Heavenly in the U.S.A.

In honor of the forthcoming Heavenly reissues (Skep Wax will rerelease all the Heavenly LPs on vinyl soon: Heavenly vs Satan is available on pre-order now; Le Jardin de Heavenly will follow next April and the other two will come along at six month intervals)—in addition to the John Peel Sessions on Precious Recordings and the announcement of the band’s forthcoming gigs at Bush Hall in London in May 2023—we asked the band to think back to 30 years ago and tell us about their impressions of the U.S. in the olden days! The very first issue of chickfactor was handed out at a Heavenly / Lois gig in Sept. 1992; I reviewed their second album in SPIN around the same time, and we interviewed them in chickfactor zine (Amelia is on the cover of issue 2).

Heavenly: Peter, Amelia, Rob, Mathew, and Cathy. Photo by Alison Wonderland

ROB PURSEY
Going to America was overwhelming, partly because we were going to meet loads of people for the first time—people whose records we’d heard, but from a distance of 3500 miles. Two of the encounters I remember most vividly from that first Heavenly trip are Phoebe Summersquash (Small Factory) and Jeffrey Underhill (Honeybunch).  Phoebe is one of the select band of people known as ‘girl drummers’. She was the most diminutive person in the band, she wore glasses and she smiled all the time, even while she beating the hell out of a drumkit. I loved that combination of effortless glee and thunderous noise. She was the living antidote to those theatrical drummers (and guitarists) who pretend to be working out in the gym, or summoning Satan, as if that was crucial to making a great sound. 

Heavenly. Photo by Alison Wonderland

Jeffrey Underhill, we met, I think, in Rhode Island. I don’t really remember the gig very well, but I was a big fan of Honeybunch. Their song ‘Mine Your Own Business’ was in my head all the time, and it still provides the soundtrack for my memories of our first trip to the US. Anyway, what I remember about Jeffrey was the fact that he showed up in a back alley in a really great old blue/green semi-beater of a car. I am a bit of a nut about old cars, and liked this one a lot. Me and Jeffrey didn’t talk much, I imagine we were both somewhat shy, but I do remember sitting on the bonnet thinking ‘this is the best car, and it belongs to the person who played the best song’.

Image courtesy of Heavenly

The encounters with all these new people came to a head at the Chickfactor Party, where there was a whole community was assembling. I didn’t really know anyone there, of course, but I somehow felt like I could get to know and like all of them. We were a long way from the UK, but we felt at home. Part of the reason for this was that women were running the Chickfactor show, and these were wry, witty women.  There was a lot of intellect behind Chickfactor, and a definite attitude, but there was a lot of humour too. The humour was a sign of confidence—there was nothing apologetic about it. That’s what being in Heavenly felt like. The women in our band were obviously in charge, but they wore it lightly. So New York, or at least this little indie corner of New York, felt more amenable to our band than a lot of places back in the UK. It was a good feeling.

Amelia: Image courtesy of Heavenly

CATHY ROGERS
I’m not sure any of my memories are really separable. The synapses which connect Heavenly to America all sit in a viscous bath of coffee and the new kind of cool of the straight edge punks and the smell of wet trees driving through Oregon and Massachusetts and the swooning delight of being in the same venn diagram overlap as the really rioting riot grrrls and gigs not being gigs any more but shows and the sheer heat of new experiences and new loves. America just felt so great. It was like finding a version of us that was just so sure of itself. So certain. Walk around the town like you own it…everyone, all the time.

Cathy: Image courtesy of Heavenly

Compared with that overpowering sense of it all, specific memories feel a bit humble. The drive down from Olympia to play a show with a band who turned out to be Tiger Trap, Calvin saying, classic understatement, ‘I guess you might kinda like this band.’ Meeting them to play a show together in this kind of basement garage, them all wearing roller skates, us being powerless to resist charms on that level. For some reason, having a conversation with a bunch of people about our favourite foods and everyone out-doing each other for eccentricity, then Molly from Bratmobile saying ‘I just want to eat rice’ and that becoming one of those weird things that I think of literally every time I cook rice. The novelty, playing at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, of being fed really well before a show. Laughing over-hearing an old guy in the audience, saying – after a whole raft of indie bands – about Lois, ‘Finally someone who can actually sing’. Meeting Ted and Jodi for the first time and being so jealous that Pete was somehow already friends with them, then seeing Jodi’s band (with another girl with a rad American name like Brooklyn or Maddison, I’m pretty sure the band was called The Runways) and thinking these were the most sensational people I’d ever met. Being interviewed for this magazine called Chickfactor and hearing of another wait what cool girls are somehow allowed to be mainstream now magazine called Sassy and realising that culture was an actual thing and the world changes and feeling that we lived in some small backwater but we were so lucky because we were here, for now. 

Amelia. Image courtesy of Heavenly

AMELIA FLETCHER
– On our first US tour, Pete and I being dropped off by Small Factory in Hartford, Connecticut, in the middle of the night. We were near the place we were all staying with my parents, and figured we’d call a taxi to get us home. But it turned out that the place we stopped at had been robbed the week before, and we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by police cars. We were freaked out. It felt like an episode of Starsky and Hutch. Then, when asked where we were heading, we realised we couldn’t remember the address. Not at all suspicious! In the end, though, the police believed the daft English people and gave us a lift home in the police car.

– Meeting Claudia Gonson from Magnetic Fields at Chet’s Last Call in Boston. She asked if I had time to come and record a song for her and Stephin Merritt’s side project, the 6ths, the next day. I said why not. I had heard ‘100,000 Fireflies’ on the ‘One Last Kiss’ compilation and liked it a lot. I remember I sang ‘Hall of Mirrors’ in an especially breathy way, and Stephin commented that I came complete with my own reverb!

Image courtesy of Heavenly

– Playing at the Fantagraphics Comics Warehouse in Seattle with Beat Happening and another band who I just remember as being very smelly! It was a great space, and I was excited because I was a big fan of ‘Love and Rockets’. Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl both came, which seemed pretty thrilling too. We were easily thrilled!

The Heavenly option. Photo by Alison Wonderland

– Arriving in Olympia at the start of a West Coast tour, meeting Bratmobile and Bikini Kill and discovering Riot Grrrl. There was a visceral buzz around the whole place, and we quickly got very excited about it too. We had always been a feminist band, but in a quiet sort of way. We didn’t really feel part of the UK feminist movement at the time. It was fighting for stuff that was no doubt important but didn’t seem relevant to our concerns. So it was thrilling and empowering to find people discussing the issues that really had affected us. And to discover a whole set of new bands who had found a way of being outspoken and angry but also huge fun. It had a big impact on us, musically and personally.

Heavenly. Image courtesy of the band

PETER MOMTCHILOFF
I have opened the drawer in which I left my old memories of Heavenly in the USA. There is a lot there, but I can’t fit it together into any kind of story. My colleagues’ reminiscences do what I seem not to be able to. As a kind of coda, I do remember that we were brought down to earth by our first gig back in England after a West Coast tour, feeling rather pleased with ourselves. It was in a pub in Gillingham, to about five men and a dog. I don’t think they even turned the pub TV off while we played.

The late Mathew Fletcher. Image courtesy of Heavenly

the best of 2021

Daniel Handler: Best breakfasts I had in 2021

Huevos Rancheros, Pork Store, San Francisco CA

Cream-cheese icing cake, unknown shop, Oxford UK

Kimchee fried rice, Robert’s house, Boonville CA

Leftover flank steak, fried eggs, homemade tortillas, Air BnB, Napa CA

5-minute egg, rye toast, off-season strawberries, home in SF

Peanut butter toast, my sister’s car after various ocean swims*

*most frequent

Clare Wadd’s Books I Read in 2021: the ones I loved and the ones that will stay with me
1. Dreamland, Rosa Rankin-Gee
2. I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain, Anita Sethi
3. Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers
4. The Doll Factory, Elizabeth Macneal
5. My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend, Tracey Thorn
6. Skint Estate: A Memoir of Poverty, Motherhood and Survival, Cash Carraway
7. Fake Accounts, Lauren Oyler
8. The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
9. Mort Sur La Lande (Vera), Ann Cleaves/Claire Breton
10. Pirenesi, Susanna Clarke
With apologies to the boys as none of them made the cut

Photo courtesy of Beth

Beth Arzy’s Top 13 Records
The Shop Window, The State of Being Human
Lancashire Bombers, Into the Sun
Wild Billy Childish & CTMF, Where the Wild Purple Iris Grows
The Umbrellas, The Umbrellas
Massage, Still Life
Hadda Be, Another Life
Reds, Pinks and Purples, Uncommon Weather
Swansea Sound, Live at the Rum Puncheon
The Jazz Butcher, The Highest in the Land
The Catenary Wires, Birling Gap
Durand Jones & the Indications, Private Space
Chime School, Chime School
Shoestrings, Expectations
Beth plays in The Luxembourg Signal, Jetstream Pony, Lightning in a Twilight Hour 

Michael Azerrad’s Ten Best Vegetables and Fruits of 2021 
1. Snap peas 
2. Peaches 
3. Ramps 
4. Borlotti beans 
5. Corn 
6. Small russet potatoes* 
7. Heirloom tomatoes 
8. Golden Russet apples 
9. Lion’s mane mushrooms** 
10. Red Boston lettuce 
* Higher skin-to-flesh ratio 
** Yes, I know they’re technically not a vegetable or fruit.

Photo courtesy of Gilmore

Gilmore Tamny’s Chronicle of Things of Note 2021 List.
1. I started talking to myself more, drinking my coffee black, painting in earnest, eating lots of wavy potato chips, wearing eye makeup (per resolution 2021), and getting up at 5:30 a.m.
2. Turns out, I like ambient/ASMR video. There are a lot of crackling fireplaces and candles. Are the auteurs morally obligated to show responsible fire safety? I found this question more central to ethical code than I would have thought. 
3. I drank coffee and made a to-do list at about 6:00 a.m. while watching a pre-recorded video of myself drinking coffee and making a to-do list about 6:00 a.m. on youtube as part of the Non-Event TV 24-Hour Fundraiser
4. I decided I wanted to grow my hair long at least once before I croak, whether it is flattering or not. 
5. I enjoyed hearing Mero (of Desus and Mero) describe watching the Jan. 6 insurrection.  
6. My tomato plant grew and grew and grew and finally produced one single chestnut-sized tomato. 
7. Cottagecore? Hmmm.
8. I need a soap dish and discovered in resulting search I have a fairly narrow and inflexible idea of the soap dish I want. 
9. Was on the receiving end of possibly the dirtiest look someone’s ever given me. No threat, –just weary disgust. 
10. After watching and reading about secret societies in history, I tried to figure out a way to talk about secret societies without sounding credulous. Harder than I might have thought. 
11. I found a good gingerbread recipe. Works very well with substitutes to make it vegan. 
12. I discovered a friend was named after the Hawthorne story “The Old Stone Face.”
13. Learned: always close the door – car door, outside door to your building, your own apt./condo door – and lock it behind you (watch enough true crime—you’ll take my point). Stalin was involved in a bank robbery. My cat doesn’t just want me to throw any toy—but a specific toy—bouncy ball not wool ball, rattle mousekins not stuffed mousekins, etc. Hull isn’t where I thought it was. Lenin and Trotsky were Freemasons. 
14. Sciatica.
15. While practicing genuine gratitude for having a roof overhead, union job, good human friends, and cat friend, I stopped smothering my distress to death with gratitude. 
16. Miriam Toews’ book Fight Night is great. 
Gilmore Tamny lives and works and frets in Boston, MA.

Mike Slumberland: The list nobody wants… my top new jazz/jazz-adjacent records of 2021
1. Nat Birchall – Ancient Africa (Ancient Archive of Sound)
2. Tara Clerkin Trio – In Spring (World of Echo)
3. Emanative & Liz Elensky – The Volume Of The Light (Home Planet)
4. Sam Gendel – Fresh Bread (Leaving)
5. Makaya McCraven – Deciphering The Message (Blue Note)
6. Natural Information Society – Descension (Eremite)
7. Sons of Kemet – Black To The Future (Impulse!)
8. Emma-Jean Thackray – Yellow (Movementt)
9. Rosie Turton – Expansions and Transformations: Part I & II (no label)
10. Wildflower – Better Times (Tropic of Love)

Photo courtesy of Angelina

Angelina Capodanno’s 2021 lists 
(Team CF, also Sony Music / Legacy Creative +  Packaging, Brooklynite, Destroyer’s #1 fan)

My favorite 2021 albums: 
1. Hand Habits – Fun House 
2. Bachelor – Dooming Sun 
3. Cory Hanson – Pale Horse Rider 
4. Wednesday – Twin Plagues 
5. Colleen – The Tunnel and the Clearing 
6. The Mountain Movers – World What World 
7. ANIKA  – Change 
8. Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg 
9. Dummy – Mandatory Enjoyment 
10. Painted Shrines – Heaven & Holy 

Plus 13 more albums I liked a lot:
Nightshift – Zoe
The Goon Sax – Mirror II
Pip Blom – Welcome Break
Lewsberg – In Your Hands
Kiwi Jr – Cooler Returns 
Mdou Moctar – Afrique Victime
Jane Weaver – Flock
John Andrews and the Yawns – Cookbook
Caleb Landry Jones – Gadzooks Vol 1
Snapped Ankles – Forest of Your Problems
Weak Signal – Bianca
Goat Girl – On All Fours
Circuit does Yeux –io

Favorite Concerts
Yo La Tengo Hanukkah + Low + Fred Armisen @Bowery Ballroom
Yo La Tengo Hanukkah + 11th Dream Day + Joe Pera @Bowery Ballroom
Young Guv @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Sweeping Promises @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room
Wet Leg @ Baby’s All Right
Mdou Moctar @Motorco Music Hall

Favorite things I watched:
PEN15 
The Velvet Underground 
The Wire 
The White Lotus
Syracuse’s surprise Sweet 16 run in the 2021 NCAA tourney 
The Card Counter
Insecure
Curb Your Enthusiasm 
Breaking Bad

Favorite things I read:
But You Seemed So Happy – Kimberly Harrington
Love and Trouble – Claire Dederer
Empty: A Memoir – Susan Burton
Blow Your House Down – Gina Frangello
Somebody’s Daughter – Ashley C Ford
Sleepovers – Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters

Favorite Podcasts
The Experiment
Let’s Talk to Lucy
The Devil’s Candy: The Plot Thickens
Radiolab – Mixtape
Ali on The Run
Running Rouge 
Shattered