SOFT CELL
NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET
ONE OF THE GREAT UNDERDOG POP ALBUMS GETS A BOXSET AS ECCENTRIC AS THE ORIGINAL, WITH ENJOYABLY ODD EXTRAS JOINING THE VINTAGE SEEDINESS
UMC/MERCURY-EMI
★★★★
As Soft Cell recently told Classic Pop, the idea that, when they were making their debut album, it would one day receive a lavish and important boxset was utterly absurd. Few records have better embodied Noel Coward’s maxim, “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is”, than Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, made for about £2.50 and a couple of Twix when Marc Almond and Dave Ball were living in Leeds bedsits near where the Yorkshire Ripper was about to finally be apprehended.