Heaven 17

Highlighted by the new wave classic "Let Me Go," Heaven 17's second album contains some of the band's best songs ("Who'll Stop the Rain," "We Live So Fast," and the very stupidly titled "Lady Ice and Mr. Hex"). That said, Heaven 17 were more of a singles band and The Luxury Gap doesn't really hold together as an album. Though the Sheffield group meant their ironic sleeve artwork and lyrics as attacks against Thatcher's Britain, young bankers and stockbrokers ended up using their songs as "get ahead" anthems.

Although their second U.S. album lacks the surface appeal of the debut compilation, it runs deeper, and politics makes the difference--not because their conscience impels them to come up with likable protest novelties like "Fascist Groove Thing" and "Let's All Make a Bomb," but because their compassion induces them to explore a subject to which they have privileged access. Nowhere else in music or sociology will you learn so much about the would-be hedonists who live the technopop/Anglodisco life. Obsessed with an upward mobility that fails to produce the advertised highs, their protagonists suffer the weariness known only to those who habitually overtax their wills. And Glen Gregory's cultivated, well-meaning vocals combine concerned observation with hard experience just soulfully enough. (Grade - B+)