Marc Almond: I feel much more at one with who I am as an artist

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I’ve got LOADS of kaftans! I’ve always been a hippy.” Not words I’d expected to hear from Marc Almond. The Soft Cell frontman is still lodged in the popular imagination as a man cavorting through the Eighties in black studded leather and false eyelashes, sneer-flirting his way through songs like “Tainted Love”, “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” and “Sex Dwarf”. But in his solo career, Almond shifted away from the sleaze synth that made his name to reinvent himself as a torch singer. His new album, I’m Not Anyone, is the third in a tender trilogy of covers albums. Lyrics about soft breezes and butterflies float over a soundscape of strummed acoustic guitar, flutes, sitar and tambourines.

“It’s all a bit druidy pagan, this record, isn’t it,” chatters Almond over the phone from the little farm he’s just bought in Portugal. “I spent all my savings on this place,” he says, “and I’m loving the rural life, planting things and getting back to nature.” If fans are surprised to hear he’s living the pastoral idyll, then so is he. “It’s a strange new experience for me,” he acknowledges, “because I’ve always been a city person. My songs have been set in cities, about urban nightlife. Dark, melancholic, a bit seedy. But I’m probably going to end up making really wholesome folk music now!”