Soft Cell will release a repackaged edition of their Top 10 album ‘*Happiness Not Included’ later this year.
Released in 2022, the LP features the hit Pet Shop Boys collaboration Purple Zone and reached No. 7 in the UK, becoming the group’s highest-charting album in 40 years.
Celebrating one year since its release, Marc Almond and Dave Ball announced a “brand new chapter” with the hashtag, #*HappinessNowExtended.
They later shared what appears to be artwork for the album, with an industrial scene featuring two power plant smokestacks and the album title.
Firm details, including tracklist and release date, have yet to be confirmed.
‘*Happiness Not Included’ was the first album of new material from the duo in 20 years that, Dave told RETROPOP ahead of its release, “reflects the dreadful government we have at the moment and the levels of hypocrisy and incompetence”.
Marc added: “In this album, I wanted to look at us as a society, a place where we have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality and decency, food before the rights of animals, fanaticism before fairness and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.”
“I think it’s very much reflective of what’s going on in the world,” Dave continued. “The fact we had someone like [Donald] Trump in power. We’re not in a very good place globally.
“Whatever your political beliefs are, the state [of the world] isn’t too good. And obviously, with all the global warming and all that sort of stuff going on, it’s not fantastically happy times.”
In a review of the album, RETROPOP said ‘*Happiness Not Included’ “boasts 12 fabulously Soft Cell numbers, laced with Marc Almond’s lyrical wit and underpinned by standout instrumentation from Dave Ball.”
