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Eighteen years after going their separate ways, Marc Almond and David Ball reunite here to prove that some things never change -- and some things change a whole heck of a lot. Cruelty Without Beauty is rife with the grandiose (and mock-grandiose) synthesizer orchestrations that marked the duo's later period, but the proud, preening decadence that seeped from the grooves of their hit debut, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, has disappeared, replaced by a morning-after introspection. Almond's voice has lost some of its quirky sweetness, but the darker tone that he's adopted is altogether appropriate for songs like "Desperate," a stinging indictment of an entertainer trying to hang on at the end of his 15 minutes of fame. The once-jaundiced worldview -- while not significantly brighter -- has changed somewhat, as evidenced by "Monoculture," an incisive (and borderline political) screed about the degeneration of popular culture. The tonal palette is a bit wider here than before the hiatus, with a smattering of horns and clever use of female backing vocals, but the disc's strengths are what you might expect from Soft Cell -- most notably, the epic sweep of ballads like "On and Up" and "Last Chance."
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TRACK LISTINGS
Disc 1
1 Darker Times
2 Monoculture
3 Le Grand Guignol
4 The Night
5 Last Chance
6 Together Alone
7 Desperate
8 Whatever It Takes
9 All Out of Love
10 Sensation Nation
11 Caligula Syndrome
12 On an Up
Disc 2
1 Monoculture Radio Edit
2 Monoculture Playgroup Remix
3 Monoculture Antoine 909 and Oggie B Remix
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