A high tech collaboration which takes Marc Almond’s storytelling back to its glory days of sleazy synth pop.

Release Date: 9th January 2026

Label: SFE

Format: 2CD / 2LP

Secret Life

If you’re a fan of early 1980s electropop (and what other kind is there?) then you will undoubtedly have some Soft Cell in your collection. The raw, innovative, slightly unnerving pairing of Marc Almond and David Ball had a tremendous ability to tell stories that you could relate to and, at the same time, feel slightly ashamed of. These were stories of an affluent society’s dark underbelly.

Seedy backstreet clubs, waif-like, androgenous playmates, illicit encounters, double lives, private cinemas, secret photo collections and more. These were the days before the internet when a person’s private life was conducted in person and on paper. Marc Almond wailed these stories, blending glitz and glamour with an unsettling level of eye contact. Imagine Liza Minelli as the lead singer of Sparks and that’s pretty much what you got with Soft Cell. The raw joy of a forgotten age.

Memorabilia

Sparks are an important benchmark. Take any electropop duo featuring a dour, expressionless keyboard player and a charismatic singer, wrapped up in lyrics which deviate from the normal top 40 fare and you have a recipe for innovation by iteration. It’s no surprise, then, that this new re-release will remind you of a variety of other artists. You’ll hear echoes of Pet Shop Boys, John Foxx, Vince Clarke, Giorgio Moroder, even Soft Cell. Originally released on vinyl in Germany in 2016, the album has been revisited and expanded for a wider audience.

The combination of heavy analogue synth basslines with the staccato plink plonk of melodies which make much out of very few notes is very Dave Ball, rest his glorious soul. The overall impression is of a set of songs trying very hard to revive the glory days of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. The overall sound is very much in keeping with Almond’s trademark style. The image that comes to mind is of a man of advancing years going through a secret box of mementos, reliving memories through faded photographs, ticket stubs and phone numbers scribbled on the backs of beer mats. The past brought into the present.

Forever the Same

The lyrics have moved on too. The contact magazines and public toilet graffiti of the early Soft Cell albums have been replaced with social media avatars and the eyes of readers’ wives have been pixelated instead of having black bars put over them. Almond has updated the technology but not the sentiment.

What happened to that sexually naive, pleasure-seeking young waif? Well, he grew up, and so did his listeners. You can’t listen to this and expect to hear Cabaret, but at the same time that seems like the best comparison. It’s hard to explain but listening to Silver City in my 50s is like listening to Cabaret in my teens.

Entertain Me

These songs are growers, not showers. You don’t get all the pleasure up front, only to tire of it just as quickly. These are songs that you have to work at. There’s a maturity to Almond that is hard to appreciate on the first listen because the melodies are deceptively simple and the lyrics apparently cliched and familiar. Work at it and you’ll be rewarded with a set of stories which show a collaboration between a singer steeped in nostalgia and a band exploring synth music as if discovering it for the first time.

In Fur you’ll be reminded of the opening notes of Depeche Mode’s See You. Worship Me Now has strains of Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) in its Europop dancefloor frenzy. I Don’t Kiss echoes Pet Shop Boys’ Love Comes Quickly which foreshadows Almond’s 2022 collaboration with another synthpop duo. The album swaps sleaze for ease as the frantic energy of Cabaret’s Entertain Me matures into the stylish sophistication of Get Closer, two songs with similar intent yet a generation apart in delivery.

Nostalgia Machine

According to the press release, Marc Almond has personally curated this rerelease and, actually, you can hear it. Apparently it’s his “most synth laden body of work since Soft Cell” according to Electricity Club in 2016. Certainly it ditches the orchestral tone of albums such as The Stars We Are or Tenement Symphony for something which does indeed sound a lot like Soft Cell which is no bad thing.

Silver City also contains a number of all new remixes and two previously unreleased Marc Almond with Starcluster tracks, Futuristic Weimar Berlin and Dancing Through The Fire. The cover depicts a futuristic cityscape illustrated by Kraftwerk collaborator Emil Schult and there are two full colour printed inners featuring two all new photographs of Marc.

All new photographs of Marc! And without pixellation or black bars over the eyes, too. What is the world coming to?

Here’s Silver City Ride:

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