Soft Cell - Cruelty Without Beauty (2002)

I was avoiding this, having only recently discovered its existence. Soft Cell were approximately my most important band in the world for the year or so spanning Non Stop Erotic Cabaret to, I suppose, The Soul Inside. They were Throbbing Gristle as pop songs, which I found incredibly exciting. I wasn't convinced by This Last Night in Sodom when it came out and although it eventually grew on me, it seemed like the split had probably been timely. Dave Ball's subsequent endeavours were sort of interesting, if hardly essential, and outside of The Boy Who Came Back, I never really warmed to Marc Almond's solo career. It seemed to try too hard, and to fixate on all that Jacques Brel stuff at the expense of fun, plus the singing lessons had apparently smoothed out all the previously wobbly charm of his voice. I probably didn't need a Grid album with Marc warbling all over it, and no-one seemed to have much of a good word to say about Cruelty Without Beauty.

Time hath yet pissed harsh upon my regard of Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris, I cried unto the wind whilst wearing a toga and clutching some stone tablets, so let us remember Soft Cell as they were.

Then, because they've just reformed to record a fifth album, somebody issued this one on vinyl and a combination of curiosity and completism got the better of me.

Initial impressions were of hi-energy techno, which at least worked better than Marc warbling all over a Grid record, but the more I listened, the more I noticed the subtleties, and the more it grew on me. Cruelty Without Beauty as an eighties revival album was never going to work, but happily they've likewise avoided the trap of sounding self-consciously contemporary - at least as of two decades ago. Musically, the album mostly keeps its feet planted in parping northern soul, as with the first three, or maybe two and a half, simply sounding like a slightly snappier, more sophisticated - or even older and wiser, if you prefer - version of the Soft Cell we knew and loved. In fact it's weird how neatly it sits behind Sodom - bringing up the rear, if you will - as the next, most logical thing, reducing the twenty year hiatus to a brief cessation of activities; and yet without simply repeating the winning formula.

Soft Cell were one of the few groups of such importance that they sort of cancelled themselves out for me, and I somehow forgot they had existed or that they were ever such a thing. Those records said far more to me about my life - and still do, weirdly - than fucking Morrissey ever did, and I played them so much that it became unnecessary with the music embedded so firmly in my head. Against odds and expectation, Cruelty Without Beauty lives up to the standard, and Dancing Alone, Perversity, All Out of Love, Caligula Syndrome and others are as wonderful as anything they ever recorded back in the eighties. Definitely looking forward to the new one now.