Soft Cell: Leaving For The New Eden
It was the 30th of September 2018 and I was amongst the 20,000 capacity crowd for Soft Cell’s final live performance at London’s o2 Arena. After a staggering two hour and forty-minute set celebrating the band’s career, playing more than thirty songs, the duo of Marc Almond and Dave Ball descended through the stage in a finale of ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’. It felt like the end of the band in every sense of the word. But for Soft Cell, this experience ignited a new period of creativity, one that has led to the release of their latest album ‘*Happiness not included’.
Soft Cell - Marc Almond and Dave Ball. Image Credit: Andrew Whitton.
Of course, Soft Cell are most remembered for their take on Gloria Jones’ single ‘Tainted Love’. This number one track was included on the duo’s debut album ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’, released in 1981. With their new album announced earlier in 2021, Soft Cell embarked on a short tour later that year to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of that record across the UK.
The release of their debut was followed by a companion album in 1982, entitled ‘Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing’. This early period would be the most commercially successful for Soft Cell, yielding five top-ten singles including ‘Bedsitter’, ‘Torch’, ‘What’ and ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’.
Soft Cell’s second album, ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ was a darker affair than their first, as evidenced by its title track and singles ‘Where The Heart Is’ and ‘Numbers’. Their final album of the 80’s was entitled ‘This Last Night In Sodom’ and was released after the duo had announced their split, the album never receiving a dedicated tour.
Soft Cell’s ‘Cruelty Without Beauty’ was re-released in 2020 and is available on their webstore.
Though Soft Cell would briefly return to the top-ten in 1991 with a re-recording of ‘Tainted Love’, Almond and Ball’s full reunion wouldn’t occur until the new millennium. Their fourth album ‘Cruelty Without Beauty’ would see the duo playing live from 2001 to 2003 with the band ceasing activity again until 2018. To accompany their performance at The o2 Arena in September, Soft Cell released a new single, ‘Northern Lights’, backed with ‘Guilty (Cos I Say You Are)’.
Soft Cell released ‘Keychains and Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story’ in September 2018.
Since then, Soft Cell have maintained a flurry of activity. They released a ten-disc box set collecting demos, remixes, live recordings and rarities called ‘Keychains and Snowstorms’. Their latest singles collection also bears the same name, which adds their 2018 tracks to the band’s classic repertoire.
Soft Cell continued diving into their archives in 2019 for their hardback book ‘To Show You I’ve Been There’, a photographic collection spanning from their earliest days, right up to their latest reunion. During the pandemic, Dave Ball expanded on his recollections for his autobiography, ‘Electronic Boy: My Life In And Out Of Soft Cell’.
Finally, the duo announced their new album, ‘*Happiness not included’ in 2021. Its May ‘22 release was preceded by the singles ‘Bruises on all my illusions’ and ‘Purple zone’, the latter a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys. Their anniversary tour at the end of 2021 included the debut performances of some of the album’s songs, including the album opener, ‘Happy happy happy’.
‘I remember a past that told us of a future, rocket ships and flying cars, other people lived on Mars.’
With its cover-art of Chernobyl both frozen in time and in a state of decay, ‘Happy happy happy’ begins as if we’ve already missed the start of something. ‘1999 AD, more than a generation away, and yet dreams travel faster than light…’ A sample of a male voice talks of the future from the distant past, soundtracked by layers of pulsing synthesizers.
The idyllic views presented in these lyrics are those of a bygone era, the kind that spawned ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in the 1960’s, an overestimation of where the human race would be in the 21st century. Almond’s lyrics also mention ‘science fiction stories’, possibly a reference to Soft Cell’s song of the same name, an early demo that was later remade for the duo’s 2019 EP ‘Magick Mutants’.
The lyrical subject matter of ‘Polaroid’ concerns a meeting with Andy Warhol in 1981, where Almond refers to New York City in that era as ‘the junkie jungle’. He also references many of the characters associated with Warhol’s Factory, the creative centre for his artistic endeavours. In particular, he mentions musician, model and actor Nico, whose last studio recording was made with Marc Almond on his album ‘The Stars We Are’ in 1988. Though the authenticity of the story told in Polaroid is ambiguous, Soft Cell did indeed meet Andy Warhol in the early 1980’s.
In their documentary series on the making of *Happiness not included, Marc Almond discusses how having Covid-19 affected his voice, likening his early vocal takes to the delivery of Tom Waits. The duo also discuss many of the album’s songs, such as their early exposure to Warhol’s work:
“I think we were both influenced by Andy Warhol, we were both inspired by Andy Warhol, certainly when I was at art college, even before I…met Dave at Leeds Poly in my early foundation years. I’d seen a documentary on the TV by David Bailey about Andy Warhol, I thought ‘that’s just fantastic’, you know I love Lou Reed and all that thing, The Velvet Underground. It was all part of a world that I just thought was fantastic.” – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part two)
‘But I just didn’t make the final cut, it starts with a yes but ends with a but, sometimes I wonder just what is the point of living. So here I am lying on my bed getting lost in my dream, and now those sirens feel like they’re coming for me.’
There is an extra urgency to ‘Bruises on all my illusions’, the tone set early on by the tempo and chord choices, but reinforced by Almond’s lyric of fighting for your place in the world. Some of the words are echoed by a chorus of backing vocals, performed across the record by Bryan Chambers, Simon King and Louise Marshall.
*Happiness not included was produced by Soft Cell and Philip Larsen throughout lockdown, with extra synthesizers recorded and programmed by Riccardo Mulhall, who shares in much of the duo’s songwriting on this album. Of the twelve songs, Mulhall is co-writer for eight of them. ‘Bruises on all my illusions’ is co-written with Jon Savage, who creates additional synth and programming layers for the song. Dave Ball gives more detail to the songwriting process:
‘So we were really just basically spending not too much time writing them. You know, spend like six hours in a day and then leave it, and then come back to it and then start on the next one, just sort of stockpiling, making notes. A lot of it was with kind of film soundtracks, which is always my go-to kind of place, and atmospheres. I played around a lot with scales, I was sort of getting my music books out a bit and working out why certain chords made you feel happy and sad and trying to include them in certain ways. So being a bit more sort of theoretical and teaching myself a few things that before I just could’ve assumed. So I was actually trying to find out why they worked, because I had the time to do it. Like Marc said, he had the time to ponder lyrics and themes. I had time to sort of, go through some music theory books and kind of learn my craft a bit better, I guess.’ – Dave Ball (The Making of *Happiness not included, part one)
‘Let’s get out of this life, I’m afraid and alone, paralysed in the Purple zone.’
Without examining the credits for ‘Purple zone’, that trademark sound of the Pet Shop Boys is immediately discernible from the anthemic keyboard atmospheres and electronic snare build-up. The synthesizer stabs in particular echo those used by Chris Lowe in their 1987 number one cover of ‘Always On My Mind’. The brilliance of this piece goes beyond its arrangement though, with the original melody and lyric making this song an obvious choice for a single. Dave Ball discusses the origin of the double duo collaboration:
“The way the Pet Shop Boys came about was they’d come to see us on the second night when we played at Hammersmith Eventim. They came backstage and like said they loved the show and thought the visuals were fantastic and stuff and Chris said, I remember Chris said to me, ‘What’s that new track that you played at the end?’” – Dave Ball (The Making of *Happiness not included, part two)
Though the piece was already finished, with the accompanying music video shot, the Pet Shop Boys remix of Purple zone altered Soft Cell’s plans, shifting their version to be the official track used in the music video and on the album. The video, directed by Yassa Khan, adds new shots of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe in the pub, who also share a table with Soft Cell. The latter was an important addition for Marc and Dave:
‘It just seemed a very sensible thing, for us all to be together in a couple of shots in the video so people can see that the reality is, we’re all together, all four of us and it’s not something that we’ve done in distant planets or something.’ – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part two)
‘All I have to say, the news, it’s made me this way, another horror every day, so on your knees and pray.’
Dave Ball sets the tension early on in ‘Heart like Chernobyl’, bassy synthesizers bringing the album back to Earth for an observation on how current events shape our own warmth, or lack of. Extra production elements such as the sparse backing vocals, light piano sounds and airy synthesizer bring a sense of tranquillity to the darkness. As ever, Marc Almond’s lyrics are gritting their teeth as they force through lines most lyricists would avoid, or sugar-coat:
‘People escaping the war in boats, tip them over and see who floats, when I’m faced with people dying, no emotion, it’s like watching a soap.’
The music video was shot at London’s Tate Britain, in a room containing Heather Phillipson’s ‘RUPTURE NO1: Blowtorching The Bitten Peach’. A commission by the gallery, the room suspends loudspeakers and dim lighting and props up vertical television screens displaying the eyes of various Earthly creatures. Soft Cell and ‘Heart like Chernobyl’ fit right in.
“‘Light sleeper’ is just something I scribbled. I was in Los Angeles…I was sitting in a café about six o’clock in the morning actually, and I just saw these two or three characters sitting around…having their coffee, all deep in thought and things. So I was just scribbling these lyrics down about why they’re there, what their lives are about, and then Dave sent me this tune. I didn’t even think anything about them really, and Dave sent me this tune and I just thought, ‘I’ve got the perfect tune for these lyrics.’ It just seemed to fit so well together. For me personally, I think it’s probably one of my favourite tracks on the record, because it goes beyond being a Soft Cell song, it’s just a great song.” – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part two)
The soft side to *Happiness not included continues with ‘Light sleepers’. Saxophone is provided by Gary Barnacle, who has been working with Soft Cell since the 1980’s, appearing on ‘This Last Night In Sodom’ and more recently at the duo’s o2 Arena show and 2021 tour. This adds to the early hours feeling of Light sleepers, along with synths programmed by Jon Savage and extra guitar laid down by Frederick Larsen. Though Light sleepers is largely an observation by Marc Almond, the track finishes with a realisation of kinship:
‘Light sleepers, I’m with you, no time to sleep, too much to do, life, it slips away with time, I want to make the most of mine, so I’m one of the Light sleepers too…’
“I wrote the track ‘*Happiness not included’, one day I was just feeling really, really angry and pissed off. Whenever you turn on the news, it’s just the same old thing going over and over. And I felt really kind of really angry about it, and I just came out with this diatribe really, spewing out all this kind of like you know, stuff that I felt kind of angry about. I mean the original words went on and on and on, I had lots and lots of expletives in it. I was just getting angrier and angrier and angrier, and I thought that I better edit this down. So I wrote that just really on a very angry day, you know?” – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part one)
And it’s the justified anger on the album’s title track that reminds Soft Cell fans why they fell in love with the band in the first place. ‘*Happiness not included’ exists easily alongside ‘Frustration’ from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, ‘Soul Inside’ from This Last Night In Sodom and ‘Darker Times’ from Cruelty Without Beauty.
This song is a product of its time, referencing social media, ‘Our social media makes us slaves,’ politics, ‘I don’t want to know about the politician talks,’ and the pandemic, ‘So wash your hands and sing Happy Birthday.’ The delivery of news and its instant availability ties these themes together, finished off with a harsh truth from Almond, ‘Before you get deluded, read the small print of life, Happiness NOT included, Happiness NOT included.’
This genuine lyric is driven by the music created by Dave Ball and Riccardo Mulhall, who utilise a more striking harpsichord sound that cuts through beneath the vocals. The programmed drums are assertive, and the backing vocals are essential to delivering the message in Almond’s chorus. Soft Cell are yet to play this song live, but it’s sure to make a devastating impact in their set when they do.
‘Nostalgia machine’ is first and foremost a dance song, perfectly placed to follow the seriousness of the title track. Here, Soft Cell acknowledge the comfort nostalgia gives to a person, a track that’s non-specific to any generation.
Amongst mentions of classic cars in the Ford Thunderbird and Hawk Studebaker with a hint of T-Rex in ‘Get it on, bang a gong,’ Marc Almond even highlights the band’s own ‘Pink Flamingo’, a concept first used in ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’. Almond elaborates on the sound of the album for their YouTube documentary series:
‘I think we’ve really got that Soft Cell sound back a lot more on this album, it feels much to me, much more like a Soft Cell album. It’s got a nice kind of edginess to it…a little bit of a dirtiness to it. It’s still got that post-punk attitude, electronic band attitude.’ – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part three)
‘Nighthawks’ expands on the dancing thread of ‘Nostalgia machine’, with a darker theme. Marc Almond’s lyric centres around the predatory and parasitic people he was surrounded with when Soft Cell first found fame. The track is vocally augmented by American drag queen and musician Christeene, who co-writes Nighthawks with the duo, slapping this song with a severe sound not heard elsewhere on *Happiness not included.
Dave Ball’s voice can also be heard in between the two vocalists - ‘Nighthawks, in a lonely city, Nighthawks, in a lonely place.’ His distinctive tone isn’t only audible on this album, but goes back as far as the Mutant Moments version of ‘Frustration’ in 1980 and later on ‘Monoculture’, Soft Cell’s lead single from Cruelty Without Beauty. Ball discusses the origins of Nighthawks:
“Well, ‘Nighthawks’ started off just as an instrumental that I had. It wasn’t really a Soft Cell track, it was just something that I was doing as a solo thing, and then I think, Marc heard it and said ‘What’s that track? I’d really like to do some vocals on it.’ So, feel free.” – Dave Ball (The Making of *Happiness not included, part two)
Marc picks up the story:
“I just loved it, I said ‘I’ve gotta nick this Dave because I really like this track.’ So I really liked it, I just loved that it was kind of something- I mean a lot of the songs we’d been writing so far were more kind of song songs. I just thought that we need to have something that’s kind of a bit dark and a bit edgy, like thrown into the mix.” – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part two)
‘I always think that when Marc and I work together, it’s like, you know, Marc is writing the script and I’m writing the soundtrack. I always think of it in filmic terms.’ – Dave Ball (The Making of *Happiness not included, part one)
‘I’m not a friend of God’ in its intriguing title is only heightened by its curious music, written by Ball and Riccardo Mulhall. As well as the usual synthesizers expected in a Soft Cell song, the musicians also indulge in organ and vibraphone elements. Adding to these instruments, this piece features live strings recorded and arranged by Martin McCarrick on cello, and on violin by Kimberlee McCarrick.
‘There are those who are friends of God, they always find a reason, for his cruel and callous behaviour, he’s not gonna be my saviour.’
‘I’m not a friend of God’ could easily exist in another life with this beat and these lyrics, sung by a crooner in a suit backed by a full orchestra. This is a testament to the influences Dave Ball and Marc Almond bring to Soft Cell. After all, Almond did duet tremendously with Gene Pitney in 1989.
‘I’m sitting in a room alone, and I’m looking at a screen, staring with the sound turned down, in my adolescent dream.’
With a tempo and arrangement that echoes traditional early 1960’s Wall of Sound productions, ‘Tranquiliser’ explores the numbing effect of constant screen-scrolling. But it also touches on the deadening of creative sectors, such as the death of the high-street and how this makes previously vibrant areas all look the same, ‘Now I could be anywhere, in any other town.’ Almond also discusses the cycle of movie remakes and their familiarity, ‘They’re re-doing all the 80s and we’ve all been there before.’
Musically, this is another song that could be transplanted into the work of a full orchestra. The foundations of which already exist in the tubular bell and backing vocal lines, the former being a particular feature of Tranquiliser. Ball and Mulhall have written keyboard string elements too, and Marc Almond contributes electric guitar for the only time on *Happiness not included.
“For me it’s about a few things. It’s about feeling out of place in the world when you’re just getting older, and you feel…that the world you knew is slowly disappearing away, like buildings are being pulled down, things are going and losing people as well. Because you start getting to that age when you start to lose people and it becomes a foreign country. You’re living in a foreign country that you don’t recognise anymore, and you think ‘Well, I haven’t really got a place that’s really for me anymore, I don’t really have a place in this, whatever this is anymore.’ And I imagine yourself, you’re finding somewhere to escape to, somewhere…you have all these dreams of the past and these kind of ideals that you have of the past, things like that. And they all seem naïve in a way now, naïve and maybe you were just dreaming. And it is that echo of the 1960’s, 1970’s, we’re going back to that nostalgia theme again I suppose. I imagine sailing away and I really love the way the music just goes on and on at the end. It’s great, it’s great but it’s fantastic and there’s some dreamy things, sailing away across some sea to somewhere you know?” – Marc Almond (The Making of *Happiness not included, part three)
For the final track on *Happiness not included, Soft Cell return to the themes presented in ‘Happy happy happy’ of the idyllic world, though executed in an entirely different way. ‘New Eden’ is considered and thoughtful, but also resigned.
The soft melodic keyboard at its centre is beautifully accompanied by the album’s backing vocalists, along with the McCarrick string players who elevate the song’s outro to heavenly heights. Almond’s lyric makes it so there could be no other way for this album to end, all the disillusion across the previous eleven songs leading to one conclusion:
‘Why are we here in this miserable town? Tears running down our faces, finding our place in this sad little world, good luck to you and goodbye to it all. We’re leaving, looking for the New Eden…’
Soft Cell have made a thoroughly thematically modern and relevant album in ‘*Happiness not included’. Marc Almond’s observations of society and the expectations foisted upon us are lyrically fleshed out in a way that speaks across generations. With Dave Ball’s unending high-quality writing and production, the duo have stayed true to their recognisable sound whilst keeping their feet firmly planted in the time and place that grieves them. A truly worthy addition to the Soft Cell catalogue, featuring some of their best work yet.
--------
References:
Almond, M. and Ball, D. (2022) The Making of *Happiness not included (part one) Hosted on the official Soft Cell YouTube account
Almond, M. and Ball, D. (2022) The Making of *Happiness not included (part two) Hosted on the official Soft Cell YouTube account
Almond, M. and Ball, D. (2022) The Making of *Happiness not included (part three) Hosted on the official Soft Cell YouTube account
--------
Purchase Soft Cell’s latest album, ‘*Happiness not included’ on CD, vinyl and cassette on their Lexer Music store. Their store also features apparel, previous releases and Dave Ball’s autobiography.
For more information about Soft Cell, including upcoming tour dates, visit their official website.
Follow Marc Almond on Facebook and Instagram @marcalmondofficial, and on Twitter @MarcAlmond.
Follow Dave Ball on Facebook @daveballofficial, and on Instagram and Twitter @daveballelectro.
Follow Soft Cell on Facebook @softcell, and on Instagram and Twitter @softcellhq.
--------
Follow and interact with Moths and Giraffes on Instagram and Facebook @mothsandgiraffes, and on Twitter @mothsgiraffes.
We have a Spotify Playlist! Featuring almost every artist we've written about on Moths and Giraffes, find some new music here.
Submissions are currently closed, but if you’d just like to send us your thoughts, don’t hesitate to contact us via our social media accounts, our contact page, or via email at mothsandgiraffes@outlook.com. We receive a lot of emails though, so please bear with us!
