I was introduced to the legendary UK indie-pop band Heavenly in the late 2000s, when the cult emo favorites Los Campesinos! covered their 1992 banger “C Is The Heavenly Option.” The original song, a collaboration between Heavenly and Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson, is a sterling example of the early-’90s twee sound: Its sparkling melodies bely sharp, sly songwriting, all wrapped up in the charmingly ramshackle aesthetic that characterized the era’s indie-pop movement. But they weren’t limited by that designation; after the group signed to the iconic US label K Records, their music grew to incorporate influences from the ascendant riot-grrrl scene. Their last album, 1996’s Operation Heavenly, found them displaying a tighter, more extroverted sound, influenced by the Britpop wave. But shortly before its release, lead singer Amelia Fletcher’s brother Mathew—who was also the band’s drummer—passed away by suicide.
The surviving band members—Fletcher, bassist (and Fletcher’s husband) Rob Pursey, guitarist Peter Momtchiloff, and singer/keyboardist Cathy Rogers—moved on to other projects, including Tender Trap, Marine Research, and their newer band Swansea Sound. But in the meantime, Heavenly’s influence grew. In 2020, the label Damaged Goods released the well-received singles compilation A Bout De Heavenly, a collection that demonstrated the group’s emotional range and appealing hooks. Fletcher and Pursey’s label Skep Wax began reissuing the group’s ’90s output, and the group reunited in 2023 for a series of reunion shows in the UK—and to top it all off, their 1993 single “P.U.N.K. Girl” gained a new generation of fans on TikTok.
Now, the band will be playing in San Francisco for the first time in 29 years on Fri/18 and Sat/19th at the Rickshaw Stop. I spoke with Fletcher and Pursey to learn about what inspired the tour, their memories of playing DIY shows in the ’90s, and what their kids have learned from Minecraft.
48 HILLS I was wondering, what was the impetus for this tour?
AMELIA Well, it was a whole bunch of things. One is the fact that we’re playing again at all, because we had a thirty-year hiatus. What made that happen was discovering that people were still excited about us. A friend put a compilation album of all our singles out, thinking a few people might be interested, and it did really really well and got lots of press and very positive reviews. Then the song “P.U.N.K. Girl” went a bit mad on TikTok, and suddenly it was like, “Oh, people actually care!” And we just thought, well, we’ll do a couple gigs and see how it goes. Anyway, we did a couple of gigs in London—it went really well. So we thought, this is fun, let’s do a bit more. So that’s why we’re playing at all.
ROB I think why we’re coming back to the West Coast is partly because we had so much fun there before. It was like our second home. We were on K Records in America—we were on Sarah Records in the UK, but on K in America—which is up in Olympia, in Washington. So it felt like we kind of had a way into the West Coast. And we made a lot of friends, played with a lot of great bands, and we have a lot of great memories—and maybe when we go back, all those memories will seem like what they are, which is a long time ago. [laughs] But the scene seems to be quite lively at the moment, and people seem to be really into our kind of music in a way that feels quite familiar, really. Or maybe it’s never gone away, just that we stopped listening for a bit.
AMELIA There’s this guy who invited us to come and play in LA, who runs a shop. And we were like, well, that sounds good, but if we’re gonna play LA, we really should play some other places as well. So it’s a mix of things, really. We’re very excited that we’re coming.
48 HILLS Yeah, I’m really excited personally! I found your music when I was teenager—this was in the 2000s, so it was after the first wave. So I’m really excited to get to see you for the first time. And I wanted to ask about “P.U.N.K. Girl” going viral on Tik Tok, because I imagine that seeing you for the first time is going to be an experience that a lot of people are sharing. I was wondering, how did you find out about that song gaining a second life?
ROB This is really funny, and it’s true. We’ve got two daughters, Dora and Ivy—they were about 18 and 19 at this time. And one of them, Ivy, the younger one, came into the kitchen and said, “Why are you all over my timeline?”
AMELIA “On my story!”
ROB On my story, right. “And I said, I don’t know, what are you talking about?” She said, “You’re all over my story and my friends’ stories as well!” She thought we’d somehow contrived it ourselves. Obviously, we didn’t know anything about it because we’re too old to do TikTok. So the first thing we found out about it was our daughter, a bit annoyed that we’d…
AMELIA Infiltrated her world! [laughs]
48 HILLS That’s really funny. Was she excited about it, or was she just frustrated?
AMELIA They were both very excited in the end. Lots of people picked up on it, so lots of different videos were made to that song on TikTok, and we were watching slightly bemused. Then over Christmas, we were all sitting around at home, and our older daughter said, “You should make a TikTok!” I was doing the dishes, and she put the phone on the cooker—which was off—and then said, “Mum, mum! Your song’s on, come and dance!” So I daftly started dancing, holding a wooden spoon in my hand, because that’s what I was washing up. She stuck that up on TikTok, and we went to bed, and the next morning she came running in going, “Mum! It’s gone viral!” And that video literally got, I’d need to check, something like a quarter of a million likes! [laughs]
ROB The comments are really funny because they’re all aimed at Dora, not at us. And there’s things like, “Adopt me! I want to be in your family!” [laughs] They were really funny. But I think what actually was really lovely about it was that the song had been picked up on by mostly gay women or queer women, and they kind of picked the meaning out of it. I mean, it is a lesbian love song. And at the time, I suppose people did notice that, but I think that generation is much more attuned, vocal, aware of themselves. The song got reborn partly because younger people found the meaning in it and celebrated it and turned it their own. All that was lovely to watch, it’s so fantastic.
48 HILLS Yeah! It’s a really beautiful thing that the song has gained this new life in a way. And that leads into one of my other questions. I know that you’ve played a few other shows this year in New York and elsewhere. I was wondering, similar to how there’s this different interpretation of “P.U.N.K. Girl,” have you made any discoveries in these old songs that have surprised you, or have you felt the audience responding in a new way as you’ve returned to this material?
AMELIA It’s really interesting. Some of them, I’m just kind of surprised that they’re as good as they are. I think all the songs—the tunes are written by me, but occasionally we would split out words. So “P.U.N.K. Girl” is written by me, but some of the other words were written by other people. And I never liked singing words by other people at the time, I just did it because I couldn’t write enough words by myself. But actually some of the words written by other people—including the words written by my brother, who’s no longer with us—are really good. And singing them is particularly moving, I think. Seeing them a bit more objectively has been really good.
ROB I think what I’ve found is that [for] older people, certain songs capture something about themselves that was meaningful. And you can never know what that is, but you can tell that that’s sort of where they’re at. Whereas, like with the TikToks, I think younger people bring a slightly different meaning to it. I think it’s partly about the context. It’s very different for us from when we were first doing it.
The context in the UK was very different to the context in America, because here, we were part of the Sarah Records scene, which was seen as quite delicate and sensitive and very anti-macho. Whereas in America we were part of a more punk scene, and riot grrrl was starting to happen, so there was more attitude. And I think there’s more of that in the response now than there was at the time. Which is kind of nice, really. I think the Heavenly stuff cuts two ways, because the music is quite sugary. And then you can either listen to the words and think, “Oh hang on, that’s not quite so sweet after all,” or you don’t have to.
AMELIA I think the earlier two albums were more sweet, more twee-pop. The latter two albums are more aware, I’d say, and thoughtful. They’re not just pop songs, the lyrics are much more complex. I had this hunch, because there was this big thing about twee-pop a couple of years ago, everyone was gonna want to listen to the old songs. But actually the latter songs I would say are going down better. And I’m perfectly happy with that, because they’re the ones I like better too! [laughs] We try to do songs from right across all the albums, because we figure that’s what people would like. But the latter ones—and particularly the ones from the “P.U.N.K. Girl” EP, like “Atta Girl” and “Hearts and Crosses,” they’re really fun to do.
48 HILLS Why are they more fun to do?
AMELIA There’s something about having an entire audience singing along with you going, “Fuck you, no way!” This is where I’m glad we’re not doing a radio interview. [laughs] It’s just really funny, it makes me laugh every time. I know I shouldn’t laugh, I should be angry. But it’s just very funny.
48 HILLS I think it makes sense too, because sometimes the laughter and anger and sadness all coexist together.
AMELIA Yeah. And actually, I think that’s something people found hard with Heavenly at the time—that we looked sugary on the outside and weren’t on the inside. And they got riot grrrl more easily than they got us, because riot grrrl did what it said on the tin and we didn’t. But it seems to have worked quite well over time. People have gradually got it.
48 HILLS Rob, you mentioned earlier that touring the West Coast three decades ago, things felt like a second home, and that you had a lot of memories here. I was wondering if you have any memories of the last time you played in San Francisco particularly, or just in general touring the West Coast?
ROB Was it in Berkeley where we played that frat house? It was a sort of radical frat house, and it was a gig raising money for protest against a piece of government legislation. It was a perfect DIY gig. Some people had a house and they kicked everybody out, and we played in it. It was kind of chaos, but it was joyous at the same time. I remember that one really vividly. My old memories get mixed up. The Bottom of the Hill club was in San Francisco, and we played there…
AMELIA Still is, I think.
ROB I remember that gig being particularly good.
AMELIA I remember playing there with The Aislers Set. I hope that’s a true memory! I love Aislers Set. I just remember everyone being incredibly friendly. I do remember one very funny thing, which was having made not quite enough t-shirts for the tour—which may actually happen again—and getting to San Francisco and having run out of all the sizes that anyone actually wanted.
ROB That actually was in Marine Research, the band we had after Heavenly.
AMELIA And Rob was a terrible, terrible, misleading salesman. Trying to say to people, “This really enormous t-shirt will look absolutely beautiful on you!” And me saying, “Don’t mis-sell!”
ROB We had to pay for the car! Sorry, that makes me look like a real fraud.
AMELIA It’s funny how people will say, “What’s your memory of San Francisco?” And my main memory is of ripping people off on t-shirts. [laughs] Apart from that, I just remember doing a lot of walking around in San Francisco because it was so incredibly pretty.
ROB I imagine it’s changed quite a lot since we left. I think also, because we’re British, we got excited about really long tedious drives. You can drive from Portland to San Francisco, or San Francisco to LA. It goes on for an almost surreal length of time where nothing happens apart from just crawling very slowly across the face of the earth. Which obviously is like, really tedious, but for us it’s kind of exciting. If you do that here, you just end up in the sea or in Europe. Whereas there you do that for a whole day and nothing happens. I like that. Maybe that’s just me.
AMELIA Well, we’re going to do it again, so you’ll be happy. [laughs]
48 HILLS That actually leads me into another question. How does it feel different playing Heavenly material live, versus playing Marine Research or Tender Trap or Swansea Sound songs?
ROB The Swansea Sound songs are all very new, it’s quite a new band. So that’s quite exciting in its own way, because doing very new things is more exciting than doing old things. Partly because you don’t know how people are going to react—there’s a certain amount of predictability to how people react to Heavenly. But I think in the end it doesn’t feel that different. It’s also the case that there are some new Heavenly songs—which is quite nice, it doesn’t feel like just a sort of museum of twee curiosities.
If you’ve got new things to do, you play differently because you can’t relax as much. And this is a good thing, because you’re still trying to work out exactly how these songs ought to go, and I think that’s good for you, and good for the audience as well, because the band are on their toes. When we first started doing old Heavenly songs, me and Pete were quite resistant to it because we were like, “Oh god, one of those bands that go around doing their old songs forever.” There’s probably too much of that. And I still feel a bit bad that we’re taking up oxygen by doing it as well, but I feel more okay about it because there are some new songs in there.
AMELIA The audience probably doesn’t want any new songs, but they’re gonna have them foisted upon them. [laughs] It’s also different if you’re singing. I really enjoy singing the same song a billion times.
ROB You just like doing things again!
AMELIA Yeah, well, anyway. I enjoy it. I think what is always really fun in any gig is the audience reaction, and Swansea Sound gigs get a lot of good audience reaction as well. But Heavenly’s audience reaction on these recent shows has been just amazing. Just feeling all the emotion in the room makes you emotional. I think that is rather wonderful, and I’ve never had that in any band quite the same before.
ROB That’s because you’ve not gone away for 30 years before. [laughs] The ones in London, which were the first ones we did, we were all a bit taken aback by how emotional it was. We had felt emotional about [reuniting], because we got together after a long time, and it was the first time we’d done gigs without Matthew. Even though that was a long time ago, you’re still very aware of who isn’t there, so there was quite a lot of emotion that had built up. But what we’d underestimated was the amount of emotion within people in the audience. And you could sense it, you could feel it. It was quite a strange feeling.
AMELIA But it’s now slightly scary. Because, I have to say, I think about a third of the audience had flown in from America, and probably another third had flown in from Europe. People were so excited, and they didn’t know that Heavenly might ever play again. Then I think it was a bit similar in New York. Now we’re doing all these shows, I suspect there will be at least a fair smattering of people in the audience who are not quite as excited about seeing Heavenly. So I’m just hoping we can stir up at least some of that feeling. But I think even if we can’t, it’s gonna be good fun.
48 HILLS You mentioned that you’re gonna play some new songs on the tour. Are you planning on leading up to a new record? Is there a release idea in mind, or are you just making some new stuff just for fun?
ROB We’ve been feeling our way. I think the new singles are good. Well, you can see what you think, you might disagree! So there will be a new thing, I don’t know when, next year sometime, maybe? I don’t think we’ve quite decided.
AMELIA It partly comes down to my speed of writing. The ideal would be we put out an album towards the end of next year. But we were actually doing the calculations this morning, and we realized that means I need to have written all the songs by the end of January. I know I should be able to do it, but it’s taken me 30 years to write four. [laughs]
ROB So the answer is yeah, there probably will be, but it will be a while. I think it’s really hard to know if that’s a good idea or not, because I’m impatient so I like to do new things. Whereas people who like Heavenly might think, “Oh god, just play those old songs that I like.”
AMELIA And actually, you are also schizophrenic, because when the Cure just put out a new single, you were like, “Why do that?”
ROB Because it sounds really boring! It wasn’t because it’s new, it’s because it’s as tedious as anything on Pornography, and possibly moreso.
AMELIA I’ve not heard the Cure single, so I cannot comment.
ROB I like some Cure things, but I mean, he’s too old to do sixth-form dirges. He’s old enough to be our dad.
AMELIA He’s not quite, but yeah. [laughs]
48 HILLS It’s interesting, returning after a long period of time. If you’re the Cure, there must be so much pressure to recreate the thing that people loved about you the first time around. Do you feel that kind of pressure at all?
AMELIA I wondered if I might, but I’m actually really enjoying remembering what Heavenly was all about and writing songs that are kind of Heavenly-ish. Obviously, we’ve done other bands since, and we’ve tried to write different types of songs in all of those different bands. Heavenly does have a very specific kind of songwriting and general style. I think we’ve maintained the style while [wanting] to move it on as well. It’s a bit weird, it’s a bit non-organic to be trying to both capture it and move it on 30 years later. But we’ll just have to see if we manage it.
48 HILLS Amelia, I read the open letter that you wrote to the Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and I was listening to the Swansea Sound album which is also very satirical, and is really thoughtful about the industry as a whole. How has it felt to see all of these big changes happening in the music industry over the last few decades? And has it changed the way that you approach music-making at all?
AMELIA It’s a very good question. I don’t think it’s really changed the way in which we make music, except that, in particular, Rob writes the songs in Swansea Sound, and he’s been quite inspired by the changes in the music industry, in a kind of negative way, to write positive songs – or in a positive way, to write negative songs! But what I do think is that we were really lucky to be doing what we were doing when we were doing it, because I just think it’s really really hard now. I mean, one of the things with streaming is so much of the money actually goes to old bands like us. In a way, that shouldn’t happen. We shouldn’t be getting loads of money from Spotify at this late stage in our lives, it should be going to new bands.
ROB It’s not that much. [laughs]
AMELIA It’s not that much! But to the extent there is money, it should be going to younger bands. And equally, touring is so expensive now. When we played in Europe and America before we used to—shh!—sneak in under the radar. It was possible because there wasn’t the internet, and we didn’t really look like a rock and roll band. Whereas now, when we look even less like a rock and roll band, we’ve had to get proper work visas, because we know it’s too risky to try and get in. And then work visas are extraordinarily complicated and expensive to get. That’s not Daniel Ek’s fault, but there’s all these different things that are standing in the way of… not people making music, it’s actually easier to make music than it ever has been, but it’s harder to get the music out.
ROB I think it’s really hard now compared to how it was because you get paid in likes rather than in money. It’s a brilliantly designed system for extracting as much value and as much wealth from young creators as you could possibly imagine. I mean, Spotify was modeled on something that would have been called piracy, the sharing of files. And the industry decided, “Well, actually, we can do that.” In their staggering amorality, they’ve become the thing they rather piously warned us all about when we were younger, that “Piracy was killing music.” Piracy is killing music, it’s just that now it’s them doing it rather than some pirates. I suppose our attitude is, you could do it anyway. We’re not gonna be put off. I think what is frustrating—and this is true of anything—is all you can do is make gestures. Most Swansea Sound songs aren’t on Spotify because we hate it. It’s a gesture. It means that a smaller number of people hear Swansea Sound, because it’s not there, but with that band it’s a gesture worth making. But you’re very well aware that you’re a bit of a pygmy in the face of something globally huge.
It makes gigs more important, as much as the amount of non-human contact we all have through Instagram and stuff means that that comes to seem like the real world. We moved out of London about ten years ago, partly because we had little kids and we were looking after my mum, and Amelia’s mum, and we couldn’t do that in London. We moved to this quite remote part of Kent, in the countryside. And with Dora, who was about 10 at the time or nine, I said, “Let’s go in the woods.” So we did. And she was like, “Let’s make a prehistoric village!” That meant a den, so you gather up sticks and you make a sort of crappy den, and it was really good fun. And she was really enjoying it. She said, “This is like Minecraft, but real!” [laughs] It almost matched up to the Minecraft experience.
48 HILLS And you’re like, this is what Minecraft is based on, actually!
ROB It’s weird because kids at that age all learn a lot from those things, and not all of it’s bad. One time, Ivy, her little sister, went, “What’s that, is that made of cobalt?” And I was like, “How do you know about cobalt?” And she said, “Oh, you need it to make -” and she named this thing on Minecraft where you have to gather up different ingredients to make a stone club to hit people with or something.
AMELIA They learn stuff. It may or may not be factually correct. [laughs] But anyway, I think we’ve gone off the topic a bit!
ROB Yeah, that’s probably not what you were asking about, cobalt.
48 HILLS I love cobalt. [laughs]
ROB Yeah, it’s very underrated and under-discussed!
48 HILLS I was wondering if you had any advice for younger artists starting out, or if there was anything you wish someone had told you when you started making music?
ROB Um, keep the masters. [laughs]
AMELIA I think the main thing that someone could’ve actually told us was that we were actually quite good. I mean a few indie people did tell us, but we didn’t really believe them. Looking back, I mean, we had other jobs we were trying to do, so we probably were never gonna really get much bigger than we did. But I never even thought we could have. I liked plowing a slightly odd vein, and I suppose in a way it was good—
ROB Furrough.
AMELIA Furrough! That way I could quite happily be slightly odd. But I dreamed, I guess, of it being a bit more popular, and we just never really tried. We thought it was unrealistic.
ROB Well, we all had jobs. And we decided quite early on that we weren’t gonna try and get signed to a major and do it full time. I’m glad we didn’t, because that’s probably why we still like doing it now, to be honest.
AMELIA True. That is true.
ROB And we did other things in our lives, which are good or are not good, but you know. We’ve lived two lives, really. We’re quite lucky.
AMELIA So I guess maybe, have self-belief, but actually the DIY way is a good one.
ROB Find a gang. Because I think that now you can be very isolated, very lonely, and you do lose your perspective. When we started, we were part of a sort of scene. There were other bands, other people, they weren’t doing the same music as us, but they had the same attitude as us. And I think that really makes you feel like… it’s not just you and Daniel Ek, there’s other people in the world too.
AMELIA Yeah. There is that sense of community, and I think that’s partly what these gigs have shown us, that the indie community is an amazing one. It’s shown it to us very forcefully. Calvin Johnson used to talk about the international pop underground, and I think I’m really pleased to say we have been part of the international pop underground. Everybody should have their own international something underground that they’re part of.
48 HILLS Yeah! That’s very inspiring. That’s all of my questions, but I was wondering if you had anything else you wanted to add before I let you go?
ROB I don’t think so. I kind of think I’ve droned on about our kids. [laughs] Are you coming to one of the shows?
48 HILLS I’m coming to the show on the 19th!
ROB OK! Well, afterwards, let us know what you think of the new songs. Be ruthlessly honest. [laughs]
HEAVENLY Fri/18 and Sat/19th at the Rickshaw Stop, SF. More info here.
