Marc Almond's Varieté
Cry-makingly fabulous.
It's been too long since a collection of songs have left me so exposed and so short of words.
Seldom is an album as good as I wanted it to be, and fewer still surpass my expectations or cut as deep.
But in world of burlesque and circus, of sideshows and strippers and sailors and freaks there is magic and weirdness and all manner of absurdities, crudities, glamour and sleaze.
There are bottles of strange liquours, broken pianos and curtains of the heaviest cloth.
There are lovers and lies. Truth and sins of every colour.
And then there is Marc Almond.
If this is to be his Swan Song, his epitaph, then we shall for ever carry torches.
His time is over, he does not belong in this world. He knows.
But strange is good. And variety is better.
I will be amazed if I hear anything subsequently released this year that even comes close.
