taking sides: marc almond v. morrissey

perhaps it's only me. anyway, lately i have been listening to quite a bit of soft cell and marc almond's solo stuff and for some reason it's making me think of comparisons to morrissey. which has me a bit puzzled, since aside from their, um, "gayness" there really doesn't seem to be that much obvious commonality b/w them. sure, there are SOME things that they have in common -- lyrical obsessions w/ loneliness and love gone wrong, a love of theatricality and pop music outside the traditional rock canon (e.g., morrissey's love of pre-beatles british pop, almond's love of jacques brel). on the other hand, marc almond seems to have a rather more mature outlook on his conceits (even in his more puerile moments like "sex dwarf") while i've always suspected that moz's motives can ofttimes be pretty juvenile & petty even when he's being serious (e.g., he's just as pissed off that maggie thatcher and dubya are kinda daft & wack as they are evil). in other words, while almond could laugh off some of his sillier lyrical scenarios (while maintaining some degree of compassion) morrissey still hasn't learned to sweat the small stuff (leading this "sensitive" soul to come off as an almost aspergers-esque clod).

or it could just be that i enjoy latter-period soft cell/almond much more than i do morrissey's post-smiths stuff. (quite a switch from 20 so years ago, when i was more of a smiths obsessive whilst my reaction then to soft cell was STILL "oh, they did something other than 'tainted love'?")