So don’t be too disappointed when your imaginary friend lets you down. The notion of God, when you stop to think about it – I mean really think about it – is quite a bizarre concept, founded upon fables and mythologies. Have you ever been drawn to religion or spirituality through your life? I don’t hold with any religion. It’s very cynical about religion, which I can relate to, and which is totally understandable.
The track ‘I’m Not A Friend Of God’, to me, sounds like it could have been recorded by Nina Simone. I look back at many of my contemporaries from that era and there is only a handful left who are still working, and even fewer of them with a record deal and recording new material through a major label. I feel incredibly privileged to be still here and working after 40 years. There is so much madness presently in the world that it all feels out of kilter. But in the end, if indeed this is the end, there is a thread of optimism that comes with accepting who we are and where we are in the world. I think any artist deals, to some degree, with themes that are meaningful to them and when you get to a certain age you find that everything hoped or imagined has come true, but only in part – almost like a kind of warped and disappointing view of the future. It was unashamedly fun, hedonistic, sometimes political and often had an anthem of liberation to it in such repressive times. I suppose 80s music still resonates today because of the sweet naivety and emotion that came from so much creativity combined with the visual excitement. What’s your relationship like to the nostalgia machine? I found myself noticing nostalgic or backward-looking references in your lyrics here – a cheeky reference to The Pink Flamingo from ‘Say Hello, Goodbye’ on ’Nostalgia Machine’, a sense of longing for all the things we were promised in the future on ‘Happy Happy Happy’, the idea that the world just wants to remake the 1980s on ‘Tranquilliser’.
We spoke to Almond about the state of society, threats to hard-won LGBTQ+ freedoms and his hopes for the future. Forty years may have passed since they dropped the vivid, unflinching ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’, but their new album finds Almond and Ball in familiar territory, mixing late-night tender torch songs with dark-hued, upbeat songs that lurk in the inviting, shadowy corners of the nightclub.
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