Heavenly

Oxford, England's Heavenly became avatars of the bouncy and saccharine indie-rock style known variously as "shambling," "twee pop," and "cuddlecore," and became an important influence on British and American indie rock, most notably Belle & Sebastian. Though the quartet had already recorded as Tallulah Gosh in the late '80s, lead singer Amelia Fletcher still sounded like a prep-school freshman on Heavenly's eight-song debut, Heavenly vs. Satan, breathily crooning with passive, pitch-challenged yearning about teen topics such as a "Cool Guitar Boy" ( "There's heaven in his eyes!"). A twee-pop touchstone, the 1991 album was rereleased a decade later with six additional tracks, but although the tunes are strong throughout and several lyrics suggest dark recesses beneath Heavenly's sunny sound, the songcraft is ultimately overwhelmed by the gangly tumble of knock-kneed beats and off-key vocals. A year later, Heavenly was ready to channel its talents more smoothly on Le Jardin de Heavenly. Newcomer Cathy Rogers helps -- she adds light keyboard fills and solid vocal harmonies behind the perennially tone-challenged Fletcher -- as do memorable experiments such as "C Is the Heavenly Option," a duet with K Records' gravelly honcho, Calvin Johnson.

Still, the improvements were hardly preparation for the jolt of P.U.N.K. Girl, a musically diverse, thematically unified EP that plants Heavenly's feet on the ground with newly assertive lyrics -- at least one of the five songs is about date rape -- and newfound tinges of musical menace beneath the retro pop cutesiness. The group eased up on that menace on its following release, but this short album still earns its title, The Decline and Fall of Heavenly. "I'm not the same girl that you once knew," sings Fletcher on "Modestic," one of several numbers in which she finds her man falling short of her dreams. For that matter, Heavenly isn't the same band, exploring its '60s pop-rock influences more explicitly than ever before, with horn charts here, girl group melodies there, even a "Tequila"-tinged instrumental ("Sacramento"). Operation Heavenly dares even more with a harder rock sound, and Fletcher finally sings tough enough to qualify as a p.u.n.k. girl herself, upsetting romantic conventions with an easy sneer on almost every song. Sadly, the suicide of Amanda's brother and the group's drummer, Matt Fletcher, ended Heavenly only weeks after Operation Heavenly's release, though the surviving members later regrouped as Marine Research. (FRANKLIN SOULTS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide