Music review: Soft Cell, O2 Academy, Glasgow

Soft Cell, O2 Academy, Glasgow ****

With a deft twist of one of his best-loved lyrics, Marc Almond, resplendent in indoor shades and strong, if not always stable, of voice, proclaimed “we’ve been involved for 40 years now” from his lounge lizard perch on a black leather stool. It was a momentarily sobering thought but let’s drink to that as Soft Cell returned to Scotland following their blockbuster 2018 reunion in London.

The main order of business was to mark the 40th anniversary of their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, aka the one with almost all the hits. But Almond and his trusty instrumentalist David Ball managed to scrape together a number of later gems for the first half of this handsomely appointed show, not least opening number Torch, with session ace Gary Barnacle chiming in obligingly at the line "I hear the saxophone", his sultry melodic tones playing over the synth bass quake, while a quartet of backing vocalists deputised for original duet partner Cindy Ecstasy.

The lukewarm new material aired from upcoming album Happiness Not Included – including the knowing Nostalgia Machine – could not touch the family melodrama of Where the Heart Is and the overwrought deeper cut Martin, both exultant primers for the second half celebration.

Tainted Love arrived early in the chronology, and remains one of the all-time great cover versions. Youth was deliciously unsettling, even with Barnacle’s light, trilling flute. Hectic fan favourite Sex Dwarf was swiftly followed by the humorous Entertain Me, with Almond heckled by his backing singers, then doused in a glitter shower, then the fidgety Chips On My Shoulder and impish My Secret Life.

Meanwhile, the seedy sadness of Bedsitter, cathartic anthem Say Hello Wave Goodbye and prime bleepology of Memorabilia, all of which made the charts a better place in the early eighties, have weathered the ravages of the last 40 years with style.

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