Day 139: Heaven 17 – Penthouse and Pavement

Today, I thought I’d go for a band that I’ve previously mentioned in my review for the Human League. After the two founding members, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, started butting heads with singer Philip Oakey, they exited and started a new band called Heaven 17. I’d obviously heard their classic banger “Temptation” but nothing else, so I thought I’d listen to their debut, Penthouse and Pavement.

Album cover courtesy of Virgin Records

After exiting the Human League, Ware and Marsh recruited Glenn Gregory as a singer, who they’d originally tried to get as the singer for the Human League but who turned them down. The trio took their name from A Clockwork Orange where a fictional pop group called The Heaven Seventeen is mentioned as having a song in the charts.

Penthouse and Pavement was released in 1981 as the new group’s first record, and it received good reviews but maybe undersold from what was expected, especially compared to the Human League who were reaching the height of their popularity with Dare. It’s a two-parter, with the Penthouse half being electronic and the Pavement-side being more funk-inspired.

The album starts off strong with “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” which partly participated to the somewhat underwhelming commercial success of the record, as it was banned by the BBC for concerns that it may defame Ronald Reagan – a song after my own heart. It reminds me that protest songs don’t have to be angry, you can also protest with a saxophone and a danceable beat. It’s a good tune even without defaming Reagan, but obviously I have nothing but respect for slagging off America’s Thatcher.

From there, I think the album does drop off a little bit. I like the writing, they’re singing about topics like the Cold War and nuclear weapons – with this and the record I had yesterday, I just feel like there’s hope for a protest music renaissance, we did it before and can do it again. But musically, I’m not getting as much out of it. When Ware and Marsh left the Human League, the NME said “the talent has left the band.” I’m not sure how much I agree. They’re good, but the uniqueness isn’t there for me – I catch the occasional whiff of a more politically oriented UK-version of Talking Heads, but we already have Talking Heads.

Eh, it’s alright but just a bit on the blander side. What can I say, I had higher expectations, but I still enjoyed it. It’s a 7/10.