went for big orchestration on everything from his whirlwind solo tango of “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart,” to a grandly gleeful rendition of Soft Cell’s slow, anthemic “Say Hello Wave Goodbye.”
While Almond’s solo ideals—spun in live settings—languidly take their time and arch their backs in sensual pleasure (or horror), as Soft Cell’s front man, there’s a blunter proposition to be had, usually sexual. Capturing Almond and Ball’s rare, recent reunion tour as Soft Cell (much of which Ball missed due to a back operation) in celebration of their newest album and the 40th anniversary of their debut disc, Almond’s camp, short-spitting vocals on the new live collection Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret… And Other Stories are akin to Judy Garland singing over Peaches tracks with a skeezy saxophonist (Gary Barnacle) blowing hot atop each cut.
While newer Soft Cell songs such as the sad and socially aware “Happy Happy Happy” and “Heart Like Chernobyl” move lyrically from Almond’s smart and provocative brand of sleaze, their gangly nobility—and groove—comes from Ball’s melodic and singed-earth proximity to the dark electro pop of the duo’s start. Which is why the spartan bolts of electronica that are the halting “Seedy Films,” the rushed “Sex Dwarf,” and the clamorous “Art of Falling Apart” are so hardcore-entertaining in a punk-rock fashion. To then be able to turn the tables on rapier-brusque electro such as “Frustration” and move into Bacharachian balladry on “Torch” and “Say Hello Wave Goodbye” is more magical—and hewing closer to what Almond would become throughout his solo career.
