If your exposure to Soft Cell has been limited to the glorious and inescapable "Tainted Love", be warned that you might want to start with earlier records like NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET or NON-STOP ECSTATIC DANCING before venturing into this, Soft Cell's 1984 swan song. Singer Marc Almond and keyboardist Dave Ball don't even try to recapture the Top 40 magic of that hit here. Instead, Almond completes his transformation into an electro-pop Scott Walker, operatically singing self-consciously jaded songs like "Mr. Self-Destruct", "Little Rough Rhinestone" and "Meet Murder My Angel", while Ball's keyboards explore an icy, nearly Germanic (in the Kraftwerk/Neu! sense) abstraction. If you have an interest in faux-decadent torch songs in the Piaf/Brel tradition, you should be interested in this electronic hybrid of the style, but if you're looking for "Tainted Love Part II", it ain't here.|
Rovi