Soft Cell
Heat: The Remixes

What is a reunion for? Everything or nothing, depending on the case. Marc Almond and Dave Ball, the duo who launched the worldwide hit "Tainted Love" in 1981, left the scene with a concert-event at the end of 1983, after a third and fourth album much appreciated by critics but desolate from a strictly commercial point of view.

Returning nineteen years later with the modest "Cruelty Without Beauty" and a long series of shows culminating in the release of a DVD and a double live album, they returned to an underground silence, apart from the release of a CD of early unreleased tracks, the kind of things you're embarrassed to let people hear until you're no longer embarrassed and there they are. The meaning of this reunion is still unclear to me. They haven't produced anything good, nor have they hinted at projects that could restore the credibility of a newfound freshness. Now, another double is released.

It is a predictable operation revisiting twenty-six historic and much less historic tracks by Soft Cell. Remix albums are, and this is no exception, a call to fans' pockets, a dusting off the attic, and a modern update of the now dusty sounds of twenty-five years ago. The best remixers of the moment are taking care of the precious object (Richard X, who revisited "Seedy Films," Cicada, and so on). The usual story. The review ends here. And yet it doesn't. Soft Cell's absence was felt just after their career was cut short. Marc Almond embarked on a good solo career, while Dave Ball continued to delight the pop world as the quintessence of The Grid. So why a remix album? Because sometimes it's worth making them if the quality of the substrate is still alive and kicking. Soft Cell's pop was neither light nor carefree, even when painted with sometimes sixties colors masked as eighties. In their albums' tracks, there are complex, dramatic, funereal, and splendidly luminous pieces. Or luminously bright.

The double remix CD (perhaps too many tracks) in some cases contains authentic reconstructions, elsewhere it's possible to find the current dance floor on the notes of what was. The multifaceted project by Cicada reformulates "Memorabilia" and transforms it into a Cicada track (what a surprise), Manhattan Clique stretches it a bit with "Bedsitter," but then delivers the masterpiece of "Torch", the irresistible dance floor that even improves the original. Such a pity for "Tainted Love" (keeping it as it was would have left no regrets), but a heartfelt thank you for the splendid and original reinterpretation of "Youth", very dark in the original, intimate and acoustic in this beautiful recomposition. More: "Soul Inside", still irresistible today, and especially "Heat", a 1983 masterpiece (from "The art of falling apart", the darkest album of their production), which here stands as a totem of obvious danceability but try to stay still if you can.

Among other gems, a powerful revisitation of "Surrender to a stranger" and the very dark yet not too dissimilar from the original "Martin", which 25 years ago was released as a twelve-inch bonus with the first editions of "The art of falling apart", but was the true attached soul of the album. Also archived are "Where The Heart Is", the famous "Say Hello Wave goodbye", "What" (more than a sequel to the original, it seems like a prequel, all '50s and French Riviera), "Numbers", "Insecure Me". The others I can forget, they add nothing and take nothing away from the classic edited versions. "Torch", however, I'll play at every party.