Soft Cell - The Art of Falling Apart

Digitally remastered 1998 reissue on Mercury of their 1982 album for the label. Features new cover art, new liner notes, all eight of the original tracks & four bonus tracks:'Martin', 'Barriers', the three part 'Hendrix Medley: a)Hey Joe b)Purple Haze c)Voodoo Chile' and the highly sought after 'It's A Mug's Game'. 12 tracks total. Album Description

Soft Cell - The Art of Falling Apart

This is a great addition to my Soft Cell collection. It dose not have as many songs on it as Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, but it is a great album. I was impressed with how different this album is from other Soft Cell albums. It is a lot of fun to listen to. My favorite song is Numbers. March 8, 2007

Pitiful

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". January 9, 2006

Good 3rd Time Effort as Soft Cell Grows Up!

Why 3rd time effort? Some people forget about "Non-Stop Esctatic Dancing" which was their 2nd effort and judging from the quality of said album compared to this and the first one, I'm not surprised. This remastered version, however, sounds a lot better than my lp version of this good grown up effort by the band except that some tracks still seem to be too bottom heavy and the highs not quite there.

About the tracks though what I mean about growing up is that the quality of the music and the lyrics is a far cry from what's on their freshman effort. That's not to say that "Non-Stop...Cabaret" isn't good; on the contrary it's one of my favourite albums of all time but the subject matter and the choice of lyrics for this album are much more complex and serious and show a band that's developing and growing.

Other than the not so great apparently "remastered" sound, the reason this only got 4 stars from me is the fact that the bonus tracks other than the brilliant "It's a Mug's Game" actually detract from and spoils the enjoyment of the cd. The Jimi Hendrix medley was really awful and did nothing to enhance the disc and really should never have been added. This was just pure filler material to make up the space.

Otherwise, there are many great tracks here like my favourite, "Numbers", "Kitchen Sink Drama" as well as "Where the Heart Is" and "Loving You, Hating Me."

This and their first album are by far the best work Soft Cell have ever done. September 14, 2005

A Superb Re-release

Beautifully remastered, this is arguably the best album they've made. Includes bonus tracks "Martin" "Hendrix Medley" "Barriers" and "It's a Mugs Game", the first two ONLY available on this cd! Totally indispensable. March 24, 2000

More reviews at Amazon.com ...