FOR PETE’S SAKE

Great to see Pete Shelley – the ambisexual penner of perfect poppunk tunes with the Buzzcocks, not the one who sang “Love Me Love My Dog” – getting the plush boxset treatment for his early-’80s electropop albums with The Genetic Years [Archive, September issue]. But I’ve got to take issue with the reviewer referring to Homosapien and XL1 as “Shelley’s two solo albums”, as though he’d never released a third that decade, the fantastic Heaven And The Sea from 1986. Not only did the original vinyl record come in an eye-catching Bridget Riley-style Op Art sleeve, but the music inside was, if anything, deeper and more satisfying than what had preceded it. With super-catchy lovelorn laments like the lead-off single “Waiting For Love”, stirring statements of self-reliance (“On Your Own”) and songs of philosophical introspection such as “Life Without Reason”, this was a really affecting and consistent album, all wrapped up in a web of guitars and synths that recalls peak-era New Order (with whom Shelley had producer Stephen Hague in common). I guess Heaven

And Hell wasn’t included for licensing reasons – it was released on Mercury, not Shelley’s own Genetic Records like the previous two – but I just wanted to give a shout out to one of the mid-’80s less-fêted LPs. It really deserves to stand alongside the likes of The The’s Infected. Doug Smythe, Tavistock, Devon