Album review: Superheaven – Superheaven

It’s been 10 long years without a new record from Superheaven. Before the Pennsylvania-based alt.rock quartet announced their return, just a whisper of them would have had us clutching our pearls with sorrow. “It’s been 84 years,” we’d dramatise, looking to the floor like Titanic’s Rose. It was a painful absence to say the least.

With that in mind, their self-titled comeback has some pretty big boots to fill. 2013’s Jar and 2015’s Ours Is Chrome were significantly (but almost quietly) some of the most impactful modern grunge records on those whose ears they graced in the 2010s. Thankfully, this record slips on like an old, lovingly stale cardigan – still potent with the sounds and smells of its nostalgic predecessors, but tackling new feelings of overwhelm induced by the present.

Opener Humans For Toys stomps in with the unforgettable darkly hazy tones that put this band on the map, and delves into the pessimism dredged up by a world that seems constantly on fire. Elsewhere, the band look inwards. On Sounds Of Goodbyes, they pick apart the feelings that surfaced at the time of their break away, mirrored in the sounds of guitars whining and sulking, where closer The Curtain grapples with a thirst to not want to waste time anymore, and finding a way back to self-rediscovery.

Superheaven have a certain formula that’s hard to pin down, a sound that others may come close to, but can’t replicate. This album in particular, rightly self-titled, packs their absence into a musical synopsis of their headspaces and the complex feelings that came up during their long hiatus, and with their revival. There was no need for them to make an extravagant change or shift, and thank God that’s not what they did. It beautifully bleeds of their own unique DNA. Welcome back, Superheaven.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Split Chain, Loathe, Soundgarden

Superheaven is out now via Blue Grape Music