Turn on The Heavy Heavy’s recently released, rollicking concert album, Live, and crank it up to 11. Though the U.K. rockers wear many of their influences on their sleeves, perhaps the first to surface are David Bowie and Marty McFly.
These heroes of pop culture are important to the band’s moniker, but “to me now, it represents the feeling after you’ve had a rather big night partying, and you see your friend for the first time in the morning,” said multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Will Turner in a recent interview. “He asks, ‘How are you doing?’ And you say, ‘That was heavy heavy, man.’ And that smile you have just after saying it, that’s what we’re about.”
Singer and keyboardist Georgie Fuller giggled in agreement—as one envisions her flashing a cheeky grin that’s a little worse for wear yet still riding last night’s high—before the pair of Brighton-based rock ’n’ roll aficionados delve more deeply into the inspirations that are readily apparent in their brand of blues rock, proudly “making the music the ’60s forgot,” according to a band bio.
“At the root of it all is The Rolling Stones,” Turner said, “and the whole Laurel Canyon thing—The Mamas & the Papas, Jefferson Airplane.”
“CSNY,” Fuller chimed in, citing the folk-rock super group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
“That whole era from ’64 until probably ’74—like, the whole lot,” Turner continued. “We’re trying to grab a little piece of everything that we love from that period; Dylan, all of it.”
From later decades, The Heavy Heavy also draws from Dire Straits, the ’90s Britpop of The Stone Roses, Blur, Oasis and Primal Scream, and American duos like The White Stripes and The Black Keys, who they’ve shared bills with.
It’s “a real cool thing” to tour with a band “we’ve really grown up idolizing,” Turner said, adding, it’s all “rooted in that ’60s guitar band style,” a sound he’s been honing for a decade and a half. “We’re taking a bit of our parents’ music as well as our adolescence and throwing that together in a big melting pot.”
Fuller is a classically trained singer with a degree in acting. As she was wrapping up her studies, Turner got her to sing on some song demos he was making. It was kismet, because it started something new. “And then there was an EP out of nowhere,” Turner said.
The group, now a five-piece, self-released the aforementioned EP, Life and Life Only, in 2020. That release was full of warm organ sounds and catchy guitar riffs, rich in vocal harmonies and summery vibes while pulling from ’60s folk-blues groups Delaney & Bonnie and Peter Green’s era of Fleetwood Mac.
But if the EP was folk rock, The Heavy Heavy’s full-length debut album, 2024’s One Of A Kind, was when the band went electric. It shows the pair’s sharper blues rock chops, but still doesn’t wholly encapsulate who these two nascent artists are or where they’re going. Enter Live, which displays how The Heavy Heavy’s live show is a different beast than the preceding records.
“Deliberately, we try and create an experience which is worth seeing in the room,” Turner noted. “We record every single show, so I’ve got everything backed up. And we just thought, ‘Why not do it between albums? It’s all there recorded.’ And then we had the idea to extend that whole idea… ‘Why don’t we have one side in the studio and one side on the road?’”
With no overdubs, both the studio and live recordings capture the group’s real rhythm, energy and synchronicity, documenting how the five-piece harmonies blend with psychedelic guitars, melodic keys and singalong choruses.
“And there are a couple of tracks that we thought would sound really great with some gospel singers, so that was exciting to add that element in,” Fuller explained. The studio songs, dubbed the Church Sessions, were aptly recorded at London’s The Church Studios and feature the Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir, which she said adds a “soulful quality [that] evokes that euphoria.”
“On the [One Of A Kind] record, we have layers and layers of harmonies and only one female singer. So it was exciting to be able to flesh those harmonies out and not just with anyone,” Fuller recalled.
The gospel choir also features on covers of Father John Misty’s “Real Love Baby” and the Khruangbin/Leon Bridges track, “Texas Sun.”
“With covers, you’ve got to be very careful, because if you’re going to re-present a song, you’ve got to make it more or different to justify its existence,” Turner said. “We have to recognize ourselves within the song and then try and do it justice and give it a different flavor.”
The Heavy Heavy will headline the Analog Reunion, formerly Cosmico, May 15-17 at Wildhaven Sonoma. More information and tickets at cosmi.co.
