SOFT CELL - Danceteria

Sooner or later everyone has to reckon with the past, to take stock of the many mistakes and few satisfactions of a lifetime, but the price to pay is considerable, especially when this happens with the bitter awareness of maturity and the present. It's therefore not easy to grasp the enormous emotional weight that Marc Almond had to face in completing this latest chapter under the name Soft Cell.

It was immediately clear that the journey through the memories of Dave Ball and Marc Almond, first undertaken with the pleasant “Cruelty Without Beauty” in 2002, and then revived twenty years later with the patchy “Happiness Not Included”, had nothing to do with the golden-years trilogy of the band. Nostalgia is a tricky beast, and it's even harder to untangle remorse from regret. This unplanned celebration of times gone by and of the now departed friend Dave Ball offers some assertive, inviting moments: however filtered through electronic trickery, Almond's voice is decidedly more on point than on the previous album.

After the interesting intro of “Elusive”, the title track lines up all the real and virtual icons of an unrepeatable era, where transgression wasn't shaped by the demands of an audience but born from a desire to confront and to dare. The dance groove is saturated just the right amount, and the images evoked trace the evolution of the unbridled hedonism of an era now consigned to history.
Although it starts off on the right foot – the dance-floor delights of “The Space Inside” and “Times Square” are indeed enjoyable – the third and final comeback album by Soft Cell, “Danceteria”, doesn't offer enough creative ideas to rely on. It's more the context that stirs interest in a record we'd otherwise dismiss as dignified retro.
Neon lights, peep shows and nights spent in seedy clubs return to centre stage, but on “Danceteria”, rather than the transgression that animated “Non Stop Erotic Cabaret“, what emerges is a commemorative attitude that favours aesthetic hedonism over the unhealthy atmospheres of the Eighties.

Marc Almond's desire to honour the memory of his friend Dave Ball, who died shortly before the album was completed, is commendable. This makes it easy to forgive the use of autotune to refresh his voice and adapt it to the synth-pop fabric of the project, a choice that at times acts like a sword of Damocles, ready to blunt the record's best ideas, such as the visceral, unhealthy “What Is Your Morality” or the disco-leaning drift of the album's finest refrain, “Wave To America”. Never more than here do the lyrics take on particular significance.
Marc Almond tells of prostitutes, of trans people on the dark corners of the streets, of fetish, of black leather outfits, in a string of reflections on marginalisation and acceptance that he has already masterfully explored in his many solo albums and in the splendid projects under the name Marc & The Mambas.
At this point it becomes easy to forgive the less successful moments of “Danceteria”. Without doubt the Was (Not Was) track “Out Come The Freaks” (with Nona Hendryx on backing vocals) deserved a more spirited reworking; tracks like “Crackland” and “In Heaven (When I Dance With You)” are more than superfluous, almost embarrassing, and even the one romantic oasis, “The Rainbow Room”, ultimately falls flat.

With “Danceteria”, the name Soft Cell is also definitively consigned to memory. It's a dignified, interesting final chapter, more for its lyrics than for its musical ideas, decidedly retro and at times enjoyable, but not enough to create that marvellous spark the duo gave to history with three small synth-pop gems. So let the celebrations and tributes for two musicians of noble lineage come, but let's not call this a final masterpiece: here the only true marvel is the authenticity of a story that still commands admiration.

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01/10/2026