Soft Cell - *Happiness Not Included (2022)

I feel I could justifiably just write fucking hell and leave the review at that. I generally experience a certain degree of scepticism regarding any comeback that wasn't Elvis, but I'm not sure it applies here. There's a difference between a group recording their first new material in twenty years and the reanimated corpses of formerly beloved entertainers giving the loyal fanbase udder one last desperate squeeze which - funnily enough, Soft Cell obliquely address on Nostalgia Machine, which almost counts as the grandson of Memorabilia if you squint a bit.

Anyway, I inevitably approached this one with caution because you never know, and even Elvis kind of blew it at the end. Thankfully, it sounded pretty good, and continued to sound pretty good, and then one morning I woke with I'm Not a Friend of God stuck in my head, something which probably hasn't happened since I woke with Little Rough Rhinestone lodged in my head back in whichever century that was. After Cruelty Without Beauty, I knew this would be worth a listen, but I'm not sure I imagined it would be this good.

It works because there's no self-conscious effort to repeat former glories beyond simply doing what Soft Cell always did best. We're not trying to pretend it's still the eighties like in Stranger Things, and we're not trying to pretend that anything is fun or cool because that's never anything that Soft Cell were about - in case you somehow failed to notice. Musically, we're mixing technopop with traces of soul of the kind Dave Ball always did so well, along with a few less obvious elements, and Ball's John Barry homages seem to have evolved into a relative of Aaron Copland - which is odd but sounds perfectly natural - and Tranquiliser has about it a trace of Nashville in certain respects; and yet Purple Zone, recorded with the involvement of the Pet Shop Boys and very much sounding it, is nevertheless perfectly at home.

Almond's lyrics remain as beautifully acerbic and well observed as ever, not least because no-one is trying to pretend we're still eighteen, and this stuff speaks to me just as it did when we were all a bit younger, randier, skinnier, and possibly more perverted. In fact it moves me right now in 2022 just as it did in 1981, and the title track is in particular an air-punchingly joyous fuck off to certain representatives of the generation which believes it invented many of the feelings expressed on this record but really didn't. I vividly recall once sitting in a school art room listening to a couple of hairies dismissing the teenybop benders who dared soil a Jimi Hendrix masterpiece, and I knew then that I was on the right side of history - to make an overused contemporary reference. This album lets me know that I still am, which is nice. Never mind the comeback, *Happiness Not Included may even be the best thing they've ever recorded.