Heaven 17
This is the thirty fifth anniversary tour of Heaven 17’s classic album, The Luxury Gap. Which was not only one of the very best albums from the 1980’s and a top four album at that, it was and still is a classic today. Such is its outstanding depth of quality just like its predecessor Penthouse And Pavement, and in 2018 some thirty five years later the quality of both albums have stood the test of time extremely well.
Some twelve months on and almost to the day when they played at the Waterfront in 2017 they are back to a bigger venue that is much more deserving of their regular big powerful sound. At the show down King Street last year they did incredibly well to manage the low ceilings that have at times destroyed many a band’s sound quality. So its fair to say that I am expecting even bigger things tonight!
They open up with Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry, followed by Who’ll Stop The Rain and you guessed it Come Live With Me, which front man Glenn Gregory explains is both his and Martyn Ware’s favourite all time Heaven 17 song. He goes onto inform the crowd that they recently carried out a poll to see if there was a preference of order for the songs to be played on this celebratory tour and much to their surprise the fans unanimously voted that they should perform it in sequential order and so this is exactly what we get much to our delight.
Yes, It was great to hear this album in its entirety, but the one thing that was really missing for me was that big powerful sound opportunity that I was really hoping they would take full advantage of tonight, it just lacked that big power punch, a real Heaven 17 cutting edge and the girls on backing vocals at times over powered Gregory’s vocal and indeed the bands overall sound, it feels an opportunity missed tonight. It’s not until the second half of the show where they cover The Human League’s Circus Of Death and Crow And A Baby then some of the classics from Penthouse And Pavement that the sound really comes alive just like it should’ve been at the start of the evening. (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, Penthouse And Pavement, Play To Win, I’m Your Money and Lets All Make A Bomb each sound quite amazing and much more like it.
The chemistry still very much exists between Ware and Gregory some forty plus years later from when they first became friends as teenagers and it was really interesting to hear how Ware was first involved in the original Human League line up back in the late seventies and co-wrote the old songs League songs that they cover tonight.
It’s been a while since I have heard the LCR crowd so noisily demand an encore, but this was also a big disappointment when it happened as for the second time this evening they sung a newer version of Temptation (!) and then closed with a cover of the classic Human League song Being Boiled which was to be frank disappointing and barely recognisable from the original version.
Overall it was a decent night, but it was certainly one that promised so much more, it would’ve been extremely memorable had the sound of been a whole lot better in the first half of the show.
