Following on from the video premiere here last Friday of "P.U.N.K. Girl", Heavenly are back with their new compilation. A Bout De Heavenly: The Singles drops today on Damaged Goods in the UK and on MVD here. It is, of course, essential, even if you (hopefully) have lots of this already.
Opening with the seminal Sarah Records single of "I Fell in Love Last Night" and flip "Over and Over", this set is headed in exactly the right direction. Memories of arguments about what was and wasn't twee nearly 30 years ago spring to mind, but the sweet-as-honey vocals of Amelia Fletcher still charm whatever you call this music. "Our Love is Heavenly" and "Wrap My Arms Around Him" are next. These singles, 30 years old now, still sound as fresh and elegantly upbeat as they ever did, maybe more so. "She Says" and "So Little Deserve" and their respective flips are here too, and we see how the sound has progressed a bit even over the course of just their first few singles. Heavenly were never as sweet and safe as you might remember now, with the loveliness always tempered with that kind of wits and smarts that, even in 1991, indicated that these players were in it for the long run.
By 1993, Heavenly's sound seemed to have broadened, enough to have encompassed American girl group stuff, and the prevailing DIY vibe of indie in the first third of the Nineties. These are peppy cuts, ones which exhibit an energy the equal of anything from a Dischord band here in D.C. back then, for example, even if the style of the music was quite a bit different. Amping up considerably at times, Heavenly finished their run as a band with a decidedly tougher sound. It's not that 1996's Operation Heavenly was in any way a mainstream record, but I can remember putting songs from it on mix-tapes next to tunes from then-current Britpop acts and thinking it was a weird choice. The feeling then was that Heavenly had earned their DIY credo legimately and shouldn't have their form of indie-pop sullied by being thrown into proximity with the likes of Supergrass. But, in reality, as affirmed in subsequent interviews with Amelia Fletcher, they counted themselves fans of Supergrass, and, dammit if "Space Manatee" didn't rock just as hard as "Caught by the Fuzz", you know? If that one likely surprised those who'd followed the group over from Sarah, a rough cover of "Art School" by The Jam should have raised a few more eyebrows.
Just as fans had followed most of these players over from the earlier Talulah Gosh, in 1996 it was time to follow them elsewhere again. While Amelia Fletcher, Peter Momtchiloff (guitar), Cathy Rogers (keyboards and vocals), Rob Pursey (bass), and Mathew Fletcher (drums) had been Heavenly, the group was no more following Matthew's suicide in 1996. The tragedy ended this sunny chapter, one of the best in the Nineties, and a team-up that resulted in some of the best, most timeless music to have survived those genre-spawning years. While most of the band moved on to Marine Research, and Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey went on to The Catenary Wires, Swansea Sound, The Drift, and other projects, the tunes made as Heavenly necessarily remain special in our minds. Luckily, they still sound special. A neat mix of the sweet and sour, the cuts are parallel creations in my estimation to the best singles from The Jesus & Mary Chain, which is to say pop de-constructed and re-constructed, with the pieces stitched up again into something that reminds us just why we listen to pop music in the first place. It makes us feel alive and good, and any cut here on A Bout De Heavenly does just that.
A Bout De Heavenly is out today via Damaged Goods and MVD.
More details via the Heavenly Facebook page.