Good Heavens

You might not know Good Heavens yet, but you sure as hell know the people involved: it's Sarah Kelly, late of theredsunband, flanked by former Wolfmother rhythm section Chris Ross and Myles Heskett. Strange Dreams is the name of their freakin' great debut and they will be pumping out the tunes in this totally free album launch, joined by Bloods. Free, people. You have no excuse.

Sarah Kelly tells Andrew P Street about…

…the end of theredsunband.
We made [second album, 2008’s The Shiralee] a year before John [Matthews, drums] left and I really wanted to get that record out no matter what. And then 2009 was just a funny year: I knew Lizzie [Kelly, keys] was ready to move on and I didn’t really want to carry on without the original three, and the Dean Turner passed away and he’d produced both the albums: it just seemed like the end of an era. So we played the tribute to Dean at the Annandale with Magic Dirt, and it felt like a fitting end.

…going solo.
I was under that really common delusion with musicians that I didn’t need to be in a band anymore. So I tried that for a little while, and I realised I was very wrong. [laughs] A band is the people in it, it’s not the songs that you write or the instruments that you play. It’s the personalities and something that keeps the thing alive. There’s an energy that you’re lucky to find, when you find it. I did play a few solo shows, and I found it really lonely. And I like to get loud.

…meeting Myles and Ross.
That was an accident. There was no way in a million years that I could have thought it would happen, or would have wanted it to happen, not having ever met them or anything. Jules [Julia Wilson of Sarah’s label Rice is Nice] had been hassling me to make some demos for a new record and I was complaining that every drummer I’d ever met was an alcoholic or a lunatic [laughs], and she said “you gotta meet my friend Myles, he’s the nicest guy!” and I was “eh, fine”. So I made some demos, Jules gave them to Myles – and that was terrifying – and he really liked it. So we met and started playing together with the idea that we’d make an album with him and Piers [Cornelius, guitarist with the Laurels] and I needed someone to play bass and keys. And I asked a few people, and it wasn’t happening, and Chris is Myles’ best friend. And it just clicked, and it was awesome. 

…the birth of Good Heavens.
I wanted it to be a band, but I think everyone else thought it would be a project – helping some lady with her record [laughs] – but it all fell into place when Piers left and we started playing as the three of us. It felt really natural and we relaxed a lot. They’d been a bit standoffish about being a proper band – they’d had a rough trot with the whole Wolfmother breakup and didn’t want to get embroiled in that sort of thing again, and I totally understood that. But we had a similar mindset, and then we made the record really quickly, and I think that’s what cemented it.