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Soft Cell: *Happiness Not Included review – synth-pop elders with an eye on the future | Musique Non Stop

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Friday, May 6, 2022

Soft Cell: *Happiness Not Included review – synth-pop elders with an eye on the future

(BMG)
Two decades after their last album, the band return with a wryly hopeful record – and some trademark electro bangers

Forty-one years since their debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, and 20 since their last album, 2002’s underwhelming Cruelty Without Beauty, Soft Cell return with an album that makes the very best of their vantage point as synth-pop elders with an eye on the future. *Happiness Not Included cleverly compares the 80s promises of a future straight out of science-fiction (“rocket ships and monorails, electricity that never fails”) with how things have actually turned out. While these songs reference war, famine, loneliness, isolation and authoritarianism, Marc Almond’s witty lyrics and synth man David Ball’s bouncy tunes mean the mood is more wryly hopeful than bleak. Heart Like Chernobyl actually begins: “Oh dear / I feel like North Korea.”

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by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian

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