By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

Tracklist: Elusive; Danceteria; The Space Inside; Times Square; Two Of A Kind; The Rainbow Room; In Heaven (When I Dance With You); Decadence Is Hard Work; Crackland; What Is Your Morality?; Losing Yourself; After Hours; Wave To America; Out Come The Freaks

Keyboardist Dave Ball died last October shortly after finishing work on Soft Cell’s final album which sees them perfecting some of the best work of their career while lyrically returning to early 80s New York, a pivotal time for the duo.

• Read on for reasons including Danceteria is a wildly entertaining, reflective and fitting epitaph to both Soft Cell and Dave Ball

Almond says: ‘Dave was a wonderfully brilliant musical genius. And I take some solace from the fact that he heard the finished record before he died.

‘He knew it was a great piece of work, and the tunes and hooks are unmistakably Soft Cell. The moment I received the music files from him, it was immediately clear that these songs were among the best he’d ever made. I was stoked and excited, and that helped with my lyrics.’

Title track Danceteria was a song of the month for us in July when we said: ‘Danceteria is the name of the New York nightclub where Soft Cell‘s young Marc Almond and Dave Ball would party until the small hours after recording sessions for their 1981 debut LP Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

‘Madonna has a track with the same title on her upcoming Confessions II album and receives a namecheck in this fine Soft Cell floorfiller because Almond saw her 1st live performance there.’

Even more impressive is the Pet Shop Boys-esque The Space Inside (listen above) stalking the leather bars and transgender sex clubs of Manhattan’s notorious Meatpacking District which muses on the vacuity of clubbing.

Sample lyric: ‘Forever together looking for a place to escape the empty space inside. In the night lights of New York where secrets seldom show. There’s a tale of dreams and pleasures only whispers know’, ‘Aching souls in leather with painted masks they hide’ and ‘Forever dancing wild and free their laughter echoes softly as they bare their scars to illuminate the darkness beneath the distants stars.’

Later in this song cycle Losing Yourself and After Hours transfix on the darkness beyond the dancefloor.

New York is the backdrop for a string of activities including a meal looking from The Rainbow Room (watch and listen above) to the Rockefeller Plaza and now-no-more Twin Towers in 1982.

Marc explains: ‘New York shaped Soft Cell, as it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. It was dirty, dark and dangerous – a real Wild West – but it was also deeply inspiring and exciting. A lot of our original influences came from America anyway: New York punk, DEVO, Suicide, Lou Reed, disco and 1960s soul. But New York was like nowhere else on earth. There were 24-hour nightclubs, music, art and underground theatre. It offered a cornucopia of energy and edge, and the lyrics on Danceteria reflect that time of my life.’

Marc says: ‘There can be no more recordings of Soft Cell without Dave, it would not be possible. The sad reality is that Dave Ball was half of Soft Cell, and live work aside, I can’t write Soft Cell songs without him.’

Danceteria is a wildly entertaining, reflective and fitting epitaph to both Soft Cell and Dave Ball.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Soft Cell Tickets
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