ALBUM OF THE WEEK
*Happiness Not Included is Soft Cell’s first album since 2002’s Cruelty Without Beauty. Dave Ball’s lovely, clean and sparse keyboard sound is great to hear again but Marc Almond’s lyrics are clunky and at times laughably bad. The first nine songs contain examples too numerous to list here. But on Nighthawks for example he adopts a voice reminiscent of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang and sings lines such as ‘Get it, shoot it, f**k it, kick it, love it ohhh’. They’re no better on Nostalgia Machine – ‘Nostalgia machine, nostalgia machine, like a silver machine, an electronic dream’. The lead single Heart Like Chernobyl contains the line, ‘It’s all the fault of the media and all the fear they feed ya’.
The pity is that the album closes on three gems: I’m Not A Friend Of God, Tranquiliser and New Eden which, though six minutes long, is beautifully constructed. But, sadly, mostly the title proves apt.