― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Monday, 8 May 2006 11:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Monday, 8 May 2006 11:33 (eighteen years ago) link
What I meant to say, is I think "Down In The Subway" is Soft Cell's best cover. Feel free to disagree, as I'm sure you all do.
― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Monday, 8 May 2006 12:47 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Monday, 8 May 2006 12:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim (Tim), Monday, 8 May 2006 13:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 8 May 2006 13:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Monday, 8 May 2006 13:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Monday, 8 May 2006 14:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Monday, 8 May 2006 14:24 (eighteen years ago) link
the 12" of "say hello" (which might, on the day of reckoning, just end up being my favourite song in the world)
i've just finished copying a dusty HD's worth of old MP3s on to my new(ish) mac. out of several thousand, this is the one i went straight to and played.
i don't think i'd change a word of what i wrote there, either.
― toast kid (grimly fiendish), Monday, 6 October 2008 17:32 (fifteen years ago) link
I just rediscovered Non-stop Erotic Cabaret. God I love this album. Is it a bad thing that it kind-of speaks to me?
― burt_stanton, Thursday, 26 February 2009 17:40 (fifteen years ago) link
What, do you identify with being a sex dwarf?
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 26 February 2009 17:42 (fifteen years ago) link
haha, no. Just the feeling and attitude of grubby urban vice and disappointment.
― burt_stanton, Thursday, 26 February 2009 17:45 (fifteen years ago) link
xpostBored suburban housewife?
― Creedence Clearwater Couto (Billy Dods), Thursday, 26 February 2009 17:46 (fifteen years ago) link
Nah. My friends were weirdo eccentrics and we'd go out and do the club thing, be weird, do drugs, etc. and my father was some button-down guy who secretly picked up trannies in 1980s Time Square ... and would disappear in prison for weeks (we were told he was working late). My highschool best friend (who's now dying of AIDS sadly) looks exactly like Marc Almond, so maybe that, too.
Anyway, this is a great album. Soft Cell A+
― burt_stanton, Thursday, 26 February 2009 17:49 (fifteen years ago) link
my father was some button-down guy who secretly picked up trannies in 1980s Time Square ... and would disappear in prison for weeks (we were told he was working late)
Exactly what was the explanation for weekends, then.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 26 February 2009 17:53 (fifteen years ago) link
No idea. We just thought he was working. What a weird upbringing. Anyway, Marc Almond really does irony well just using music ... I didn't appreciate it until now.
― burt_stanton, Thursday, 26 February 2009 18:01 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah, anyone who can cameo as well as he did in the frickin' Coil "Tainted Love" video can operate on a level higher than an "is it irony or not?" type thing.
― System Jr. (Mackro Mackro), Thursday, 26 February 2009 20:12 (fifteen years ago) link
I just learned what a "bedsit" is and boy did I have that song wrong. I thought a bedsit was like a babysitter for grown-ups? Which I knew made no sense because he was "all alone," but I thought maybe he felt alone spiritually next to the cold panoptic eye of this freaky adult babysitter. That and sometimes it's foolish to try & make sense of lyrics but maybe I should've tried harder with this one by employing a dictionary instead of totally making shit up.
― the 'hip' thing nowadays — gay Mormon missionaries (Abbbottt), Sunday, 17 April 2011 17:24 (thirteen years ago) link
Another hypothesis was a "bedsit" was a person who works at a spanking parlor? I feel kind of embarrassed by all this but you have to admit such a figure would fit in the general Soft Cell world.
― the 'hip' thing nowadays — gay Mormon missionaries (Abbbottt), Sunday, 17 April 2011 17:25 (thirteen years ago) link
I like all these alternate interpretations!
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 17 April 2011 17:28 (thirteen years ago) link
i have recently found that i quite like soft cell. not always as music (they have only a small handful of songs i hold close), but as characters, as performance, as a wonderful thing that existed in the world. like suicide, they transmute rock & pop into this wholly other language, the rinky-dink chintz of the sounds a perfect foil for marc's arch sleaze and coy torment. also enjoying the way their music and attitude - perhaps in turn channeling throbbing gristle's? - leach out into their followers and contemporaries, usually in more "palatable" (less explicitly queer) guise. berlin's "sex (i'm a)", eurythmics' "love is a stranger", even ebn-ozn's "aeiou sometimes y"...
― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Friday, 22 April 2011 20:42 (thirteen years ago) link
classic burt itt
― buzza, Friday, 22 April 2011 20:44 (thirteen years ago) link
i guess everything i just said is a cliche, the received wisdom, soft cell 101, but i never really gave them a fair shake at the time and have been entertaining myself recently playing russian roulette with nostalgia. "talk talk" vs. "it's my life", that kind of thing.
― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Friday, 22 April 2011 20:52 (thirteen years ago) link
I still can't believe a bedsit is just a place a person lives in.
― offee is for losers only, do you not c? (Abbbottt), Saturday, 23 April 2011 00:54 (thirteen years ago) link
that it is literally his (only) homeI think about this every day.
― offee is for losers only, do you not c? (Abbbottt), Saturday, 23 April 2011 00:55 (thirteen years ago) link
what kind of question is this, who would ever say dud?
― akm, Saturday, 23 April 2011 03:04 (thirteen years ago) link
The original video for Sex Dwarf remains disturbingly impressive:
http://vimeo.com/10458506
(NSFW and probably illegal in a few states.)
― doug watson, Friday, 12 August 2011 02:18 (thirteen years ago) link
oh man i wanna watch that but i'm at W..Cabaret is the best €2 purchase I made this year
― willem, Friday, 12 August 2011 06:48 (thirteen years ago) link
NSEC is one of those albums that sold because of the hit single, only to surprise/shock said buyers that the single isn't remotely representative of their style. Sometimes, discovering that can be a good thing. This time, it is.
― Lee626, Friday, 12 August 2011 08:18 (thirteen years ago) link
Here doggy doggy
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/soft_cells_infamous_sex_dwarf_video_nsfw
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 20:28 (twelve years ago) link
now that looks like a good time
― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 20:40 (twelve years ago) link
...is currently banned from YouTube.
Nope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=470l3j-56CY
I don't know how anyone could call the band who made that video a dud.
― viborg, Thursday, 29 March 2012 00:19 (twelve years ago) link
I never got into Soft Cell as much as I did other bands from that period, but I still enjoy listening to that first album from time to time.
― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:48 (twelve years ago) link
The extended Torch is extraordinary. Their best moment, I think. Loving this tonight.
― kraudive, Tuesday, 5 June 2012 01:49 (twelve years ago) link
NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET is one of the best albums of the 80s. It has aged like fine wine. Little known secret: Soft Cell's videos are amongst the best of all-time. They were all directed (AFAIK) by Tim Pope, who worked extensively with The Cure.
― Tyler Burns (burns46824@yahoo.com), Saturday, 20 October 2012 18:26 (eleven years ago) link
Chilling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_x1Arnuw0
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 31 March 2013 14:32 (eleven years ago) link
When I finally read the book it worked even more brilliantly, though they are two different beasts in the end.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 31 March 2013 14:48 (eleven years ago) link
Go Alfred!
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/soft-cell-feature
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 20:16 (eleven years ago) link
thanks!
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 May 2013 00:17 (eleven years ago) link
Really great in-depth feature on The Art of Falling Apart here at the Quietus today
http://thequietus.com/articles/14100-soft-cell-interview-marc-almond
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 13 December 2013 16:41 (ten years ago) link
I can't stop listening to This Last In Sodom at the moment... while not the most accessible Soft Cell album, there's something about it that keeps making me return to it a lot at the moment. 'Slave To This', for one, is just insane and wonderful.
― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Sunday, 10 August 2014 22:17 (ten years ago) link
This Last Night In Sodom, rather.
― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Sunday, 10 August 2014 22:21 (ten years ago) link
and oh my god, 'Surrender To A Stranger'...
― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Sunday, 10 August 2014 22:39 (ten years ago) link
Great, scuzzy and insane album. My favorite of theirs by a mile.
― Acid Hose (Capitaine Jay Vee), Sunday, 10 August 2014 23:49 (ten years ago) link
The Art of Falling Apart is my favourite but some of my favourite songs of theirs are on Sodom. Little Rough Rhinestone, Meet Murder My Angel and Soul Inside are all so good. It does have its weaker moments, Slave to This still creeps me out a little too much and Down in the Subway is the only weak Soft Cell single.
― Kitchen Person, Monday, 11 August 2014 01:44 (ten years ago) link
I've occasionally read Sodom being described as "unlistenable", but that's absolute bollocks really. It does have an attitude to it that I don't seem to get from the other two Soft Cell albums, though. A synth-punk from a time when mainstream synth-pop was getting increasingly chirpier.
― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Tuesday, 12 August 2014 11:28 (ten years ago) link
*album
― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Tuesday, 12 August 2014 11:29 (ten years ago) link
Neil Tennant's review of This Last Night In Sodom from Smash Hits:
Out with a bang. For their final LP together Marc Almond and David Ball have put together a hot, rockin' collection of new songs about sin, squalot, suffering etc. The rock'n'roll rhythm of 'Down In The Subway' isn't restricted to that track; several others, particularly 'Mr Self Destruct' could be jived to with ease. Others are steeped in a luscious, Spanish sensuousness, hot and revengeful, with richly textured synthesizers and a twangy guitar. A triumphant farewell. (8.5 out of 10)
― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Wednesday, 20 August 2014 00:24 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h2SS-sSMfY
― Hungry4Ass, Thursday, 12 February 2015 00:00 (nine years ago) link
Woah, sounds great.
― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, 31 August 2023 08:09 (one year ago) link
"This Last Night In Sodom": a perfect album, I say. Consistent throughout. Buzzy, wild synths and boxy drum machines. Almond's nearly unhinged overdubbed harmonies and backing vox. Tons of reverb. MONO! Frayed and hungover sounding yet full of a weird, speedy energy. Needs more accolades!
― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Friday, 6 October 2023 01:04 (eleven months ago) link
Trudat!
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 6 October 2023 02:42 (eleven months ago) link
Thirded! (is it really mono though? I never noticed)
― Doctor Madame Frances Experimento, LLC", Friday, 6 October 2023 14:06 (eleven months ago) link
Some of the tracks are, yes!
― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Friday, 6 October 2023 15:14 (eleven months ago) link