Heavenly - The Decline and Fall of Heavenly
Artist: Heavenly
Author: Sarah
Date: 02/02/2023
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Author's preface
Today is the release date of the reissue of The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, so there was never any chance that I wasn't going to do a review for it. A little bit ago, I was looking through a flash drive I had in undergrad, and I realized that I had already written a review of it! Back around 2017 or so, my campus radio station had started getting serious about their website, and asked all of us to start writing stuff to go up on there. On this flash drive, I had a few reviews that I had written for them, but I never ended up submitting any of them for some reason. But now I've got my own website, so I've got a new place for them to go.
I kept this much the same way it had been when I originally wrote it, with the exception of removing one line about "Skipjack" (now my favorite song on the album) being relatively weak. It's probably not the same review I would have written today, but I think there's value in remembering the ways I used to think about things, even if that value is only for myself.
The review:
This was Heavenly’s last album released on Sarah Records, and the last album Sarah Records released before its closure in the summer of 1995. Like the P.U.N.K. Girl and Atta Girl singles of the year before, The Decline and Fall of Heavenly continues to move away from the love songs of earlier albums and more towards the riot grrrl they were exposed to in the United States. “Me and My Madness” is the name of the first track of this album, and it’s a very apt choice. The album is maddeningly inconsistent, featuring some of their very best material alongside an unfortunately weaker songs (for example, “Sacramento”, a pleasant, yet throwaway, instrumental in the middle of the album).
When it’s good, Decline and Fall is the peak of Heavenly’s career. Unfortunately, even in the best songs, its best moments tend to be just that: moments. The shouted chorus to “Skipjack” which gives Carl Wilson a run for his money (author's note: I think I wrote this one and a review of Wild Honey back to back, which is probably why Carl Wilson was on my mind?) and the phased backing vocals in “She and Me”, for example, are all incredibly memorable, even as the songs themselves fail to live up to those high points. Luckily, “Modestic” (one of Amelia Fletcher’s best vocal performances), “Itchy Chin” (featuring a snaky keyboard line from Cathy Rogers that’s Heavenly’s finest moment) and “Three Star Compartment” all succeed admirably, placing among my favorite Heavenly songs.
Unfortunately, other than “Three Star Compartment”, the second half of Decline and Fall falls short of the bar Heavenly had set for themselves with their prior releases. “Sacramento”, as mentioned before, is pleasant, but it’s still only an instrumental. Rogers gets a prominent keyboard line, and she really shines there, but the song is really hurting for lack of vocals. “Sperm Meets Egg, So What?” is one of the most immediately catching songs of the album, but repeated listens can easily cause its overly-bouncy chorus to become grating. “She and Me” is, divorced of context, a really good song, and a hint at what could have been had Heavenly explored slowcore a bit more. But tagged onto the end of a mostly upbeat pop album, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Even though the first half is markedly better, it still has its flaws, such as the cheesy fake strings rising after the line “I hear strings” in “Me and My Madness”.
Decline and Fall is really Rogers’ album to shine. Her keyboard really takes the lead instrumentally, with Peter Momtchiloff’s lead guitar taking more of a supporting role. Not only that, it also marks Rogers’ debut as a lead vocalist, as she sings “Me and My Madness” and “Skipjack”. Although I prefer the sound of her voice to Fletcher’s (Rogers’ voice to me sounds like a manifestation of the phrase “clear as a bell”), I still find that Fletcher manages to be a better lead vocalist through the character of her voice (her voice emotes better than Rogers’ does). Decline and Fall is no masterpiece, but it remains as a highly listenable, if transitional, effort from one of the greatest bands of the 1990s.