“I’VE always been a rock ’n’ roller. I come from punk music and make controversial songs like Sex Dwarf,” says Marc Almond. “But now I go to garden centres and like potted plants .
And I wanted to make an album to embrace that. “I didn’t want to make a dark album.” The Soft Cell singer is explaining how his new solo album, I’m Not Anyone — a collection of emotional covers — was influenced by nature and his move to rural Portugal .
He says: “I wanted the levelling out on the album. There are lots of elements and nature references and there are some melancholic moments. But ultimately it has an uplifting feel to it and is very spiritual.
” I meet a jovial Almond at his East London hotel, where he jokes he is “feeling a bit ragged” after a late night at The Brewery, where he picked up an LGBTQ+ Lifetime achievement award. He says: “I had two great people giving me the award last night, which was Russell Tovey and Holly Johnson — two really great people, a young, fantastic actor and a musical icon, and I was the filling in their sandwich. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you feel like part of the furniture.
You feel people see you but they don’t see and you’re taken for granted. “It was a long, long event but it was lovely and came completely out of the blue. “Thank God for Holly as we come from the same place — Liverpool.
Well, I’m Southport, which is close. “So even long before we knew each other, we went to the s.
