David Ball: An Appreciation

If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of Soft Cell. It’s a joke but the gateway to most people finding music they like is greatest hits. There were some great compilations that left lasting impacts on my generation. There of course the duality of things. 1991s Memorabilia-The Singles credited to Marc Almond and Soft Cell is at once fantastic, a primer to Almond’s best stuff and also about as good as beginning to end listen as one can experience. 

But on the other hand, you can overthink such things and this compilation is one on which it is easy to overthink These particular “greatest hits” make for a weird grab bag. The most famous songs are 1991 re-recordings of Soft Cell songs. Also, with a US track list of 13 songs (and 2 dance remixes), it is a tough job to limit that catalog to the “best of the best”. From a critic’s perspective, Marc Almond’s solo work is mostly overlooked here. There are his collaborations with Gene Pitney and Bronski Beat that both make for fine additions, but Almond had six albums of solo material by this point, and only two singles (then recently released) made the cut. Yet, such are the arguments to be made and while one can split hairs over whether the compilation was truly representative, it was still a fantastic album. At this point, I had bought it largely on the basis of “Tainted Love”- a song that made the American Top 10 in 1982 and one of those instances where it has remained one of the most played songs from year to year.

I immediately jumped into the Soft Cell and Almond discography truly and deeply. While that momentum could have died off, especially with Almond not having a ton of success in America, the 90s ended pretty strong. In 1997, Some Bizarre Records re-released the early Marc solo records. In 1999, his solo album Open All Night with special appearances by members of the Creatures and Sneaker Pimps got a lot of attention in Uncut magazine. Almond’s discography is all over the place with a variety of sounds and plenty of gems in a ton of albums of various quality, but in light of David Ball's 2025 death at age 66, I want to focus on Soft Cell now.

Buying the Memorabilia compilation led to me buying the band’s debut Non Stop Erotic Cabaret. Soft Cell’s debut is on my short list of perfect albums. It is one of those magical albums where even the cover is perfect- a Peter Ashworth photo of the duo on front in a leather jackets with Almond ostensibly carrying the album like it’s a magazine in a brown paper bag as if it was just purchased from a seedy 'adults only' shop. The band was short lived, and there’s not a better record in their discography. That, of course, is because the band was a case of “too much too soon”. While surely played up to shock, the legend was that the band’s drug dealer Cindy Ecstasy was popping up in cameos for the band’s music videos and Top of the Pop appearances. 

1983s follow up The Art of Falling Apart may not have the legacy of the debut, but it’s a pretty solid of collection of songs 1984s This Last Night in Sodom is harder to defend but it does have a couple of killer tracks like the manic “Where was Your Heart (When You Needed it Most)” and the psychotic “Meet Murder My Angel”. The decadent lifestyle was over taking the music. The song “L’Esqualita” which took place in a Puerto Rican transvestite bar in New York was about Heroin. I didn’t buy these albums until a good decade-plus after their release but the story remains the same. 

Dave Ball did his own thing and did quite well, with most of his music coming from his project The Grid, also occasionally working with Almond, doing some production work, and being a top name remixer. I may or may not have been aware of his contributions to “Psychic TV presents: Jack the Tab” when I picked up that seminal release. He can also be found on that band's well-regarded Towards Thee Infinite Beat. 

 In 2005, Soft Cell released their early recordings in the compilation The Bedsit Tapes. These early recordings had been bootlegged and it contained the four songs that made up the band's 1980 debut EP Mutant Moments, as well as other early recordings, including a cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid". The Bedsit Tapes are great, not just in a "these are good for bedroom demos" way, but it truly sounds like a good record. Much like Gary Numan/Tubeway Army's early work, it is at once primitive and futuristic at the same time. 

I am sure many  critics thought that synths were destroying music when these recordings were made, but given the constraints of the time, it shows what an amazing ear for melody that Ball had. Obviously, the band would improve on these greatly by the time Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret came along, but the elements are there on these early recordings. Soft Cell would reunite and go back in the studio to record a new record- 2002's Cruelty Without Beauty. Robert Christgau gave it a "Bomb", but most reviews were generally positive. I liked it a lot as a reunion album that did a pretty good job of a band catching some of their early magic, and I have listened to it quite a bit over the years. 

 2022's Happiness Not Included is a bit more patchy as an album, but there are some solid songs there too. "Purple Zone" is a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys and one of my favorite songs of recent memory. I love the video where Messrs. Almond, Ball, Tennant and Lowe having written so many synth classics seem to be having the time of their life.