Soft Cell’s best Album – The Art of Falling Apart – is getting the spruce up it richly deserves by being reissued in multiple formats including a diamanté toaster, a deformed cuddly toy and word has it that the platter will be added to the periodic table when they have the next round of PT voting in Svalbard in the new year.
The album has a self-effacing title but the songs are strong and confident. Still sleazy, but less of the slap and tickle with a wink to the postman (?). The title track, Baby Doll, Loving You Hating Me and Where the Heart is are all top-drawer Soft Cell songs.
However the gold in them thar hills is the material you found on the 12 inches (missus, ooh I say! And so on). Martin – a quite literally diabolical song in the sense that the Devil is lurking in there, messing with poor old Mart. It’s a Mugs Game is another wonderful nugget – a teenager having an extremely angry and amusingly inarticulate rant about his lot in life. As a broody teenager at the time I very much related to the, erm, energy. And also a very brilliant Jimi Hendrix medley – yes, you heard me.
Anyway – well worth looking out it for when it’s released as I think this was one of the most unpredictable, prolific and joyous periods of any band.
https://www.softcell.co.uk/product/new-the-art-of-falling-apart-2025-6-cd-box-set-art-print-set
I would argue that I just bought the best Soft Cell album on CD (after only owning the original LP from the year it came out) – This Last Night…In Sodom, which is the album by them that I was the most obsessed with as a teenager. It’s a 2025 reissue with bonus tracks, including a 12″ mix of Soul Inside, but it’s unclear if it’s been remastered…certainly no fancy packaging or box set treatment for this one!
I’m guessing no, but I can’t say I’m ever bothered about such things anyway.
Also, I bought the gigantic Soft Cell mega box set some years ago, and also the gigantic Marc Almond mega box set, so I probably don’t need any more, if I’m honest!
I’ve yet to listen to all of those CDs…box sets are like buffets in the way they both makes me feel completely stuffed, just from looking at all of the offerings on display!
But I’m always up for giving my money to Marc Almond whenever he releases new material.
“Sodom” was recorded in mono (a typically awkward choice by the duo at this point in their career) so it’s debatable whether remastering would have any noticeable effect…
(… and to answer a question further down the thread, yes, “Born To Lose” was the B-side of “Down In The Subway”)
Mono, really? Well I could never tell, whatever they did sounds great to me!
Aha! I was starting to wonder whether I’d imagined it!
According to Marc Almond, »some parts of the album« were recorded in mono, not the whole album.
I bought the LP as a teen because I’d heard Annie Nightingale play Martin. Bit it wasn’t on the LP, so I had to buy the 12″ as well. I will be buying this.
I didn’t go, but they did the megabox (with awful mastering), played their *final* shows at the O2 and pretty soon announced they were working on a new album.
I see Fonda 500 are playing the Hull Adelphi only a few months after playing their final ever show there.
Also, get those chairs ready…Boyzone are coming back, back, BACK!
Wasn’t there a Heartbreakers song on the B-side of one of those 12″s too? (Born to Lose?)
Yes, that’s on the 6CD but not the 2LP. Might be on the 2CD.
Soft Cell were very much “my” band of the time… they had all the right reference points (Northern Soul! Suicide! Kraftwerk! John Barry!), mixed with weirdo art school sensibility, just the right amount of sexual ambiguity, and they annoyed all the right people…
“Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret” has the mega hits (including “Say Hello Wave Goodbye” of course, a song that will outlive us all) but “Falling Apart” is the better album, especially when including the Martin/Hendrix 12” single originally packaged with the LP… and IIRC the NME voted it their 2nd best album of the year, too!
It may be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer the version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye on the Memorabilia compilation CD from the early 90s. Better drum machine, that’s what I’m saying.
I own Tainted Love single on 7 inch * (bought when it was about no. 33) and Soul Inside 12 inch.
* One of the biggest mistakes ever was they put another cover version on the B side (Where did our love go). If they had out any old self written crap on the B side they would have earned considerably more from a million selling record.
(In reply to Dai)
The 12″, which I bought at the time, has Tainted Love segued into Where Did Our Love Go.
I recently picked up the 7″ for 50p. It gets to the end of TL and there’s something missing…