Marc Almond- Trials of Eyeliner: Anthology 1979-2016

Stunning 10-disc career survey from pop’s dark star.

- Jon Dale

He’s been through a lot, has Marc Almond. For many he’ll always be the voice of “Tainted Love”, the Gloria Jonessong his duo with Dave Ball, soft Cell, remade in needle point vision in the early 1980's. The excesses of that decade, and their after-effects, seem to have scored, or scarred, much of Almond’s subsequent life. And while he’s flirted with pop stardom a number of times, including his No 1 duet with Gene Pitney on “something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart”, he’s always seemed more comfortable singing from a psychological space somewhere between the mainstream and the margins.

It’s a life lived fully, though, even as, at its most extreme – his motorbike accident in 2004, for instance – it’s had Almond near death. Moments like this have left him with a heightened understanding of his own mortality, from all accounts. But then again, our construction of identity, and its intimate relation with our grasp on mortality, has always informed Almond’s most potent songs. Trials Of Eyeliner makes that clear, monstering together a wildly varied 37-year career into a 10-disc collection that seems underscored by one question: how to truly live the self?