The Heavy Heavy: The Best of What's Next

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There’s a phrase that William Turner and Georgie Fuller have added to their lexicon: “zombie project.” They use it to describe a band or an album that “will not die.” It’s a measurement of success, in some ways, as it keeps coming back again and again. You can’t outrun it, and you can’t look away from it. Turner and Fuller met over five years ago, when Fuller was singing back-up vocals on someone else’s album, an album Turner was drafted in to play on. The first music they ever made together leaned into this dreamy, poppier sphere of intrigue, but they never felt much comfort in that. It didn’t feel like the music they were supposed to be making.

When Turner asked Fuller to record backing vocals for his old, now-defunct band, which worked in a surfier realm, that’s when something kinetic began fastening into place. “There was something about the way my voice hit the microphone and [William’s] recording style and production style,” Fuller says. “We had this epiphany moment, where we were like, ‘Whoa, that sounds cool.’” Of course, it took a few more years for the duo to see it come to fruition, when they started laying vocals down on a string of demos that would become their debut EP, Life and Life Only, in 2022. “We were like, ‘Oh, God, something really great is here and it feels really good,” Fuller continues. “It feels like a zombie project, and that was The Heavy Heavy.”

Fuller has a long, extensive history as a trained singer, having performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival and taken acting turns at the London Theatre. In a lot of ways, her background is the perfect ammunition for a life spent in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Drama and rock music are so deeply intertwined by the raw, organic energy of humans being moved by the sounds they’re producing and connecting with audiences. “The way they threw down in the ‘60s, it was theatrical—and it still is,” she says.

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Turner grew up in the parish of Malvern in Worcestershire. According to him, Malvern is a “hippie mecca for aged musicians.” He went to school with Robert Plant’s son, and world-famous violinist Nigel Kennedy lived right next to the pub he and his friends would frequent. As a kid, Turner’s parents put him on to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix and a good cocktail of Beatles and Stones, and being from Malvern allowed him to live in nature but traipse around the same hills Black Sabbath, J.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis once roamed. It was a potent, folklorish way to become a person. “I wouldn’t say Malvern is a thriving music scene,” Turner says. “There’s definitely a cool local music scene, but people who come to Malvern or live in Malvern seem to stay there, because it’s a center of the universe for a lot of people. It’s such a beautiful place, entrenched in something magical.” “The air there is something different,” Fuller corroborates.

My first introduction to The Heavy Heavy was over two years ago, when I was filling in as a news writer for a different publication and heard the band play “Miles and Miles” for the first time. I remember being so transfixed by the song’s blues-juiced arrangement and the way Turner and Fuller’s voices melted into each other like some combed-out, tightened-up, modern-day rendering of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The energy captured all across the Life and Life Only EP—it was explosive but personal; heady but spacious. And then, when I saw The Heavy Heavy play a set in the States at their first-ever South By Southwest, it all came swirling into this cloud-nine bath of grooves.

But on their debut album, One of a Kind, Turner and Fuller ramp up the pizazz into a volcanic tapestry of sights, sounds and colors. The surfy, garage-rock stylings of Turner’s roots blast into “Miracle Sun,” while he and Fuller adopt a Dire Straits-style twang on “Wild Emotion,” only to do a 180 into this orchestral, sprawling coda on “Salina.” And then, on “Happiness,” Turner and Fuller take their two-part harmonies and plug them into an slick, croony arrangement tinted by an organ not unlike Steve Winwood’s. For being a couple of Brits, they understand Laurel Canyon and Bakersfield music far better than most Americans do, and One of a Kind is a colossal motley and soulful, rollicking delight. “We were sort of a bit more bombastic than what the EP suggested,” Turner says. “I’ve always made music that is big in its nature. I think I wanted to make stuff that played on the strengths of our live set and married the two worlds together. We wanted to make something a bit bolder and a bit more energetic.”

Life and Life Only has lived a few lives since its inception and, when it came out, Turner and Fuller had only played two acoustic shows together. The EP was self-released in 2020, got a nice “official” release by ATO Records in 2022 and then, just last year, was reissued again with four extra recordings. Their cover of Father John Misty’s “Real Love Baby” got a baroque and beat makeover, while “Miles and Miles” and “Go Down River” both hit the Top 5 on Adult Alternative Radio. Despite the EP being a self-contained machine, it was, as Fuller puts it, The Heavy Heavy “just throwing stuff out into the world.” “We honestly didn’t expect this to happen,” she says. “This is ‘wildest dream’ territory.” The duo had a lot of demos that took a lot of shapes, which is why even the short, seven-song vacuum of Life and Life Only is a good, varied example of everything The Heavy Heavy can be. But they didn’t want their debut full-length to be an array just for the hell of it.

“One of the things that we were contending with [on One of a Kind] was that there’s twice as many songs on it and, whilst we still want each of them to have their own identity, there does also need to be some sort of congruence to them,” Fuller continues. “We wanted it to be cohesive, as an album,” Turner adds. “The EP was very pretty and breezy, which is lovely. It’s very fun to make records like that. But we wanted to make [One of a Kind] bigger than slightly so pretty. There are pretty moments on, but that’s the sort of thing we’ve left behind.”

When The Heavy Heavy are in the studio, Turner goes on a “voyage of discovery” and writes into the sound. “I’ll just disappear on my own in the studio and come up with various starters that we’ll work out, just trying to find an atmosphere and a little world to go into,” he says. “And then, sometimes, that will end up in a full-fledged song. Sometimes it ends up in just a chorus, and then we have to work at it.” He and Fuller, more often than not, write lyrics together and then, once the music has reached a certain point of cohesion, gets taken to their band (Chris Reynolds, Joe Bordenaro, Tom Holder, Frank Fogden) Much of One of a Kind was recorded by Turner and Fuller at home but, if a track requires some live, in-the-same-room playing, then they will follow that muse. “We’ll listen to something like Joe Cocker and be like, ‘That sounds great, let’s just try and work out what makes that great and then take those ingredients and make our own cake from it,’” Turner adds.

Not many musicians are willing to be so transparent about wanting to make an album that sounds like their favorite album. But there’s a reason why The Heavy Heavy’s One of a Kind shares an alchemy with the Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup: Turner and Fuller love Goats Head Soup. No one wants to be labeled an “imitator” or get accused of cribbing someone else’s work, but, if a record is great, then there’s probably something about it that’s worth studying and learning from.

The Heavy Heavy are scholars of music that already exists, as are the rest of us. Yes, they are taking notes on Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac and, sometimes, it makes finding their voice that much easier. The Who were trying to be Howlin’ Wolf once upon a time. “It’s like going down a road somebody has already been down, because it looks so beautiful,” Turner says. “We’re not trying to find any new roads, but we obviously are, because of the nature of just making music. You find new stuff. For me, hearing the productions of Phil Spector, there’s just not enough of those records. Part of it, the drive, is to make more of that sound. There were a lot of records between ‘66 and ‘74, but that was it. Things changed, computers got involved. The industry completely changed and that was it. [Rock music] had its moment.”

On One of a Kind, Turner and Fuller tap into those recording techniques of yesteryear because they still, 50, 60 years later, sound bulletproof. Turner produced, engineered and mixed every song and arranged most of the album’s instrumentation. Mirroring their live prowess—galvanized by sets at Bonnaroo, Newport Folk and Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert’s late-night shows—The Heavy Heavy don’t totally abandon the summery, floral roots that made Life and Life Only so enchanting. Instead, they double-down on it like a fever dream and use it as a jumping point. The fidelity, in turn, is off the charts, the optimism is big and psychedelic, and the analog gear they use contours the mentality of the songs. “All of those ingredients still exist, so we’re going to put them all in and do more of it,” Turner explains.

But even as The Heavy Heavy do that, their music still sounds like it was made in 2024—further beating the retro allegations, but it’s not for a lack of trying. “As much as I try my absolute hardest to make something that sounds like it’s really from 1968, it just never will, because we have other influences from the ‘90s and on,” Turner continues. “I think there are eight stories in the world. That’s it. Those are the stories and they get told and retold and retold,” Fuller adds. “Why reinvent the wheel? They work. And you’re a different person. You are a unique human on this planet—so, if that’s the recipe that you like, you take that recipe and you put it in your body and then it comes out through you and it’s going to be yours.”

The Heavy Heavy don’t use synthesizers or modern technology in the studio, preferring to use old microphones and old preamps. It’s a sonic footprint that’s quite sought after nowadays, even if the music being made with it is very “modern-sounding.” It’s easier, Turner contends, but far more expensive. In his eyes, however, the band “live[s] within our limitations.” “But it’s within those limitations, I think, that you find better music,” he argues. “Songwriting, it’s not hiding behind effects. It’s real music, which I think, at the end of the day, will always work. If a song is a good song, it’ll sound good if it’s from 1920 or if it’s from 2020, or in the ‘90s, or in the ‘70s, or the ‘60s, or even in 20 years,” Turner adds. “That’s a thing Jim Morrison said, and we’re going by that.”

One of a Kind is The Heavy Heavy’s “party record” that makes you, as Fuller succinctly puts it, “want to kick down the fucking door and puts a spark in you.” But making an album like that doesn’t come without its challenges. On “Feel,” she and Turner were nose-diving into this strange groove that calls to mind the Stones and the Stone Roses, but the song’s melody and phrasing conjures something chameleonic and multi-hyphenated like Mellow Gold-era Beck. It ultimately ends up washed over by Madchester-style Britpop and gonzo poetics. “Happiness” was written last-minute and demanded the focus of “every cell” in Turner’s body to make a well-constructed song. “I take quite a while to ruminate over songs and demos,” he continues. “They have their own lifespan, but ‘Happiness’ went from zero to 100 in about three days. I was in moments of despair trying to write it, and it just fell out in the end.” But on the flip side, “Lovestruck” came straight out as a fun, Joni Mitchell-influenced number written during lockdown. “I remember coming into the room and him being like, ‘I’ve just written this song,’” Fuller remembers. “And he played it to me, and I still remember jumping around the kitchen, like, ‘Oh, my God, this is so amazing!’”

Turner and Fuller have left the countryside and made a genuinely phenomenal rock record. As they look forward to this week’s release of One of a Kind, they recall a poster that was hanging on the wall of their manager’s office. It said “Work Hard, Be Kind,” and they’ve adopted that as their mantra, and it radiates from the Zoom call as they affirm each other of their shared love and musical kinship. “I always think I’ve seen the worst of [Turner], and then he continues to surprise me,” Fuller laughs. “No, I’m continually surprised at how strong his musical intuition is. He just knows what the right sound is and at what point. There doesn’t even need to be a why. If we’re soundchecking, he’s always got his producer head on him. Even if he’s doing a bloody guitar solo, he still wanders over to Frank on the drums and twiddles about with them just to get that absolutely perfect sound. It’s a marvel, really, to watch him. He’s an incredibly calm person. He’s a constant person.”

Fuller pauses for a moment. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever said, because I’ve had a coffee,” she jokes. Turner remains in awe of Fuller’s voice and what heights she can take it to. “There is no limit,” he asserts. “I just have to tell myself that, anything I can imagine for Georgie to sing, she’ll be able to do it.” And it’s that chemistry that paints the 12 songs on One of a Kind into view. It’s been five years since The Heavy Heavy began, and One of a Kind is a spotless example of two musicians still growing into each other. Turner and Fuller’s friendship holds court as the band’s vibrant, unshakable core.

Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.

The Heavy Heavy: The Best of What’s Next