More than 20 years following their final tour, Britain’s indie stars, Heavenly, have come back to the open arms of fans who never thought they would return. The band has been keeping busy in the meantime, though–while leading typical lives, the members have been working on other projects like The Catenary Wires, Would-Be-Goods, and Swansea Sound. In the case of Amelia and Rob, they’re running their own record label now, too. Before embarking to play their first American shows since the 90s, I sat down to speak with the band about everything from their lyrics, to Calvin Johnson, to San Diego’s infamous venue, The Casbah.
[Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
Could you guys introduce yourselves for the record and tell me what you do in Heavenly?
Amelia: Okay, I will go first. I’m Amelia and I sing and play guitar in Heavenly and mostly write the songs.
Rob: Hello, I’m Rob and I play the bass in Heavenly.
Cathy: And I’m Cathy and I play keyboards and sing.
I wanted to start by asking– you all came back to Heavenly a few years ago now, but I feel like within the last year or so things seem to have exploded in terms of love for the band. Now you’re playing festivals and you’re coming back to America to a bunch of sold out shows. For a while though, it never seemed like your intention was to come back. What was the deciding factor that finally brought about the reunion of Heavenly? And how has it felt to come back and play these old songs to an entirely new generation of young fans?
Amelia: That’s an interesting question. We were not [planning on coming back]. I’d wanted to do it for quite a long time and no one else was that enthusiastic. Well, Cathy might have been, but I didn’t dare ask her. But I thought no one else was very enthusiastic. But then we started re-releasing our albums because we discovered that they weren’t very easy to get ahold of, and they were selling for silly money on Discogs and secondhand shops. And in the process of putting them out and kind of finding, you know, discussing them amongst ourselves and writing notes for the booklets that come out with them about our memories… I think we all just kind of started to think “Why aren’t we doing this anymore?” The people are interested! So we did a couple of shows in London and I think we were really taken aback by just how emotional they were. There weren’t that many younger generation people at those, I think it was more older generation kind of rediscovering and being reminded of why they loved the band all that time ago. But I think now– we weren’t necessarily gonna even play any more shows— but we loved that so much that it seemed kind of silly not to. So we’ve now got quite a few shows booked and we are starting to see some younger people who’ve discovered the band in the meantime through TikTok or Spotify or whatever. And it’s yeah, it’s fantastic.
Rob: I got to admit I was one of those grumpy people who thought we shouldn’t again. Partly because there are so many ancient bands like us on the road taking up valuable stage space and I think there’s something wrong about it. But yeah, I was persuaded and it is really good fun. And also we’re doing quite a lot of new music as well so I kind of tell myself that we haven’t completely just turned into our own tribute act.
Cathy: I think Amelia and Rob have covered pretty much all the bases. I kind of agree with all of that. I think it was quite tentative how we all agreed to do it and it was just for these couple of shows. I think it just felt like a really incredible shared experience with the crowd, to be with probably many of the same people who we last saw 25 years ago. So yeah, that definitely gave us a taste to do more. We would love to have some more young people! We played in Madrid earlier in the year and there was a really nice mother and daughter who came. The mother was of our sort of age and was a Heavenly fan back in the day and the daughter had discovered Heavenly through TikTok. And then they both discovered that they knew Heavenly! They were like “Why do you listen to this? What do you mean, why, how do you even know this?” And they came to the show together. That was so nice.
Rob: Sorry, the other thing I should say, because I want to mention him, is a man who plays drums for us now. Because, obviously, the band came to a very sad, abrupt end when Mathew died. That was also a reason why it was very difficult to imagine playing again. But thanks to Ian, who plays the drums in our band Swansea Sound, we just felt we had met someone who was very, very good, but also really nice. We could imagine it working with him. So that was a bit of a moment as well… Ah, there’s Pete!
Pete: Sorry I’m late!
It’s all good. We’ve only done one question so far. But one thing I will say, I think you guys are going to be surprised when you come to New York at just how many younger people are going to be at the shows, so that’ll be fun.
Everyone: Oh? Cool!
Yeah! I know so many people who are around my age who are just obsessed. So, I think it’ll be a fun couple of shows.
Rob: Well I’m nervous now!
Moving on, I wanted to ask about the lyrics. The first song I ever heard from Heavenly was “Atta Girl,” and what immediately struck me other than the incredible instrumentation was the lyrics. I think one of the strongest aspects of the band’s songs are the words that accompany everything. So, I wanted to ask–after that first album, Heavenly vs. Satan, there’s a sort of thematic shift in your discography with Atta Girl, Operation Heavenly, and The Decline and Fall of Heavenly. You go from making these more pop-y love songs to these songs with more difficult subject matters such as rape and abortion. What caused this shift?
Amelia: So the shift was, I think, partly about growing up. But I think it was also a lot about discovering Riot Grrrl. We went to the west coast to do some shows when we were on K records, which was based in Olympia, and we weren’t quite expecting what we found the second or third time we went to Olympia. The whole place was buzzing with this thing called Riot Grrrl that literally at that point had just been invented. And we didn’t want to become a kind of, I guess, “standard Riot Grrrl,” and we didn’t want to sound like Bikini Kill. But we found the issues they were discussing just really rang true. And we were kind of, I guess, almost ashamed, or at least I was almost ashamed, that we had not really covered those sorts of issues in our songs before, even though we talked about them. It just hadn’t really struck me that one could. So we started to and I think it was a real sea change. I will admit though, “P.U.N.K. Girl” is a song that I wrote the lyrics to and people are always saying, “Did she really write the lyrics?” There were apparently rumors that it was written by a boy…but I have to admit that the words to Atta Girl were written by my brother. So you like his lyrics on that one… but they’re brilliant lyrics!
Well all of the lyrics on that EP are great! Especially Hearts and Crosses, too! So fantastic… Going with that, though, I also wanted to ask, as you said, you didn’t want to sound like Bikini Kill, why did you choose to keep the same sound that you had on the first record, even though the lyrical themes evolved? I feel like a lot of the music is almost, not tricking people per se, but in a way you seem to hide these sort of darker lyrical themes behind this perception of softness and femininity.
Cathy: I think that’s really interesting– I mean, it’s a really good way that you put it. I think it would have felt fake if we’d have completely changed our sound and tried to be a band that we weren’t. And, I suppose we still like a really melodic sound, we like lots of harmonies, and we like a real tunefulness about the songs. I quite like the fact that it’s kind of like a bit of a Trojan horse–but for messages that you might not expect. You might be kind of like “tra-la-la” singing along and then be like “Hang on, what did she just say?” I think that that’s quite a nice surprise, that the form and the content don’t have to be always in sync.
Can any of you remember the moment you decided that you wanted to be in a band or what sparked your love for music?
Rob: I think for me, it was when I was at school. I think it’s quite common that your best friend gets a guitar of some kind– which my best friend Tim did, because his brother had it and couldn’t be bothered to play it so he let him have it. And he said, well, you better get a bass. It was just kind of logical really, because that’s what the other person had to do, and then it was immediately more fun than anything else. That was when I was 15 or 16. And then I think once you’ve got that, the fun of playing music with other people– I mean, I think I don’t get any fun from sitting around and playing music by myself–but when you’re playing with other people, it’s a kind of fun that you don’t really want to stop.
Pete: Yeah, I think it was when I was probably 13 or 14. My friends and I were very interested in music. We kind of wanted to be in a band more than we actually wanted to play music. It was just the kind of fun bonding thing to do with your friends focused on music. I think often people’s first band is really just an imaginary band and they don’t know how to play instruments or anything. And it’s good when the music culture can allow people to easily make that transition from loving music and wanting to be in a band to actually doing it. As opposed to having a sort of obstacle course to it, which was more like what it was like in the 70s, where you had to pay your dues. But even when I was young, it was starting to be possible just to… you know one band might let some kids get up and play before them even if they were really hopeless and didn’t know what they were doing. That was when music really started. That was a really big change in music–when you could you could just make that transition from loving the idea of being in a band to actually doing it.
Amelia: It’s funny that you said that about imaginary bands, because when I was about six, I went to see a show in London about the Beatles. And the Beatles in this show were in Hamburg and there was some German guy in it who was calling them “The Pee-dals”. I loved this show, and I loved the Beatles, so I tried to form this band at school called The Peedals and got various people to say they were in my band and each of us had to be one of the Beatles. I think I was Paul in the Peedals.
Rob: You are Paul!
Amelia: I am Paul [laughs]. But I have to admit, I didn’t think that there would be anything like writing songs or learning to play guitar involved…
Rob: You were really just trying to get some friends.
Amelia: [laughs] Yeah, I guess when I wanted to properly be in a band– I guess I had dreamed of it for quite a long time, probably since I was six!– I knew some kids when I was at school who were basically thinking of starting a band and I got my way in as their singer.
Cathy: It’s funny because I think for me, it’s the total opposite. I did lots of music when I was a kid, but it never occurred to me to be in a band! But I did lots of really square music. I had a friend and we used to make little comedy, like spoofs of things that were on at the time. And so we would do music like we did a cover of this song by Barbra Streisand and Elaine Paige called “I Know Him So Well,” but with mixed up lyrics. It was quite bad. And I had another friend who was a really swotty musician and she wrote a carol that we entered in this– There was a really bad TV program called Nationwide and they had a carol competition and we entered a song for the Carol competition! [laughs] I played in orchestras and those kinds of music things, but it didn’t occur to me that it was possible to be in a band, somehow. Until many years later, when I met these guys.
Rob: I never heard that story before!
Cathy: It just came back to me!
Rob: [laughs] You entered a Christmas carol for Nationwide! Well I’m afraid on this basis that at this moment Cathy is sacked!
Amelia: I actually wrote a carol for the Christmas Nationwide carol concert as well!
Cathy: Did you!?
Amelia: I remember writing one, so I was just as square.
I know we touched on this a little bit earlier, but I also wanted to ask–in America, you worked with K Records, to release your albums. How did you come to meet Calvin Johnson? and what was it like working with him not only through K, but also as a musical collaborator?
Rob: Well, I mean, that song, “C is the Heavenly Option,” that he is on, we didn’t meet him at all while we were doing that. He was sent the song with the gaps for him to sing it and then his vocal came on a tape and we stuck it in. So, it felt like he was in the room, but he wasn’t in the room.
Amelia: Yeah, in the old days everything was really slow. You had to basically send a tape across the Atlantic and then this tape would come back a month later and you just played it with slight trepidation because if it wasn’t any good, you had to start all over again and you weren’t going to get your album done in time. I just remember us all falling around the room with laughter–which maybe wasn’t the right answer, but it was good! But we had already actually met him by then, because we were already on K. But I think, actually, Calvin was the reason we signed to K but he wasn’t the reason we got asked to sign to K. He used to run K with a woman called Candice, and Candice I think is the first person that kind of discovered Heavenly and really liked it. She played it to Calvin and then they approached us.
Pete: There were connections between our sort of music scene and that sort of music scene starting in the 80s when bands like The Pastels and other Scottish bands had a certain amount of interaction with Beat Happening and other bands. We also were on a label, an Edinburgh based label, 53rd & 3rd, which also released at least one record by Beat Happening. There was a kind of transatlantic link established in the 80s just on a very small scale. It’s still kind of going strong I think. That’s how we first became aware of Beat Happening and Calvin. And Mathew actually went out– was Mathew the first of us to go to Olympia? I think he was…
Cathy: I seem to remember that. Yeah.
Pete: I think Mathew, after he finished at school–Amelia will correct this–I think he might have invited himself to go visit Calvin and Candice one summer and we scarcely knew them. But they were really hospitable and he had a really good time with them. So, that was another factor in building the bridge, I think. Is that right?
Amelia: I’d completely forgotten it, but it does ring true!
Rob: In fact, we’re going to be going back there in October. Because, I think these gigs get announced tomorrow actually, we’re doing gigs on the West Coast.
Yay! Are you coming to California at all?
Rob: Yeah!
Amelia: We are!
Rob: Also we’re going to start– we’re not going to play in Olympia but we’re going to play in Seattle, but we’ll be seeing that kind of people again… Where do you call home?
San Diego!
Rob: Oh yeah! I remember playing there…
Pete: We played in a concrete punk rock club underneath the flight path of the planes landing. One thing I remember about San Diego from my visit is how close the airport is to the city center. You can walk to it, which is pretty incredible. And one effect of this is that the punk rock club was incredibly noisy with airplanes going overhead, which is probably why they were allowed to play punk rock, though. Do you remember what it was called?
Is it The Casbah?
Pete: It might’ve been The Casbah, that sounds familiar.
Amelia: That sounds right, yeah!… It was also an over 21’s only and Mathew was actually under 21 when we played there and they made him stay outside until the minute we went to play and then he had to go straight outside again. Luckily it was nice weather, it being San Diego.
Pete: …And he liked planes!
It was definitely The Casbah then if it was 21+. I have one last question that’s mostly for Amelia and Rob. You both run your own record label now, Skep Wax! What inspired you to start this? And how has it been being on the other side of music and distributing it and all that?
Rob: Well, we hate bands now [laughs]. We started doing it– I think it was partly a lockdown thing, because there was time. It’s the sort of thing you talk about for years and never do and I thought if it’s ever going to happen, now’s the time. It’s been really good! I mean it started off– the first things we released were our own bands– Swansea Sound and a band called The Catenary Wires, which is another permutation of us, basically. We were using ourselves as the guinea pigs, just to see if we could do it, and then it went quite well. So then we started inviting other bands to put stuff out. We’re working on some more things now. It takes over. I mean, it’s quite all consuming. And not all of it is the most fun. So you have to do things like fill out MCPS sheets–it’s just like a sort of tedious office job [laughs].
Amelia: I get secret joy from the fact that I quite like doing really nerdy, filling out forms and stuff, but I just refuse to do it because Rob hates it. So much of running a label is doing that. If I just took on doing all those bits I would just spend my whole life doing this so I just make Rob do them and I hear swearing across the room as he’s just filled another bit of a form in wrong–but it’s quite entertaining!
Rob: But I really like it. If a song that you’ve released by another band appears on the radio is almost as exciting as if it were your own band, so, it’s good!
Amelia: It is! And it’s really nice building a community. I mean, I think what I really liked about all the labels we’ve been on, but particularly Sarah Records and K Records, is that they built a community. There were people actually all around the world who liked that kind of music and they were keen to actually meet each other. That was what was so nice about the Heavenly gigs in London is it felt like people were as excited to see each other there as they were to see the band. It was just kind of a really lovely feeling of community, and I think that’s actually quite a motivator, at least for me, running a label is that we are starting to generate that kind of community ourselves again and it’s lovely.
Rob: The thing that I’d say is that I feel a slight sense of duty because for many years other people have done it for us, you know they’ve filled in the MCPS sheets! So, it kind of felt like our turn, really. But [labels] do make a difference. It is a bit intangible these days because obviously when we were on Sarah or K, the only way you could get the music was to buy the record from the label, whereas now it’s just it’s in the air. But [labels] seem more important than I thought they would be. It’s still great. Like Amelia says it creates a kind of community, a part real and part virtual community, but it is still one. So, that is a nice thing.