Marc Almond's career trajectory was always likely to feature an Indian summer. In recent years, he has been inextricably drawn towards careworn yet defiant torch songs, reflecting on a life lived hedonistically, viscerally yet not always terribly wisely – the kind of material that can only be delivered with the gravitas of age and experience.
If Almond is to mount a typically romantic and flamboyant comeback, his most likely vehicle is the as-yet-untitled album he is currently recording with legendary Bowie/Bolan producer Tony Visconti. Backed tonight by a seven-piece mini-chamber pop orchestra, he is certainly up for the fight, looking trim and animated and, as ever, surfing a tidal wave of nervous energy.
The first fruits from these sessions are a quaintly retro double A-side single ("I don't usually release singles any more," he confides in an aside, "because I think, 'What's the point?'"). The Dancing Marquis is a glam stomp that allows Almond to quiver "Put your face in my bouquet, inhale me!" Burn Bright is a lush, string-driven pop trifle, and Tasmanian Tiger can only be described as a burlesque children's song. Between them, Almond appears to be so nervous that he is hyperventilating.
Thereafter, he notably gains in confidence as he sweeps through a laudably eccentric and spirited set. We get nothing from Soft Cell, yet Almond finds space for The Storks, the symphonic and hypnotically melodramatic Soviet war song from his difficult 2003 Russian-themed album, Heart on Snow.
After an endearingly babbled speech explaining how his teenage love for Bowie led him to Lou Reed, he performs a heartfelt tribute consisting of Reed's Caroline Says and The Bed, and the Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes. Where Reed blanched his work until it was free of blood, the excitable Almond gushes vermilion, yet nevertheless his interpretations sound thrillingly true to the spirit of the songs.
Another left turn follows as Almond unexpectedly lurches into playing the whole of his fan-favourite, Weimar-cabaret-hued album Mother Fist and her Five Daughters, from 1987. His quavering vocal has always been more valiant than virtuoso but it holds up well, and is the ideal tool to express the monstrous camp of St Judy. By the set's end he looks to be in tears, but sashays back for a knowing encore of Walk on the Wild Side, the Reed song that a teenage Almond not only adored, but adopted as his life's motto. It is to be hoped that his comeback enjoys the fate it deserves.
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