Our recurring feature series Track by Track sees artists guiding readers through each song on their new release. This week, members of Superheaven break down their new self-titled LP.
A year after releasing their sophomore album in 2015, the four members of Superheaven decided to go their separate ways. Though they ultimately got back together in 2022 following several reunion shows, it wasn’t until fairly recently that they began contemplating a new record. Now, they’ve officially returned with that album, released under the eponymous title Superheaven.
After almost a decade away from the studio, Taylor Madison, Jake Clarke, Zack Robbins, and Joseph Kane have cooked up ten new tracks that seek to re-establish who and what Superheaven, as a project, is. The Pennsylvania group’s third full-length release was engineered by Clarke and Robbins, with Will Yip serving as the project’s co-producer.
“Every song starts from a different idea from a certain person in the band,” Madison tells Consequence about the songwriting process. “Everyone was really in the mix on just getting their hands dirty.”
Compared to previous records, Superheaven saw the quartet being more hands-on in terms of collaboration than ever before. As Robbins explains, “that whole dynamic of everyone cutting in on everything” is what makes these songs sound so fresh despite the band having been around for years.
“Humans for Toys”:
Taylor Madison: I think that the opening track for a record, at least in my opinion, should always be an ass-beater. I don’t like it when a record starts with a build-up song or anything like that. I think that’s the wrong way — you should let them know what time it is on track one. I feel like that’s part of the reason why this song is track one, because it kind of whips your ass out of the gate, and I feel like that’s important for track one. You want it to be like, “This is what you’re in for [over] the next ten songs.”
Zack Robbins: I think in the songwriting process, that was probably one of the ones that was toward the end of assembling everything and being like, “All right, we have enough and then some for a record.”
Madison: I remember I didn’t really like that song until the end.
Jake Clarke: Yeah, we had an intro to it, and it was just a guitar thing, and it didn’t hit, and then we kind of formed the end, and everything just kind of clicked when we did that. But it was a later song, and it wasn’t always one we were throwing around as an opener. I think Taylor came to that idea, and I was like, “Wait, yeah, this is cooking, this is cool.”
Robbins: I think that was one that was pretty collaborative, like on the vocals. Taylor wrote all the lyrics, but we all kind of cooked on that one a little bit with Will Yip as well.
From: https://consequence.net/2025/04/superheaven-self-titled-track-by-track-interview/
