We Still Feel like Outsiders: Interview with Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey of Skep Wax and Heavenly

Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey pull back the curtain on life running their Skep Wax label, revisiting Heavenly… and plenty more besides

If Lou Barlow had been born in the UK instead of the US, and been in thrall to Sarah Records instead of SST and Sub Pop, then he quite conceivably could have delivered “Gimme Indie Pop!” in place of Sebadoh’s droll meta-anthem “Gimme Indie Rock!” in 1991. Within this alternate reality version of Barlow’s talismanic treatise, he would almost certainly would have name-checked or been thinking of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly, two of the highly-influential DIY guitar-led pop bands that established Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey in the British music scene between the late-80s and early-90s.

Since emerging from that fecund epoch, Fletcher and Pursey have consistently held aloft the flame for independent mindedness and melodic artisanship, whilst managing to hold down their day jobs. Through the aforementioned two groups alone, the twosome cemented a legacy that is perhaps only being properly appreciated in more open-eared omnivorous times, without the fickle gatekeeping of the once overbearing weekly music press.

But things didn’t end with Heavenly. Subsequently, Fletcher and Pursey – with varying combinations of accomplices – brought us the similarly inclined Marine Research, Tender Trap and Sportique across the late-1990s and early-2000s. Whilst family commitments and a relocation to rural Kent may have curtailed creative productivity during some between years, since the mid-2010s the twosome have steadily snowballed the size of their activities, as both creators and curators.

Hence, The Catenary Wires have become a vehicle for Fletcher and Pursey’s retro-pop duo explorations, whilst Swansea Sound (co-fronted by Fletcher and Hue Williams of The Pooh Sticks) have provided a rawer conduit for Pursey’s sardonically biting songwriting.

If that wasn’t quite enough, then the pair have also established Skep Wax as a label home for their own just mentioned projects and long-awaited Heavenly album reissues; as a reunion meeting place for fellow Sarah Records graduates (primarily via the excellent Under the Bridge compilation and through signing-up The Orchids); and as a nurturing outlet for a younger generation of impressively non-conformist artists (Marlody, Special Friend and Panic Pocket).

Tracked-down via email, amidst Heavenly on-stage reunion activities, a flurry of releases and live events, Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey generously shared some behind-the-scenes insights on their intertwined musical paths to date.

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After years of putting out lots of releases through independent imprint routes – under various guises that have in turn followed pretty strong DIY beliefs – I’m slightly surprised in a way that it took you until the 2020s to establish Skep Wax as your own label. What finally spurred you into setting it up?

Rob: We first talked about setting up a label in 1990 when Heavenly started! We met with distributors and did preliminary work, but then Sarah offered to release our new band. So, we shelved the plans for thirty years. What happened more recently was that we had two of our own albums to release – by The Catenary Wires and Swansea Sound – and it seemed like a good time. We could use our own bands as the ‘guinea pigs’. Lockdown helped: we had a lot more spare time. Also, I’d got fed up with making TV programmes, so I needed a new challenge. We were very influenced by the DIY ethos of other labels we’d been on in the past. There is something miraculous about the fact that you can still record and release music without any corporate input.

What actually informed the choice of name for the label?

Rob: We had converted a barn into a scratchy venue (we live in a very rural part of Kent where very few gigs happen). And it became known as The Skep. A skep is an old-fashioned wicker beehive, and skeps were used by smugglers in the old days as disguises – they wore them as masks. 

Had you originally only intended that Skep Wax curate your own projects? If so, what has since led you to enrolling other artists? Was assembling the multi-artist Under the Bridge compilation the tipping point or had you already been heading in that direction things before its conception?

Rob: Yeah, once we realised we could do quite a decent job with our own releases we felt confident of releasing other people’s music. Under the Bridge was a good way of connecting with a lot of bands, and also acted as a kind of tribute to Sarah Records, who were real pioneers in this field. It was a natural step to then release The Orchids’ album. Lately we’ve added Marlody, Panic Pocket and Special Friend: we are looking at bands who are new or not very well-known. Hopefully, the label will help get them the attention they deserve.

Amelia: We would only ever put out bands we really love though. In a way, every time you release music, you put your reputation on the line. So, you don’t want to be pushing anything unless you genuinely think it is great. That is [one] of the things that distinguishes small indie labels actually – they usually do it mostly for the love of it!

In running one of your own, which other labels have inspired you the most from the past and present?

Rob: Sarah, obviously. I didn’t appreciate them as [much] back then as I do now. They had a kind of manifesto, and they stuck to it. K was another great label. Both of them created a scene, both of them had a strong ethos – both of them showed that there was no need to go begging at the major labels’ doors. I think that genuinely independent labels act as living demonstrations of the fact that there’s more than one way to run society. It is not inevitable or inexorable that corporate capitalism is the only way to get things done.

Speaking of Under the Bridge, do you think that part of its creative success came in fulfilling the satisfying combination of being a rounded standalone listen as well as a route map to exploring the featured artists within?

Rob: Definitely. The bands on the compilation are as diverse – possibly more diverse – than the Sarah roster. But there is a shared sense of what is good and what is precious. All those bands prioritise their art over any careerist impulse. They want to be heard, but they want to be heard on their own terms. I think that helps give the album its unity. I was really delighted when the tracks first arrived. I thought, “Wow, there are a lot of very good songwriters out there!”

Did it take a lot of work to reconnect and obtain contributions from many of your onetime labelmates and erstwhile bandmates, in various forms?

Rob: It wasn’t all that hard really. Most of the bands have some kind of presence online. There were quite a few people I’d never met or had any contact with – but that is all so much easier now. Partly because of email. Partly because, being older, you don’t have that same anxiety about approaching people.

Are you considering or already working on a sequel set to Under the Bridge?

Rob: Yes. We are hoping that another album will appear in 2024. I’ve asked all the bands if they want to do it again, plus a few other people I hadn’t managed to make contact with the first time round. I tried to think of a really clever name for the sequel but it will probably just be Under the Bridge 2!

Why do think that artists with previous Sarah Records associations, along with other indie pop inclined outfits from the same era, that were once seemingly buried by the viciousness of the once powerful music press of the early-90s, are now enjoying a revival of interest, through live and studio reunions, archival releases, podcast interviews, books, documentaries, Discogs collector mania and more?

Rob: It’s a good question. I think part of the answer is in the demise of the weekly music press. Back in the 90s taste was rigorously policed by those magazines. Some of the writers were great but the editorial line was determined by the magazines’ parasitic relationship with the corporate music industry. Only certain bands on certain labels got heavily featured. Other bands (including a lot of stuff on Sarah) were dismissed or ignored. Sarah didn’t spend any time trying to bamboozle or bribe the magazines – and as things moved on they became actively hostile. So, millions of people had no idea their bands existed.

It was obviously quite frustrating at the time, but we felt that the politics were right: it was better to create your own DIY scenes without caring about the music press. Now, of course, those scenes can be re-discovered by anyone. You don’t need the NME’s permission to listen to something on Spotify. It is a shame, or maybe an irony, that now our old bands are listened to a lot, the payments – from Spotify etc – are pathetically small. So, we can enjoy the belated attention, but the royalty cheques are not back-dated! It is nice though, that people are finding something valuable in material that remained somehow pristine and idealistic.

Amelia: While the music press at the time was pretty horrible and misogynistic, I actually think we did surprisingly well back then. There was a decent-sized indiepop scene, with people who were happy to ignore what the music press said, or even positively excited to see the bands that the music press had slagged off! There were also a few good apples in the music press who were supportive of Sarah and indiepop more generally. That said, it was nice going to the US where the music press was far less toxic, and we got reviews that were genuinely positive.

Whilst I’m guessing that the Sarah Records familial connection brought The Orchids to Skep Wax, how did you come to draw Marlody, Panic Pocket and Special Friend into the fold?

Rob: A combination of ways. Marlody is local to us. She played her first gig in the Skep! She is an amazing songwriter and a stunning performer. We just thought, “People must hear this music!” Panic Pocket we already loved from their first EP, so we approached them. Special Friend approached us through Kathryn of Secret Shine – she’d seen them at Paris Popfest. I guess those three routes probably set the pattern for the future.

Given the diversity of the just mentioned older and younger new signings, is it important to you to not let Skep Wax be too easily pigeonholed in its tastes? Is it also a case of simply following the noses of a ‘what Amelia and Rob like’ A&R philosophy?

Rob: Now we know how much work is involved in getting records out, it’s definitely the case that you absolutely have to love the music. So yes, that is our philosophy. I am glad that the label skews female, and I think we will be conscious of wanting to make sure the output is diverse. It helps that a lot the music we love is made by outsiders – we aren’t interested in putting out music by people who want to conform to the mainstream.

Amelia: I totally agree with that but I also think we have pretty diverse tastes. Marlody sounds pretty different to Panic Pocket! For me, a lot comes down to spirit, originality and great songs.

Turning back to your own creative output, broadly speaking The Catenary Wires seem like a means to express your love of nostalgic vintage pop crafting whilst Swansea Sound feel like a rawer meta venture to reflect upon, celebrate and rail about the music industry and your place in it. How would you explain the differences in the modus operandi between the two enterprises, is much of it just down to divisions of labour, with different collaborators?

Rob: That’s a pretty good synopsis of the two bands! The main difference I guess, is that The Catenary Wires is me and Amelia working as joint songwriters. This means it moves more slowly as a band, as collaboration takes more time and we have to both be in the same place musically and emotionally for it to work. It also has me singing, and my voice seems to lend itself to melancholic or emotional songs. If I try to sing something upbeat it just sounds sarcastic, even if I sincerely meant it! Swansea Sound feels very different. I write all the songs, and there’s a very different approach: it’s angrier, more satiric, more comedic and a lot faster! I am really lucky that Hue wanted to sing these songs. His voice is perfect for them. He’s also a really good front man – Swansea Sound is very entertaining as a live band.

Amelia: Rob is being kind. One of the problems with Catenary Wires is I am an incredibly slow songwriter! But ideas have been gestating, so hopefully we will kick ourselves into action later this year.

From recently reading Nigel Tassell’s fascinating Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? book, I was struck by how many bands that emerged in that era were chewed-up by the vagaries of the business side of the musical realms. It seems, from the outside at least, that you have both managed to avoid harder financial and legal derailments that have befallen quite a few of your peers. Has holding down substantial day jobs in parallel been part of your self-sustaining longevity?

Rob: I’m sure it has. We never relied on music as a way of making a living. And we were pretty successful in our day jobs. I’m not making TV any more: there’s only so many times you can be nice to commissioning editors, but I had a very good run. Amelia is still working in antitrust economics, and is still very dedicated to it. Very few musicians – very few artists of any kind – can make a living out of their work. All the poets I know have other work to keep them afloat, most of the visual artists too. Either route is a compromise: you dedicate yourself exclusively to music and accept the corporate embrace. Or you keep your music safe, but have to make money some other way – and constantly wish you had more time for music. I am happy with the route we took, but I am especially happy that we are as productive as we’ve ever been. We do not feel at all jaded.

Amelia: Not jaded. Although sometimes quite exhausted! We do take on quite a lot.

In what main ways now is it both better and worse to operate as artists functioning at your level, compared to when you first started out?

Rob: I think that’s hard to answer. We still feel like outsiders, but we appreciate what’s good about that status, rather than feeling anxious about it. So I would say it’s better: we value what we’ve got.

Amelia: I think we are incredibly lucky actually to have started at a time when there was a lively indie scene, and the ability to make a name for yourself without much resource. We are also lucky to have kept much of that audience over time. I really feel for bands starting out today. In some ways music has been democratised, in that it is cheap and easy to record at home and self-release digitally. But the other side of this, it that it seems really hard for new bands to break through, at least without huge marketing budgets which are out of reach of small indie labels. We may have hated the UK music press, but they did do a reasonable job in terms of raising widespread awareness about new music.

How helpful latterly has your base and musical community connections in Kent been with all things Skep Wax?

Rob: When we moved here ten years ago we didn’t really know anyone. We also had two little kids and were looking after Amelia’s mum Jean, who had Parkinson’s Disease. The Catenary Wires started as a fireside entertainment, as we thought we might never play a gig again! But we met other local people who really wanted there to be entertainment – that’s why The Skep came into existence as a venue. We re-started everything – bands, label, venue – from the ground up, and gradually we’ve come into contact with loads of great people – other bands, poets, audience members. And now, oddly, it feels more dynamic and more exciting than it ever did in London.

The last year or so has also seen a retrospective return for arguably your best-known band – Heavenly – through the careful excavation of your Peel sessions by Precious Recordings, the Skep Wax vinyl reissue campaign for the studio albums and the live reunion shows. How did you judge that the time was right to reopen that chapter in your careers?

Rob: The re-releases – of the singles on Damaged Goods and now the LPs on Skep Wax – made us realise that there was much more of an appetite for Heavenly than we’d have envisaged. Me and Pete Momtchiloff had always been quite resistant to the idea of reunion gigs – there are so many of them, and they seem to squeeze out the new music that should be dominant. Including our own new bands. You shouldn’t wallow in the past. Anyway, we lost that argument. 

Amelia: And I won. But actually, I’ve been surprised at how enthusiastic everyone in the band has been. After the last reunion show, we were all keen to play again the very next day! Unrealistic, obviously, but it shows how much fun it was.

Have there been any logistical challenges in bringing the albums back into print, in terms of the ownership rights, locating master tapes, redoing the artwork and the like?

Rob: It’s not been difficult with the music: we are still good friends with Matt and Clare of Sarah Records, and they have been incredibly helpful and supportive. The artwork is a lot less easy, and Amelia has spent a lot of time sorting that out.

Amelia: I was newly impressed at all the amazing artwork that [my brother] Mathew, and then Sam Oakley, did originally. So thoughtful and careful. And really quite hard to re-do!

Having heard the new expanded Skep Wax editions of Heavenly vs. Satan and Le Jardin De Heavenly so far, I’m impressed by just how fresh and uncluttered they sound, with no noticeable period production trappings to date them unflatteringly. How do you feel about such an assessment? Were the original production decisions more by accident and limited budgets, than design?

Rob: Yes, we had limited studio time, so the songs had to be recorded quickly. Also, we thought of ourselves as a live band, so we didn’t feel the need to add loads of overdubs. The one thing that was added was vocal harmony – I suspect it’s Amelia’s favourite part of the recording process and luckily there was time for her to achieve that. Along with Pete’s guitar, which still sounds brilliant to me, those harmonies are probably the band’s most important trademark.

Amelia: I spent most of my childhood inventing harmonies along to any music that was playing. My dad just thought I was singing out of tune – which I probably was, but for a reason. In the end my harmony-obsession came good!

Heavenly vs. Satan feels especially like it contains songs that, perhaps in a kinder parallel universe, should have been hit singles. Do you hold any sadness that such hyper-melodic songs such as “Cool Guitar Boy” and “Shallow” weren’t more widely heard at the time?

Rob: Personally, I don’t. Amelia may disagree!

Amelia: Sarah had a policy of not doing singles from albums. I think they thought it was a rip-off. So we always had to choose between recording a single or an album and it tended to just depend on how many songs we had worked out, rather than whether the songs actually sounded like singles! I’m not especially sorry that neither of those songs was a single, but I would quite like to have released “C is the Heavenly Option” as a single. It was never going to be though…

Listening to both these albums, I’m reminded of a university friend enthusing about Heavenly, who first introduced to me via a mixtape featuring “Cool Guitar Boy”. In particular, I recall that they put Peter Momtchiloff in the same league as Johnny Marr. Do you think that Peter’s abilities are sorely underrated alongside his contemporaries?

Rob: He is a brilliant guitarist. He’s also a modest person, and achieved it all without making a big deal out of what he was up to. I’m glad that your friend appreciated his playing, and I’m sure he would be too.

Amelia: I agree!

How has it been revisiting the Heavenly catalogue for the reunion live shows? Might there be more come from the reunification than just the handful of live dates?

Rob: It has been really good fun, I have to admit.  Despite my grumpy attitude to reunion gigs. I don’t know if there will be more shows after the ones in May. I reckon it’s possible.

Amelia: Hmmm… interesting answer!

Were you pleased that Marine Research – your first short-lived group after Heavenly – received some belated retrospective love and attention via the Peel sessions EP, also released by Precious Recordings?

Rob: Yes, that was nice. There were some very good songs. As a band, Marine Research was probably on the rebound from Heavenly: it was our attempt to move forward without Mathew when we were probably still in shock. It was a better band than we realised at the time, and John Stanley (aka DJ Downfall) was a great person to be in a band with, and is still a close friend.

Amelia: I still really love some of the Marine Research songs. I think we did them better live than we ever managed on record – and there is a great live performance on Spanish TV on YouTube – but the recordings are still good. I think we were seeking to do something pretty interesting. It was also a really good way for me to start dealing with having lost Mathew. Which was really hard.

If you had to stop making and releasing music tomorrow, would you be content with what you have brought in the music world and your status as veterans in your own niche?

Rob: I don’t think I’ll ever be content, as there is always another song waiting for you just around the corner – and I’d hate not being able to meet it.

Amelia: Ha. I really don’t think of myself as a veteran yet. But yes, I think I’d be pretty happy with what we’ve already achieved.

Do you have anything else forthcoming in the pipeline and not discussed already – via Skep Wax or otherwise – that you can you tell us about now?

Rob: The main thing is a new Swansea Sound album. It’s going to be called Twentieth Century, and it will be out in September. I’ve been mixing it solidly for the past three weeks and I still like it, so that’s a good sign!