Next Wave #1191: The Heavy Heavy

Every so often a band comes along that feels like it belongs in another era. The Heavy Heavy‘s harmonies and blues-influenced guitar riffs and solos are plucked straight from the summer of love. In truth, they are a contemporary act hailing from Brighton and the result of an unusual pairing. Celebrating the release of their debut LP, ‘One Of A Kind‘, with a string of record shop dates in the UK, the group is ready for lift off. 

2022 EP, ‘Life and Life Only‘, offered encouraging signs for an act that walk a delicate line between the contemporary and an homage to 60s acts that influenced them. It’s apparent in their intimate live shows which pack a punch, and help add an extra dimension to what is an already stellar record.  Having played just a handful of gigs in the UK, the band went on tour in the US with Black Pumas, a sign of the high regard they are held in and how their sound is tailor-made for an American audience.

On where their striking name comes from co-lead vocalist William Turner cites the pre-eminent shapeshifter. “We took it from an obscure BBC Radio interview. It was on a documentary somewhere. It’s a very small clip of somebody asking David Bowie what Ziggy Stardust sounded like. He said it’s heavy, heavy man. So we got it from there.” Georgie Fuller adds: “We’ve heard it in numerous places since then too, like Back To The Future and Local Hero.”

The Heavy Heavy’s origin story is not necessarily what fans might expect. Lifelong musicians William and Georgie first encountered each another ten years ago through another musical venture; William was in a surf rock group and Georgie’s vocals were added into the mix on a few of their tracks. “We realised there was huge potential for the harmonies there, and we recorded some demos that eventually became the basis for what would become the EP.”

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Georgie recalls Will initially being sceptical about his own singing voice. ”He didn’t class himself as a singer,” she says. “Even though he was singing on all the tracks he was recording. It’s one thing to have a great voice in a unique timbre, but it’s another thing to then be able to harmonise with other artists.” Of the harmonic bands that have influenced The Heavy Heavy’s vocal-led repertoire, there are perhaps some obvious examples and some unexpected names that crop up: “Crosby, Stills and Nash being the big one. The Mamas and Papas, Fleet Foxes, even the Eagles, the second era of Fleetwood Mac…”

The duo’s time spent touring with the likes of Black Pumas and soon to be St Paul & The Broken Bones, bucks the industry trend of making it big in your home country before making it in the US. “Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy in that way,” Will says. “It’s always funny people in America are like, oh, so everybody must really know you over in England, and we say, no one knows us, because we’re always over here. I think it’s just the sound of the music and the way the music industry is set up there, and the fact that we have an American label and management. We’ve been incredibly lucky.”

Touring with established acts has opened the band’s eyes on how to perform to an audience in 6,500 capacity venues – like in Amsterdam which was a huge reflective, ‘take-it-all-in’ moment for Georgie. “We were watching Black Pumas, watching [bandleader] Eric, command his space and connect with the audience. It was a big learning curve for us,” she says.

The duo share songwriting credits on new album, ‘One Of A Kind‘. Unlike in bands where songwriting credits and roles played cause friction, the duo’s process is efficient and collaborative. It starts with Will and then Georgie’s adds her thoughts: “I’ll look for different worlds and different places, sonically speaking, that we can go to. We then formulate the start of a song. Lyrics always tend to come a bit later.”

On the evolution of their sound from their formative EP to their first full-length, Will says the band wanted to pack more of a bolder, proverbial punch. “It’s very much in the same wheelhouse sonically. But I think it’s a little less breezy, maybe, and laid back. With the album, we wanted to kick the door down and make a louder impression. So we’ve injected what I would call a bit more of a British influence; think The Small Faces, The Rolling Stones and some of the Brit-pop era.”

One of the biggest obstacles for a band trying to balance the sounds of yesteryear and today, is how to employ modern techniques and recording setups. A lot of it comes down to mixing. “Tracks from the 60s and 70s have very quiet drums, so even having louder drums makes it sound more modern,” Will explains. “It’s about taking the character from those old records – the sonic world that they live in – and presenting them in a modern way which people are used to. With a fidelity of sound. We don’t necessarily want it to sound exactly like the 60s, but we want to take the ingredients of the things we love and bring it up to date.”

Describing The Heavy Heavy’s sound to a new, impressionable audience might be a challenging ask but the band are up for it. “Bombastic, golden, retro rock and soul,’ Will declares before Georgie adds in a show of natural synergy, “with some psychedelia and a bit of folk harmony sprinkled in.” The band’s upcoming intimate record store shows are the perfect setting to hear their refulgent sound up close and personal. They’ll be on the road in the UK in Spring 2025, with their largest UK show to date at the iconic Scala. It’s a game-changing gig from a band who continue to appear on every tastemaker’s radar.

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‘One Of A Kind’ is out now.

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