Superheaven haven't made music in 10 years, but they've been gaining prestige faster in recent years than they ever did when they were together.
Superheaven haven’t made music in 10 years, but they’ve been gaining prestige faster in recent years than they ever did when they were together.
Out of nowhere, in 2023, they hit it big on TikTok with ‘Youngest Daughter’, a track from their 2013 debut Jar, which has been streamed on Spotify 145million times. For fans of the band, this has worked out nicely, culminating in a sold-out Jar anniversary tour in 2023 and, now, a brand-new album.
That album might be titled simply Superheaven, but from its opening riff on the track Humans For Toys, it’s clear that this is a slightly different Superheaven. For one thing, they’ve never sounded so metallic. As on other tracks across the album like Cruel Times and Long Gone, this riff is heavy, bordering on sludgey. The production, too, is heavier-handed, with tones smoothed and made huge to drive home those big riffs.
The power of Superheaven’s previous records came from the immediacy and tactility that nodded to the band’s punk roots. On Superheaven, it comes from this enormity. While the new style sacrifices some fire, it creates a sense of maturity: heightened stakes, and the accrued wisdom to cope with them.
As if to demonstrate that right off the bat, opener Humans For Toys is perhaps the most nakedly political track they’ve ever put out. “Children burned alive / Money’s everything,” vocalist Taylor Madison sings, in a rebuke of war that’s hard not to read as an observation of attacks on Gaza. On the other side of the coin, Cruel Times is a love song about long-term devotion that could just about be described as feel-good – definitely a rarity in the band’s usually dark catalogue.
That said, the intense and doomy catharsis that the band have thus far traded in is still ever-present on Superheaven. Hopelessness and isolation are the overwhelming themes of the record. Closing track The Curtain is crushing as Madison sings, “I feel like half a human being,” while Long Gone is almost spiritual in its despair. That catharsis feels like an important throughline to the band’s identity.
There are lyrical glimpses throughout the album to the stakes of their reunion. When Madison sings, “We were never meant to come back,” on Cruel Times, he likely refers to overcoming the odds in his relationship, but it’s easy to imagine the double meaning that will arise when the band play it live. Likewise, on Sounds of Goodbyes, a song explicitly about Superheaven’s hiatus and reunion, co-frontman Jake Clarke sings: “It’s a spark of a new life.” This new life is different from the old one, but it’s got plenty to offer Superheaven fans.
