Heavenly

From Talulah Gosh to the Sarah catalogue

Heavenly formed in Oxford in 1989 as a spin-off from Talulah Gosh, part of the C86 scene. In 1988 Amelia Fletcher had released an electronic solo single, "Can You Keep a Secret?", on Fierce, with no impact, and then assembled her former Talulah Gosh bandmates with Mathew Fletcher on drums. After their second concert, supporting the Television Personalities at the Camden Falcon, the Sarah Records owners Matt Haynes and Clare Wadd offered to release them. Early singles included "I Fell in Love Last Night" and "Our Love Is Heavenly" (1990), and the debut album Heavenly vs. Satan came in 1991 (Sarah 603). Cathy Rogers joined in early 1992 for Le Jardin de Heavenly (Sarah 610), with a guest vocal from the K Records founder Calvin Johnson on "C Is the Heavenly Option". They toured the US in 1992 and spent time in Olympia, Washington, near early riot grrrl, and in late 1992 Fletcher appeared with Huggy Bear on Channel 4's The Word.

In 1993 the Sarah singles "P.U.N.K. Girl" with "Hearts and Crosses" (Sarah 81) and "Atta Girl" with "Dig Your Own Grave" and "So?" (Sarah 82) followed. A Peel session in June 1994 included "Sacramento", "Itchy Chin", "Doomster" and "Sperm Meets Egg, So What?". The Decline and Fall of Heavenly (September 28, 1994, Sarah 623, K in the US) was produced by Ian Shaw at Shaw Sound in Fulham between April and June 1994; AllMusic's Nitsuh Abebe gave it 4 of 5, a cleanly produced sequence of bouncy, guitar-based pop songs, with a complaint that it is so painfully short. The K Records EP P.U.N.K. Girl came out on July 11, 1995, and the compilation This Is Heavenly (Elefant) the same year. Operation Heavenly (Wiiija and K, 1996) was released as Britpop peaked and included a French-language Serge Gainsbourg cover. Mathew Fletcher died in 1996, shortly before its release, and the remaining members retired the name and cancelled a planned tour.

Fletcher and Pursey went on to Marine Research and Tender Trap, and later the Catenary Wires and Swansea Sound; Momtchiloff played in the Would-Be-Goods. The reunion was announced in September 2022, with a first show in May 2023 at Bush Hall in London with Ian Button on drums, and 2024 dates in Spain, France and the US. The single "Portland Town" came out in 2025 and Highway to Heavenly on Skep Wax on February 27, 2026. Skep Wax, run by Pursey and Fletcher from Kent, has reissued the original albums on vinyl, and the compilation A Bout de Heavenly: The Singles appeared in 2020. Bandcamp Daily reports that "P.U.N.K. Girl" spread on TikTok, and Pursey said they had no idea, they did not even know what TikTok was. Michael White's Popkiss: The Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records (2015) covers them.