Varieté

Please Marc NOT a Swan Song!

     

It's been reported that this will be Marc Almond's final album of new material. I certainly hope he is not committed to that idea because Variete is a wonderful collection of Marc's musical vision. There is pop, music hall, underground and otherworldly music on hand. The album's view of life through the eyes of a man of the stage, the music hall stage, brings us the odd, the sad, the fiercly independent....it brings us Marc Almond in all his guises. There is love unrequited on Nijinsky Heart, reflections of a singular man on The Exhibitionist and a two part tour de force in Swan Song and Sin Song. There is some perfect pop in Variete and Unloveable and even that twisted country twang Marc has shown us before on Bread and Circus. This is possibly Marc Almond's greatest work and certainly belongs in the same conversation with Soft Cell's Non Stop Erotic Cabaret and his solo Tenement Symphony in my opinion.