Most of the time when a band reforms, the results are lackluster. A creative partnership that’s run its course isn’t easily resurrected for love nor money and usually it’s for the latter and not the former that most reunion albums and tours occur.

That’s the way that I normally feel, but when Marc Almond and David Ball decided to reform Soft Cell in 2001 I was very excited to see what they’d come up with after 18 years. They had worked together on a few thing in the years since Soft Cell split in 1984, so it wouldn’t be an issue of them looking backwards to the 80s or anything like that. The idea of a mature Soft Cell seemed vastly appealing.

The first thing they released was “God Shaped Hole,” a track that was a part of a 2001 Some Bizarre compilation album titled, I’d Rather Shout at a Returning Echo than Kid That Someone’s Listening. They went on to record their unfairly neglected Cruelty Without Beauty album, which came out in 2002 and toured the globe in support of it. Sadly ticket sales were poor and most of the US dates were cancelled. I was lucky enough to catch them at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles (which was packed) and they put on one hell of an amazing show that balanced the hits with the new material.

The lead single from Cruelty Without Beauty was “Monoculture,” an infectiously catchy, but sharply-pointed diatribe about the bland horror show that popular culture was becoming (and this is years before the Kardashians or Cupcake Wars...) The evil Ronald McDonald-type character seen in the video is Some Bizzare label boss and former Soft Cell manager Stevo Pearce.
 

 
Interestingly, the second single from Cruelty Without Beauty was a cover of “The Night,” a song written by Bob Gaudio for Frankie Valli. Back in 1981, Ball and Almond were basically given one last shot to chart a single by their record label. Originally they were going to record this number then, but instead opted to record Ed Cobb’s “Tainted Love”—both records were big on the Northern Soul scene that influenced their sound—and the rest is history.

Here’s “The Night” as performed on Top of the Pops 2 in 2003:
 

 
The record of how utterly amazing the Soft Cell reunion was live. You’ll notice that David Ball—unlike the dudes touring as “Kraftwerk”—actually plays his keyboard: