new introductory bit here.

This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.

note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input.

Marc Almond is best known as the singer for the synthpop duo Soft Cell, but even while that band was a going concern as British hitmakers, he started a separate career. He released a pair of double albums in 1982 and 1983, Untitled and Torment and Toreros, under the banner of "Marc & the Mambas," and moody little monsters they are, with black, gothic instrumentation provided by the likes of Ann Hogan and The The's Matt Johnson. They include, among some Almond-penned bleak "love is evil and cruel" pieces, covers of various songs by Jacques Brel, Lou Reed and Scott Walker.

The Mambas gave way to a backing band called The Willing Sinners, featuring Hogan and future Banshee Martin McCarrick, and Almond left Some Bizzare Records for Virgin. Marc's mid-80s output for this label finally saw US release in 1997 on Thirsty Ear Records; at the time, Virgin could not find a label in America who would take it. Vermin in Ermine was the first to appear, in 1984. 1985's Stories of Johnny was his most successful solo chart LP, containing ten moody tales of lust and despair. The music is much lighter than what passes for the unlistenable stuff they call "goth" in 21st Century America; the mood comes from the lyrics and the arrangements. The swirling opener "Traumas Traumas" just ensnares listeners, and the choral background singing "Oh, my, can't you feel my heart" on "Love's Little White Lies" just conveys utter hopelessness in a way that all the Nine Inch Nails-inspired industrial flotsam can only hint at. The American issue also includes CD-Extra promo videos for the three singles, "Stories of Johnny," "This House is Haunted" and "Love Letters." "Letters," which just missed the UK top 40, is unbearably hopeless, with Almond singing a chorus full to overflowing of passion and promise to someone who quite clearly could not care less. Thirsty Ear also released 1987's Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters in the US for the first time.

Signed to Parlophone, Almond assembled a new backing band called La Magia and released The Stars We Are in 1988, a great record which featured a duet with Nico in what would be her last performance before her untimely death. The album also featured a cover of Gene Pitney's classic "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart," and when it came time to release it as a single, Pitney agreed to sing it as a duet with Almond. The result was a mammoth #1 hit. Sadly, Capitol, who had issued this album in America, didn't like the idea of two men singing a love song together (they weren't singing it to each other, dummies) and never issued it. The album did dent the US chart at #144, and the single "Tears Run Rings" proved successful in some markets with the college crowd.

Parlophone passed on Almond's next offering, which he had been recording off and on for the past four years. The works of Jacques Brel had seen English translation before; both Scott Walker and David Bowie had been inspired by Brel, and Almond had actually recorded a pair of Brel songs with the Mambas in 1982-83. Marc recorded these twelve songs, with translations approved by Brel's widow, in sporadic sessions from 1986-89 before they were finally issued by Some Bizzare in a garishly-designed sleeve in 1990, but, despite a chart resurgence with that recent UK #1 "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart," the album failed to chart. It made it to America in a very widely-available import, and was finally licensed by Thirsty Ear in 1996. Absinthe, a collection of songs by other French composers, was recorded over the same period, but not issued until 1993, and has not seen a domestic issue. Not nearly as compelling as Jacques, Absinthe nevertheless has a few good songs, most notably a treatment of Rimbaud's poem "Mes Petites Ameureuses."

By 1990, Marc was more of a star than he'd been in eight years, albeit one with principally a cult following. Parlophone hoped that Enchanted, his eighth solo album, would cement the inroads made by his #1 single. The record is somewhat impressive, despite the whiny lead single "A Lover Spurned," which was problematic since that was the big hit single the record company hoped for. It did at least dent the UK top 30. As with much of his work, it's full of dramatic love=death metaphors, but this one has an unexpected flamenco influence. The second single "The Desperate Hours" is the most direct musically, but there's also a very Spanish-styled set of lyrics about a widow's unexpected betrayal at the reading of a will. The packaging is camp to the point of embarassment, but there are a few good payoffs within.

Most interesting for longtime fans, the third single "Waifs and Strays" marked a reunion with Dave Ball. Now one-half of the remix/DJ duo The Grid, Ball remixed the single for club play. Collaborations with Ball continued on the following year's Tenement Symphony. Now back on Some Bizzare in the UK and Sire in the USA, Marc was back in the UK top 20 with his upbeat, irreverent club version of Jacques Brel's "Jacky." Unlike the material on the Jacques LP, this wasn't at all traditional or faithful to the moody original, which had been popularized in England in the late 60s by Scott Walker. Ball's hi-NRG stamp is all over this one, co-writing the sweeping, anthemic "Meet Me in My Dream" and the lush, romantic "My Hand Over My Heart." Oddly though, the album's big success came with the third single "The Days of Pearly Spencer." Originally a minor hit in the 1960s for British folkster and psychedelic pioneer David McWilliams, the single was pulled months after promotion for the album had realistically ended and shot to #4 on the charts.

Rather than a return to mainstream form, "Spencer" proved to be his last appearance in the top 20 to date. Never a big one for touring, Almond put on a huge live show entitled Twelve Years of Tears at the Royal Albert Hall in September 1992. The subsequent live album, edited to one CD from the full two and a half hour show, was a chart bomb, not even purchased by as many people as saw the concert. They missed out on a very good performance, with standout versions of "Waifs and Strays" and the Soft Cell classic "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye."

1995's "Adored and Explored," his last appearance in the top 30, was the first of four singles to emerge from the following year's Fantastic Star set. Now signed to Mercury and again without US distribution, Almond was settling into the same "cult star" mode he was in a decade previously.

In 1998, Marc signed to Echo Records, but the label shut down after the release of his single "Black Kiss." The parent album made its way out on the tiny Blue Star label the following year, impressing few with its by now standard repertoire of songs about cruel women and dangerous love. The upbeat "Tragedy" was a minor break from the standard, and Kelly Ali's guest vocals on "Almost Diamonds" are fantastic. The same cannot be said for the guest appearance of Siouxsie and Budgie of the Creatures on "Threat of Love," but truly both Siouxsie's and Almond's heydays were probably over by this point.

Another album, Stranger Things, was issued in the UK in 2000. A full-fledged Soft Cell reunion, with a new album and tour, came in 2002. (1/03)