Music / 80s
Review: Marc Almond at Colston Hall
Marc Almond is one of those faded pop stars who gets a warm welcome from his audience whatever he does. The middle-aged mums and dads were out in force, eager to relive their youths when they were three decades and four dress sizes younger; itching for the more upbeat songs to put in an appearance so they could give each other an elbow nudge and incite each other to shuffle from side to side in the aisle. So it didn’t really matter what Marc did; his die-hard audience was going to leave happy (although possibly those who walked out after about 20 minutes left unhappy).
But c’mon Marc, you had a full house here. You could at least have dressed the part and not just worn a loose, tatty shirt. Not since I saw Kim Wilde wheeze and puff around the Let’s Rock stage at Ashton Court last summer have I seen a performer so miserably panting for breath throughout their set – and at least Kim had been trying to dance.
Marc opens with Minotaur from his new album, The Velvet Trail, which he is here to promote and which he gives a good airing to. “This is a song about being very cross”, Marc announces, before launching into a nice 2015 song with chords that would not be out of place on Soft Cell’s 1983 magnum opus The Art Of Falling Apart.
is needed now More than ever
All of the music is accompanied by garish projected visuals on the overhead screen, which dominates your sightline – making it pretty much impossible to watch Marc the person, however hard you try. Images of Pop Art-esque cartoons merge uncomfortably with Mexican and Illuminati-style logos during Bad To Me. While a song about the bright lights of Vegas is inexplicably accompanied by images of a Tokyo neon cityscape.
You have to question why such dominant projections are needed at all. Can the music not speak for itself? I saw Marc at St George’s a few years ago without any of this fuss and the whole experience was significantly more pleasurable.
The patient audience was eventually treated to four Soft Cell songs, which was undoubtedly all they came for… although they had to hang on until the bitter end to hear them. The Soul Inside dipped its toe into the nostalgic 1980s’ puddle, before Bedsitter plunged a full ankle in and swirled it around to muddy the waters. It’s hard to envisage the 57-year-old Marc Almond we see now as the 24-year-old Marc who was starting the nightlife all over again before kidding himself he was having fun.
Thank goodness for the encores. The hits Tainted Love and Say Hello, Wave Goodbye felt hard-won by the time Marc drew them out of his pocket, although by the time he reached the latter – poor breathless Marc was dependent on the audience to sing most of the lyrics for him. Luckily, they seemed more than happy to oblige.
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