COMPETITION TIME!

Yesterday’s post giving a mention to Heavenly was just a prelude to what’s on offer today which will see the first of the TVV competitions in 2024…..don’t ask me how many I’ll be running as it’ll depend on how generous I feel as the weeks and months go by as I’ll be purchasing all the prizes that end up here rather than relying on freebies from record labels.

The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, the band’s third album, was originally released on Sarah Records in 1994.   Its 30th anniversary is being celebrated with an expanded re-release, via Skep Wax, on 2 February, and I’m delighted to put two copies of the re-release up for grabs – how you might get lucky can be found a few paragraphs further down.

The original album contained eight songs, but the expanded release will include five further tracks, consisting of the A and B-sides of singles released in 1993.  Here’s the Skep Wax press release:-

The third Heavenly LP will be re-released by Skep Wax Records on Friday 2nd February.  The re-release will include all five tracks from the Atta Girl and P.U.N.K Girl 7” singles. These are the songs that have earned Heavenly a whole new generation of fans: Tiktoks based on P.U.N.K Girl have been liked by millions of teenagers and that song alone has accumulated over 7m Spotify streams.

The Atta Girl and P.U.N.K. Girl singles were released in 1993; album The Decline and Fall of Heavenly came soon after in 1994. Collectively they show a band that is rapidly expanding its scope. The album veers confidently from high speed indiepunk (Me And My Madness) to cool surf instrumental (Sacramento) and back again to the sweetest indiepop (Itchy Chin). Meanwhile, the singles, which include the band’s most celebrated tune ­– P.U.N.K Girl – demonstrates how much confidence Heavenly were deriving from their involvement in the nascent Riot Grrrl scene. All the anger is there, the politics are direct and crystal clear – yet the whole thing is still delivered with the sweetest pop melodies. It’s like being punched and kissed at the same time.

The three releases also show how Heavenly had come to feel equally at home in the UK and in the US. The album maybe feels more British, as demonstrated by the Old World irony of the ‘Decline and Fall’ title. At Heavenly gigs in the UK, often playing with other bands on the increasingly influential Sarah Records, audiences were getting bigger, while the bands were finding a sweet spot where anti-corporate understatement and a dismissive attitude to an increasingly misogynist UK Press was no barrier to success. P.U.N.K Girl and Atta Girl on the other hand, are more gleeful, more headlong, and somehow feel more American: they are carried along by the excitement and adrenaline of having found another spiritual home – the indiepunk Riot Grrrl scene that was focussed on Olympia, WA, the HQ of Heavenly’s US label K Records. (K released P.U.N.K Girl and Atta Girl together on one 10” EP.)

Amelia Fletcher and Cathy Rogers were now confidently sharing vocals, sometimes harmonising, sometimes taking it in turns, sometimes singing over each other. Peter (guitar), Mathew (drums) and Rob (bass) had become adept at changing gear from ornate pop to full-on punk, unafraid of genre rules and increasingly happy to make up their own version of what pop music should sound like.

The more delicate, more decorative arrangements of Heavenly’s first two albums had been left behind. The band – or more accurately, the women in the band – were still dogged by accusations of being too fey, too ‘twee’: not ROCK enough. But, as the chorus of Atta Girl makes clear, any attempts to define Heavenly by their ‘cuteness’ now received an unambiguous response: ‘Fuck you, no way!’

So…….to possibly get your hands on a copy of the album, please come up with the correct answer to the following question:-

What was the catalogue number of the original release of The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, back in 1994 on Sarah Records?

Please send your answer to the blog e-mail address – the vinylvillain@hotmail.co.uk – but please include your full name and address so that I can work out postage costs should you be lucky.  (I promise that all the emails will be deleted afterwards so that I don’t keep any of your personal info).

mp3: Heavenly – P.U.N.K. Girl

The closing date is Friday 19 January.  Good luck etc.

JC