PHOTO: MIKE OWEN | Everybody has one Soft Cell song. For most people, it is “Tainted Love,” and that is fine. It is a perfect record. It is also a door, not a house.
I went through the door at fourteen and never came back out. What was on the other side was not a synth-pop novelty act with a Northern Soul cover to its name. It was Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, a song cycle about bedsits and hustlers and cheap glamour that owes more to Brecht and Weill than to the chart it briefly conquered.
It was The Art of Falling Apart. It was This Last Night in Sodom, the sound of a band detonating itself on purpose. Then came the solo work, where things got genuinely strange: Marc and the Mambas, Torment and Toreros, a double album Almond himself has described as the sound of a nervous breakdown. Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters. An entire album of Jacques Brel translations.
He is a pioneer of the form, one of the handful who took a cheap synthesizer and a drum machine and got a torch song out of them. He also never once stayed in the room he built. I have seen him play more times than I can count, and I have never seen him coast.
On September 25, Soft Cell will release Danceteria, their sixth and last studio album. Dave Ball finished it days before he died on October 22, 2025, and Almond has been plain about what that means: without Ball, there are no more Soft Cell records.
My favorite Soft Cell song has always been “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye,” and I have never had much of a defense for that beyond the fact that it takes me apart every time. It went to number three in Britain in January 1982, an Almond and Ball composition, a breakup staged in an ordinary nightclub and sung with more contempt and more tenderness than a chart single is supposed to hold.
They borrowed the song’s title for the O2 show in September 2018, the one billed as the last one ever, and closed the night with it. Then they made two more records. For years, the joke was that Soft Cell could never quite finish saying goodbye. It has stopped being funny. The song has to do the job now that it was only rehearsed before, and Dave Ball wrote half of it.
The last Soft Cell record is set in a nightclub too. That is either a coincidence or the entire point. Danceteria takes its name from the Manhattan club that threw the American launch party for Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, and it runs the length of one early-Eighties New York night, from the velvet rope to the bleary walk home and back inside again. It is not a wake. It is a disco record.
It is also, he is careful to point out, not the whole record. Almond told me he rarely buys vinyl anymore, that he has no space left for it, and that cutting Danceteria to two sides cost the album songs he would rather you heard. He grew up with the format and loves it. He also thinks many people now buy it for the sleeve. Ask a vinyl magazine’s favorite question and be ready for the answer you get. He was that direct about all of it.
You came out of Leeds Poly on a performance art course, not out of a band—so the things you were stealing from as a young artist weren’t all records. What was in the mix in those first couple of years, and which of those early obsessions would surprise people who only know Soft Cell?
As much as I loved music and had been a fan from a very early age, at art college I was influenced as much by film, theatre, and even dance as by music. Film particularly influenced me a lot, from the kitchen-sink black-and-white dramas of the 1960s to Italian Giallo and the lush drama of Visconti, the underground movies of Andy Warhol and early John Waters. I also loved experimental theatre and dance, such as Ballet Rambert and Lindsay Kemp. I always thought I’d go in a theatre direction as opposed to music.
My art college years were the years that the punk movement was in full swing, which was hugely influential because it showed us you didn’t have to be a brilliant musician; in fact, it was a reaction against all of that. Soft Cell evolved out of that.
Danceteria is a love letter to a New York that no longer exists—Madonna’s first show, Warhol, Congo Bill on the fourth floor. But memory is unreliable and usually flattering. How much of this record is the club as it actually was, versus the club as it became in your head over forty years?
The track “Danceteria,” I hope, paints a picture, but it’s a personal recollection and self-referential, and it name-checks some people I knew at the time. I could have name checked a lot more, but then it would have just been a list of names. I hope the track conveys a good feeling of hedonistic euphoria and the excitement I felt of being in New York and nightclubs such as Danceteria and other clubs at that time in 1982. The club is a microcosm of this life that we dance our way through. That life is a Danceteria. It’s a good word. The album, though, is a love letter to New York at that time, both the light and the dark. I tried to think of it as a journey through a New York night.
Dave’s music came first—a whole file of tunes arriving unannounced—and the New York concept followed. Which track was the one that cracked it open, where you heard it, and the shape of the whole album suddenly appeared?
The first piece of music I heard was the music for the actual track “Danceteria,” and it was the first word that came into my mind; it started the theme for me.
Nona Hendryx on “Out Come The Freaks” is inspired casting. When you’re bringing a guest into a song, are you looking for a voice that belongs to that world already, or one that surprises the song into becoming something else?
Nona Hendryx and I have known each other for a long time, and I felt it was long overdue that I’d made a record with her. “Out Come The Freaks” was a track I loved in the early ’80s, when it was part of my DJ set. It was the last track we recorded for the album. The original was on ZE Records, as was another track that was part of my set, “Busting Out” by Nona.
I knew I wanted Nona on the track, so I sent it to her and said, “Just do whatever you want.” She’s a great artist with a wonderful presence, and she was also a Danceteria regular, so it’s great that she’s part of the record.
Danceteria is a journey through a single night, but on vinyl, that night has an intermission—you have to get up and flip it. Did you sequence with two sides in mind, and where does side one end?
To be honest with you, we didn’t record the album with vinyl in mind. I know it’s an important format these days, and I love vinyl, but I’d prefer it if people heard the full album on a long-play format. I had to do some severe editing for vinyl and lose a couple of tracks, so while vinyl is great, it’s not the full album.
You’ve said vinyl holds special memories for you, given that you’re of that certain age. But set the nostalgia aside for a second—when you put a record on versus streaming the same thing, what do you actually hear that’s different? And does it change how you sing, knowing a track will end up cut to lacquer rather than only living in a playlist?
I grew up with vinyl, so I’ll always have an affection for vinyl records. Though to be honest, I rarely buy them anymore. In this age of downsizing, I just don’t have the space for them, and I have all the vinyl records I’ll ever want. My copy of T. Rex’s Electric Warrior is dog-eared, scratched, and barely plays. I think there’s something nice and real in the crackles and scratches, and an analog sound to my ears is better than digital. I’m old school on most things. I think many people buy vinyl now for the artwork on the sleeve that they can put on display on the shelf, and may play the record once, if at all.
The New York you’re celebrating was only months away from being changed forever. Is there a shadow underneath Danceteria, or did you make a deliberate choice to keep it joyful and let the loss stay off-mic?
Yes, I did, I wanted it to be more of a love letter to those times, though also acknowledging that New York had a darker side. Tracks like “The Space Inside” were inspired by the trans sex workers and heavy leather scene around 14th Street and 9th Avenue, and the Meatpacking District. People looking for their space in a city that could be quite unforgiving and lonely.
The loneliness of the city is also referenced on the track “After Hours.” It wasn’t all disco and glitter balls. At that time, New York, Manhattan was quite run down and dangerous, and the club culture was very hedonistic, and the art and culture often taking place in club life was very heavy and transgressive. In 1982, we were hearing about a new disease for the first time, and though it would devastate the city over the next few years, it had not yet taken hold and didn’t even have a name, but its presence was just being felt.
The voice on Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret belonged to a very young man. What can you do with yours now that you couldn’t then, and what have you stopped asking of it?
In the early days of recording, I had a very punk approach to things: sing it once, and that’s enough. The emotion is true and genuine, if not technically good. I listen to old tracks, and I sound so young and high like a twelve-year-old out of tune. It’s curious, but it was authentic.
I still like to think I’m authentic, but I can’t be that same naive singer anymore. Your voice changes, deepens, and the songs you sing are different, from the perspective of a person who’s lived with experiences. I used to sing songs that sometimes were too old for my years, but now I’ve grown into them. I think, though, vocally these past few years I’ve been at a peak, and I’m still, at almost 70, have a good range, better than in the past, but I wait for that to change, as it will. I’m on a mad course of recording at the moment. Getting things down on record while I still have a voice I know.
You’re playing Il Rumore del Lutto in Parma—a festival built around mourning. Of everything on the calendar this year, what made you say yes to that one?
It seemed like an interesting festival, and I haven’t played in Italy in a while.
Phil Larsen has stood in for Dave before, and you’ve said Dave remains the beating heart of the band. What’s the actual difference on stage—in the moment, mid-song—between playing those songs with Dave beside you and playing them now?
Obviously, I miss having Dave as part of Soft Cell period and in live performances, though Philip plays a lot of live parts, many of the programmed parts are Dave’s, so all the material you hear live still has a strong presence from him. Dave had given his blessing for Philip to be a Soft Cell member a long while ago, and Dave’s actual live appearances were only in the UK. As there will be no new Soft Cell material without Dave, live sets will include only material from all albums up to and including Danceteria, so Dave’s presence will always be part of the live show.
Darker Waves puts a dozen acts on a beach for a day, and half that crowd came for one song. Meanwhile, you’ve got a brand-new record about a Manhattan club most of them have never heard of. How do you build a set so the new material isn’t the bit people wait out?
Well, concerning Soft Cell, I’d probably say two songs. I won’t be doing new material at Darker Waves. With a 40-minute set, it’ll be tailored to that crowd and what they prefer to hear. We have a few other West Coast USA concerts around Darker Waves, and that’ll be a longer, more rounded show featuring new songs as well as old.
Danceteria covers more ground, I think, than simply being about Manhattan; tracks such as “Decadence Is Hard Work,” “What is Your Morality,” and “Losing Yourself” could have been on any Soft Cell record.
Most bands never get to write their own ending—Soft Cell now has a full stop on it. Fifty years from now, somebody pulls Danceteria out of a crate with no context, no “Tainted Love,” no idea who you were. What do you want that stranger to hear?
An album that I hope hasn’t dated too much with time.
