There's More Than Just Nostalgia in this Return: Heavenly – Highway to Heaven

Start to finish, Highway to Heaven envisions or perhaps wishes to revisit a golden age of pop rock where the sun never leaves the overhead sky, and the drive to nowhere ceases to end. In today’s state and climate, this can be written off as a pipe dream, and yet stepping into this album feels like pure bliss while it lasts, and immediately again as you play it front to back once again.

Highway To Heaven - Heavenly (Album Cover)

Soon to revert back to dreamy vocal hooks, there are times where the mood can slightly shift, an acknowledgement of reality that twee pop may not always concede to, and while slightly jarring and an unfortunate splash of water to the face, it can be appreciated.

Most impressive is the demonstrated ability from both band and producers involved to exactly invoke the sound and style of not only the genre as a whole, but the band’s past work. Heavenly returns as quant as ever and embraces the past with open arms. As if returning to grandma’s house and not seeing anything change, but loving the old world you see in front of you, yet never really knew except through this eccentric display of memorabilia, you may develop rose-colored glasses towards this period. The curveballs here provide an antithesis to ever developing that poisonous nostalgia, but we all know it’s fun to daydream.

Heavenly has made a splendid return to form that not only serves as proof of timelessness but also gives way to new ideas. While there have been many imitations, homages, and tributes to the happy-go-lucky indie Brit pop genre that is twee, hearing new works from one of the original groups will always be a treat worth pausing to experience.

If you're interested in this style of indie music then it may be worthwhile to check out a scene known as C86, a mixtape made by NME to showcase some independant british record labels at the time. One of the featured groups was Talulah Gosh in which all of the members of Heavenly were a part of before forming Heavenly.

Be sure to follow Heavenly on Instagram and Spotify and see them live when they perform near you!