The Art of Falling Apart

by

Soft Cell

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After enjoying their first two albums, I picked this one up the second I saw it at a local CD store. I gave the album the best possible listening experience, headphones, eyes closed, not being distracted by the phone or anything else. I found the album agonizing to listen to all the way through. I love early-synthesized electronic music, so it came as a surprise that I found this album to be such displeasure. The writing mainly focuses around the grittier side of life, drunk bullies ("Forever The Same"), drugged house wives lusting over the paper boy ("Kitchen Sink Drama"), strippers ("Baby Doll"), and a child growing up to be a murderer ("Martin"). The lyrics sound bohemian and immature, like reading through the journal of an angstful 15 year old that hates everybody. The duo's lead singer Marc Almond mentions in the included liner notes that they wanted to create a dirtier sound with this album. The previous "Non Stop Erotic Cabaret", featured some rather seedy writing at times, but on this album it's used to excess. "Martin" is especially difficult to listen to clocking in at arround 10 minutes; the song is little more than a few keyboard noises with the lead singer saying "Martin" repetitively. The Hendrix melody is about as awful as you may imagine it to be. In `82/'83, there were so many more interesting albums coming out. If you want dark synthesized music, why not check out the first 2 albums by The Human league, "Reproduction" is especially good. Or OMD's first 3 albums, they have all been remastered recently with interesting bonus material. You can do a lot better than this album, if you insist on owning a Soft Cell album; why not check out "Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing".