Soft Cell: The Last Dance at Danceteria

 

Danceteria sounds like a return, but it also sounds like a farewell. It is a return that functions more as a goodbye. The sixth and final album by the English duo of Dave Ball and Marc Almond. After Happiness Not Included, the band came back.

Dark descendants of Suicide and Throbbing Gristle. A link between synth pop and techno music. Ball would die just two days after finishing the mix of the album. What a way to return, and what a way to say goodbye. There will be no other album from this extraordinary band of electronic pioneers.

Did Ball and Almond know that everything would end here? Perhaps the title, Danceteria, says a great deal. The place where Ball and Almond would end up after the sessions for the legendary Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, to talk at length with Andy Warhol and Madonna. Now that place is the title of the album that puts the final period on the duo’s story.

The album is as conceptual as it is open to interpretation. Stories about visits to the Danceteria cafeteria, tickets to porn and horror movies in the fleapit cinemas of Times Square, a dinner at the Rainbow Room and then the search for afterhours spots. Non Stop Erotic Cabaret was an ode to the sordid London nightclub scene.

Danceteria repeats the formula, this time in New York. Ball finished the mixes almost on his deathbed, with large doses of morphine coursing through his body and the drug becoming part of the album’s sound. The band clings to its legacy until the very end. There are elements of Lou Reed, Marc Bolan and David Bowie in the music.

There are elements of Andy Warhol’s cinema, Dario Argento and John Waters in the images that Almond’s lyrics conjure. There are musical elements that strengthen the link that connects them to bands such as Suicide, Sparks and the Pet Shop Boys.

The title track could easily be a mix of Sparks, Pet Shop Boys, Lou Reed and David Bowie. “The Space Inside” could be a great Pet Shop Boys song. “Two of a Kind,” “The Rainbow Room,” “Decadence Is Hard Work” are the classic Soft Cell sound, more alive than ever.

The dynamic between Ball’s restless synthesizers and Almond’s passionate vocals remains intact. Danceteria sounds like nostalgia not because the band is trapped in the past, but because nostalgia is part of the concept for closing the circle.

For some, Danceteria will sound like a farewell, for others it will sound like a return. It is the last thrash of the whale that puts images of Scorsese’s After Hours or Taxi Driver in our minds. Danceteria becomes the final document of a band that did things their own way until the very last moment.