The Heavy Heavy Interview
The Heavy Heavy create the kind of unfettered rock-and-roll that warps time and place, immediately pulling the audience into a euphoric fugue state with its own sun-soaked atmosphere. Led by lifelong musicians Will Turner and Georgie Fuller, the Brighton, UK-based band began with a shared ambition of “making records that sound like our favorite records ever,” and soon arrived at a reverb-drenched collision of psychedelia and blues, acid rock and sunshine pop. As revealed on their gloriously hazy debut EP Life and Life Only, The Heavy Heavy breathe an incandescent new energy into sounds from decades ago, transcending eras with a hypnotic ease. In dreaming up Life and Life Only, The Heavy Heavy tapped into many of the musical touchstones that Turner describes as “deeply entrenched in our psyche”: Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones, British Invasion pop acts like the Hollies, folk-blues duo Delaney & Bonnie, to name just a few. Pushing past the confines of reverential pastiche, the band imbues their output with a strangely charmed quality and heady authenticity undeniably tied to their status as artists on the fringe, both philosophically and geographically. To that end, Turner hails from the remote town of Malvern, an enchanted stretch of the English countryside once frequented by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and Kate Bush. “It’s famous for the healing qualities of its water, and there are ancient trees where the Druids used to worship—there’s a sort of magical-hippie aspect to it,” he notes. Fuller, meanwhile, elevates every track with her spellbinding vocals and magnetic yet wholly unaffected presence, building upon a kaleidoscopic career that’s included performing at Montreux Jazz Festival as a teenager as well as acting in the London theater.
Rooted in their effusive harmonies and fuzzed-out guitar work, Life and Life Only contains the first track Turner and Fuller ever recorded as The Heavy Heavy, a lilting piece of psych-pop titled “Go Down River.” “I’d had this song a while and couldn’t quite finish it, but then once Georgie added her vocals it all came together,” Turner recalls. “The male-female harmonies gave it this whole new sound; it just felt like lying in the green grass on a hot sunny day.” Self-produced in a London flat, the six-track project also brings that transportive power to songs like “Miles and Miles” (a bright and jangly number whose whirlwind velocity calls to mind late-’60s/early-’70s road dramas like Easy Rider and Vanishing Point), “Man of the Hills” (a groove-heavy homage to Turner’s otherworldly hometown), and “Sleeping on Grassy Ground” (a sweetly languid epic featuring a near-operatic vocal performance from Fuller, a classically trained singer). With their full-length debut due out in next year, The Heavy Heavy recently expanded their lineup to five members, allowing for an even more vast and bombastic sound now touched with heavenly four-part harmonies. A massively prolific outfit who’ve written and recorded hundreds of songs in the last two years alone, the band feels perpetually inspired by the pursuit of making music that provides a rarefied pleasure. “The driving force behind all our songwriting is to feel good, and to make other people feel good too,” Fuller points out. And thanks to their uncanny grace as sonic alchemists, The Heavy Heavy ultimately perform a certain magic with their music: eliciting a sublime daze that goes far beyond pure escapism.
In a little over one year The Heavy Heavy have toured relentlessly in the United States and Europe, garnering numerous accolades from both fans and critics. The Guardian deemed the band “one to watch” and praised their “thrillingly instinctive retro rock;” NME listed them as an Essential Emerging Artist for 2023. The Heavy Heavy appeared on national television on CBS Saturday Morning, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Their single “Miles & Miles” reached the top 5 of the Billboard AAA and Americana Radio Charts. The band also landed high profile placements, such as Netflix’s popular series Outer Banks. ATO Records released an expanded version of their EP Life and Life Only in March 2023, which includes harmony-laden covers of Father John Misty’s “Real Love Baby, CSNY’s “Guinnevere,” and Jonathan Wilson’s “Desert Raven.”
(Bio: from band’s site)
When and where were you born? How did you initially begin to fall in love with music? Was this something that was relevant around your household? Do you have any siblings? When and where did you see your first concert and when did it dawn on you that you wanted to be a musician?
Georgie: I was born in the South of England and grew up at the foot of the hills near Brighton. I have a brother and sister. Mine was Kings of Leon at the Brighton Centre. We were both pretty young. But you don’t realize that’s what you want to do until you get older and have to start making life choices.
Will: I was born in the middle of England and grew up on the hills of Malvern. We both first began to fall in love with music through listening to the music our parents played The Stones, Pink Floyd, CCR, Dire Straits. We were raised well. Music was and still plays a hugely important role in our family homes. Georgie’s family’s social time revolves around the dining table with record after record being played louder and louder as the night progresses. It usually ends up with everyone on their feet singing along in their loudest voices. Music is the beating heart of her family. I have a brother. We both would be playing in the garden with friends most of the time making up games, etc. Our earliest influences were The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Who, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. My first concert was Crosby Stills & Nash at Royal Albert Hall.
Did you guys participate in any groups prior to The Heavy Heavy? How did the band form and how did you guys initially meet each other? What was the chemistry like when you guys first got together to jam?
Will: I had a psych/surf/jam band called The White Feather Collective for years before THH. We met through music about 10 years ago and kept going back to each other to try out various projects. Great chemistry, it just worked. A mutual understanding of the sound we all wanted to make.
What commonalities did you share for the vision of the music you wanted to create together? When and where did you make your live performance debut and what was that experience like?
Will: It’s got to sound right. There is always an inevitability with the songwriting. Most importantly, the experience of listening to the track has got to feel good. We wanted the songs to sound golden and timeless with real performances and distinctive sound. We played an acoustic duo gig in London just before the pandemic. It was good to put the demos up on their feet.
Tell me about writing and recording the band’s 2022 stellar debut “Life and Life Only”. What was the overall vision and approach to this record?
Will: Some of these tracks had been created 5, or 6 years ago without a home. When we started laying down Georgie’s vocals on old demos of mine, the sound formed and feeding the male/female harmonies into that world of sound made the project come together fairly quickly. We wanted to recapture the energy and sounds of records made in the late 1960s and carry on that mentality, creating a ‘golden’ atmosphere via production and songwriting whilst bringing the sound up-to-date, drawing influences from our contemporaries.
When and where did recording begin and would you mind giving some back story the songs that are featured on the album? With the impact the band has generated, how have these experiences been like for you both personally and professionally?
Will: I make all the recordings at home, so they started there (in our flat in London). The songs arrived at different speeds and at different moments during 2019/20. Often drawing influence from iconic records, the songs revolve around a feeling of traveling freedom, imagining driving across America (very much the case for 'Miles and Miles'). ‘Go Down River’ is an escapist love story set in a dream-like sunset vibe. Since the EP has been released on ATO Records our lives have changed dramatically. We now spend most of our time on the road in America, touring through places we never imagined we’d ever visit. Personally, we are living out our childhood dreams and having a truly magical time. Combined with building an income from music. Things could not be better.
What have you got in the works for your Spring and Summer? Is there anything else you would like to further share with readers?
Will: This Spring and summer we are touring America doing our own headline shows and festivals, we hop back to the UK for a couple of weeks for some more shows back home, in between all of that we are putting together our debut album. We play The Greek in LA and Berkeley, as well as Red Rocks, supporting The Revivalists & Band of Horses. We can’t wait!
