Marc Almond’s return last Friday to the city where he first made lascivious electronic music as one half of Soft Cell was overblown and underwhelming.

He had wanted to play the Grand Theatre but Barnum had pitched its musical circus there all week and so Almond, above, had to be a ringmaster at Leeds Town Hall instead, promoting his new album, The Velvet Trail, with flashy projections and glitter balls.

Say hello to a too-loud sound mix and often indecipherable chatter between songs, like it was 1981 all over again. Wave goodbye to the cabaret style and operatic drama of his latter-day shows, as seen in his guest spots with Jools Holland at York Barbican last November.

Almond was accompanied by three musicians, but here the drums were way too heavy, like a trench coat in a storm, while the guitar and the keyboards sent out search parties for tunes. Almond’s new album favours minor keys with “big, dark, dramatic pianos and strings”, but in Leeds the strings were absent, the dark dramas were overwrought and the “velvet” in The Velvet Trail was crushed to a mush, spoiling Life In My Own Way and Zipped Black Leather Jacket.

“Give us a tune, Marc,” shouted one malcontent, but when they came, even the old Soft Cell favourites suffered suffocation in the mire.