Bye Bye And Hello Again: Heaven For Real’s Latest Album Grapples With New Beginnings and Nostalgia
Heaven for Real. Photo by Inez Genereux.
Heaven For Real, the experimental indie rock group consisting of twin brothers Mark and J. Scott Grundy, is set to release their third full-length album, Who Died & Made You The Dream?, on November 7th via Mint Records. Filled to the brim with infectiously intricate earworm melodies, entrancingly immersive soundscapes, pensive songwriting, and captivatingly charming vocals, Who Died & Made You The Dream is one record you need to listen to. In anticipation of Heaven For Real’s new release, Mark and Scott discuss the creation of Who Died & Made You The Dream?
“I think the premise of the dream life, the short-term dream, the long-term dream, the idea of what one should do, what one should be from both your own perspective, from societies perspective, and from the broadening dominant culture, there’s this constant reckoning that occurs all the time with the way you think things are gonna be,” says Mark. “This record is about examining relationships, examining life, examining your experiences from as many different sides as you have access to from your vantage, and trying to see yourself from the outside. It’s about taking an examination of your life, the way that you live, the choices you made, and how they have amounted to the kind of person you are.”
Reflecting on the creative process for a Heaven For Real song, Mark explains, “In the moment of creation and recording, it is very much us just channeling our creative impulse or the people that inspired us long ago or even continue to inspire us today. I guess in the conversation of making music in 2025 and how crazy it is to be an artist in a dying world its nice to be able to bring in all kinds of influences. We do what we like. It's what works for us. We know when we hate something, and we know when we like something.”
“We just try to serve the song, and depending on the song, you can bring in a lot of influences; it can be something new or something old,” adds Scott.
Usually, Heaven For Real primarily records at home, but for Who Died & Made You The Dream?, they recorded it in Victoria, B.C., with Austin Tufts and with mixing from Jay Arner. Several artists across Canada collaborated with the band on the record, including Jen Yakamovich, Laura Jeffery, Olivia Scriven, and Mark Sutherland. “This one really did feel different because we weren’t at home, we were in Victoria,” comments Mark. “I’m really grateful we were able to work with the people we were. It’s a new step for the band too, I feel very proud of it.”
Who Died & Made You The Dream?
Scott, Jeffery, and Yakamovich all play drums on the record. Having multiple drummers throughout the record heavily influenced the direction and vibe of some songs. “I just think the drums as an instrument, like whether it’s a rock style or jazz style or whatever, it’s gonna influence the song hugely, so it's fun to see the difference in how that's played out based on who was playing,” says Scott.
The infectiously catchy, jazzy dream pop tune “Sentient Brat” opens the record. “As an intro for the record, there’s a funny heavy handed quality to starting a record with ‘Bye bye,’” comments Mark. Opening the song with ‘Bye bye’ was a late addition, as Heaven For Real was having difficulty coming up with the best way to introduce listeners to the record. “We were just trying out different grooves that felt like it would be a proper intro, because we had all these different ideas on how we would intro this record. It’s a different kind of record for us. It felt like we needed something that was vocally driven but wasn’t introducing a new melody or something like that.”
Listeners may find “Sentient Brat” has a bit of a nostalgic vibe to it. Mark also feels this way, too. “It’s nostalgic for me for a more personal reason in that that song feels like it could sit with another project that Scott and I have called Quaker Parents,” he comments. “I definitely wasn’t like ‘This is gonna be the nostalgic track,’ but that’s how I feel about the song. It feels like a song that I would have written in a different time in my life.”
On the song “Hold Me Back,” Heaven For Real utilizes the same guitar progression for the majority of the run-time. Despite this, the track is still very dynamic as they incorporate lots of fascinating textures. “For that one, we were just thinking about maintaining a vibe,” says Scott. “The guitar riff is really built around that so you can do so much on one chord with different melodies. We just wanted to ride that out as long as possible and make a song out of it… Also, Jay Arner mixed the record and worked some magic on that track.”
Subtle changes to the delivery of the drumming also helped maintain the vibe they were going for. “Scott was like, ‘OK, Jen, for this song, just do one drum fill for the entire song,’” explains Mark. “Micro adjustments like that helped us really focus on the center narrative of the song.”
Heaven For Real takes inspiration from three distinct genres for Who Died & Made You The Dream? “We’re drawing from indie sounds, which we’ve really been drawing from for the last while, bringing in some ’80s rock references, like Thin Lizzy or Heart, and mixing that in with some more cloud rock, like colder palettes like ML Buch or other types of still guitar-driven music, but with electronic references that that have been really inspirational for us the last few years, and just trying to weave those together,” comments Mark.
The songs “A Little Bit Of Space (And The Heart Starts Dancing)” and “Unltd. Time,” particularly the outros, are heavily influenced by ’80s rock. “Scott plays drums on ‘A Little Bit Of Space’ and Jen plays drums on ‘Unltd. Time,’ and they have very different styles, but were in pursuit of these more rock sounds,” states Mark. “When we made the outros, we wanted them to have a sort of left turn, and that’s why they're back-to-back on the record as well. They both have this left turn quality and are by design statement endings for the message of the song… They’re in a way both realizations. ‘A Little Bit Of Space’ is a realization of the body. ‘Unltd. Time’ is a realization of the mind, because it says ‘I’ve been in a mad rush’ at the end of the song, it's like the overwhelm of that. They're the two sides of the coin.”
Heaven for Real. Photo by Inez Genereux.
One of the standout songs from the record is the hypnotically hazy “Common Breath,” with one of the notable highlights being the outro and the repeated line “Sorry, babe thought it’d be different.” Speaking on the significance of the line, Mark comments, “You can have a mourning for the difference, and I think that is what the song is an expression of. We have these little, tiny periods of grief for the way we thought things should be, or the way we thought relationships were gonna go, or how your life was gonna turn out. That refrain, ‘Sorry babe, thought it’d be different,’ is a small moment of reflection or a point of recognizing that. For me, I get caught up in the whole idea of like ‘Yeah, but it's fine, we move on, and that’s what we do, and that’s what life is, and it's in constant flux.’ The record is really about change, and it's about analyzing that from all these different sides, angles, and emotions. So, the mourning or grieving of the change was an important narrative to be represented, too, and just trying to acknowledge that and be okay with it.”
“Allowance” is less focused on melody compared to other tracks on the record and is meant to serve as an introspective interlude for the listener and the band. “I kind of think of that as a landing zone or a free parking for the listener,” laughs Mark. “But in all seriousness, though, it just felt like the right thing to incorporate because a lot of the songs are very vocally driven or focused on a melody… We have another song called ‘Allan’ that was on Kill Your Memory; it's not actually a throwback to that in any specific way. After we finished the record, I noticed the parallel. It felt appropriate for this release to have that because, similar to Kill Your Memory, it just felt like a good place in the sequence for the listener to have a reflecting point or for us to have a reflecting point.”
Similar to how "Sentient Brat" humorously starts the record, "Sinister Gladness" again demonstrates Heaven For Real's wit. “‘Sinister Gladness’” is more playful, and ‘So much for an answer’ is the first line,” states Mark. “Again, the name of the record is a question, and the idea for it was for it to be a double thing, [kind of responding] like ‘So much for an answer.’ As a closer, it made just the most sense overall.”
Overall, it is rather fitting that Who Died & Made You The Dream? deals so much with the idea of big changes, new beginnings, and examining life, as Scott has entered an exciting new stage in his life. “I just had a kid, so it’s like a new chapter and definitely this time has been really awesome,” he smiles.
Who Died & Made You The Dream? is out via Mint Records on November 7.