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After remastering and reissuing newly-acquired classic albums from ’80s pop duo Scritti Politti in 2021, Rough Trade will go back and revisit their signature album with bonus tracks – and have also recently given a third of the group’s albums a re-release.

Scritti’s sophomore album Cupid & Psyche 85 will be reissued on July 10 in a new CD or double LP deluxe edition, featuring the classic original album (featuring the U.K. hits “Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)” and “The Word Girl” as well as the U.S. stunner “Perfect Way”) alongside seven bonus tracks. Four were present on original and remastered CDs, making the real treasures here two out-of-print mixes of “Perfect Way” (one of which was only ever released on a U.S. promo 12″) and a dance mix of “Lover to Fall” that appears to have never been released before (the track was only released as an edited single in France). The packaging – including unique inner sleeves for both LPs – feature lyrics, original album credits and liner notes by both primary singer/songwriter Green Gartside and then-keyboardist David Gamson. While Rough Trade’s remaster of the album was paired with a simultaneous remaster of the group’s hip-hop-oriented Anomie & Bonhomie (1999), this deluxe edition of Cupid comes just on the heels of a new remaster of 1982’s Songs to Remember, the group’s debut album and predecessor to this one.

Though Scritti Politti began as a punk band in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ breakthrough – that group’s Anarchy Tour kicked off on the campus of Leeds Polytechnic, where Green Gartside was a student – they soon became something very difficult to categorize. Despite a strong leftist work ethic (the band initially lived in a squat and self-distributed guides explaining how they made their releases) and a politically conscious streak (name-checking Marx, Derrida and other social critics in their lyrics), Gartside had a change of heart after suffering a debilitating panic attack, regrouping on Songs to Remember with a sound indebted to soul, pop and New Wave. “You don’t have to be lobotomised to make pop music,” he’d tell Smash Hits. “There’s a real passion to make it.” Audiences agreed: Songs to Remember earned critical praise thanks to songs like “The ‘Sweetest Girl'” and peaked on the U.K. charts at No. 12.

But Gartside was still pursuing pop ideals greater than what the U.K. could offer him, and after Songs to Remember decamped to America in search of a larger record deal. He’d eventually sign with Virgin in England and Warner Bros. in America, and took up with two American musicians (synth whiz David Gamson and drummer Fred Meher) and one legendary producer (Arif Mardin, the Atlantic Records mainstay who’d worked for years with Aretha Franklin and was relatively hot off producing Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You”). The songs that became Cupid & Psyche 85 – hook-filled, diverse electronic/organic confections with contemplative, often intellectual lyrics on the human condition – served as a blueprint to a different approach to pop music. It’s not hard to hear the influence on 21st century acts like The 1975 and Carly Rae Jepsen, HAIM, Dirty Projectors and Hot Chip. “Perfect Way,” which missed the U.K. Top 40 but peaked just outside the Top 10 in America, galvanized none other than Miles Davis, who added the song to live performances for the rest of his life (even covering it for 1986’s Tutu only a year after Scritti’s version was issued). At No. 5, Cupid & Psyche 85 is still the band’s highest-charting album in England – and it’s particularly exciting to get a pressing with rare and unreleased material such as this one in print.

The remaster of Songs to Remember is available now, and the expanded Cupid & Psyche 85 will be available July 10. Both can be pre-ordered below. (As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.)

Songs to Remember (2026 Remaster) (originally released as Rough Trade ROUGH 20 (U.K.), 1982 – reissued Rough Trade RT0565CD/LP, 2026)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

1. Asylums in Jerusalem
2. A Slow Soul
3. Jacques Derrida
4. Lions After Slumber
5. Faithless
6. Sex
7. Rock-a-Boy Blue
8. Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin’
9. The Sweetest Girl

Cupid & Psyche 85 (Deluxe Edition) (Rough Trade, 2026)

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada

1. The Word Girl
2. Small Talk
3. Absolute
4. A Little Knowledge
5. Don’t Work That Hard
6. Perfect Way
7. Lover to Fall
8. Wood Beez
9. Hypnotize
10. Flesh and Blood
11. Absolute (Version)
12. Wood Beez (Version)
13. Hypnotize (Version)
14. Perfect Way (Version)
15. Lover to Fall (12″ Dance Mix)
16. Perfect Way (12″ Mix)

Tracks 1-9 released as Virgin V 2350 (U.K.)/Warner Bros. 9 25302-1 (U.S.), 1985
Tracks 10-13 released on original CD pressings: Virgin CDV 2350 (U.K.)/Warner Bros. 9 25302-2, 1985
Track 14 released on “Perfect Way” single – Virgin VS 780 (U.K.), 1985
Track 15 previously unreleased
Track 16 released on “Perfect Way” 12″ promo – Warner Bros. PRO-A-2357 (U.S.), 1985