Like most 30-something rock dudes, Taylor Madison despises TikTok on a deep existential level. But he despises any job, other than being in a rock band, even more. So even if the Superheaven frontman doesn’t have the app on his phone, he begrudgingly appreciates what it’s done for his livelihood.
Flashback to 2023, and one of the biggest contemporary rock hits is Superheaven’s “Youngest Daughter,” a 2013 deep cut that sounds like 1993. Years and years of grueling tours and inane interviews failed to accomplish what the algorithm did a decade after the fact, earning Superheaven a gold single without Madison having to leave his couch. “I don’t like to do anything, so I don’t,” he states shortly after firing up a Game cigarillo in our Zoom conversation. “I’m the laziest person on planet Earth. I don’t want to do anything that’s hard.”
Arriving almost exactly ten years after its predecessor Ours Is Chrome, Superheaven’s self-titled third album is the sound of a band secure in their artistry, operating from an unexpected position of strength. The band’s 2013 debut Jar, originally recorded under the name Daylight, was a staple in the burgeoning “soft grunge” scene defined by Balance And Composure and Citizen; One of my favorite grunge-era factoids is that the videos for “Sex Type Thing” and Sunny Day Real Estate’s “In Circles” were filmed on the same soundstage, and “soft grunge” was basically the midpoint of those two songs.
Whereas friends and peers saw Superheaven as a successful band on account of having a record deal and “not playing middle school talent shows,” Madison and co-vocalist/guitarist Jake Clarke experienced that time as a Sisyphean struggle for survival. “Second LP, you’re like, ‘We gotta fucking go hard on this,’” Madison recalls. “We were pressured into doing a lot of shit that we didn’t want to do.”
The strain of saying yes, only to play shows to a dozen people, led to Superheaven going into quasi-hiatus in 2016. Madison and Clarke started Webbed Wing, which added a spritz of Lemonheads-style power-pop to the surly grunge of their main gig. Drummer Zach Robbins joined DARK MTNS, whose debut Up Above This Cloud is well worth seeking out if you like indie rock that sounds like mid-2010s Philadelphia. Though they’d play an occasional benefit and joined Balance And Composure for their then-last tour, “[Superheaven] was pretty dormant for that time,” according to Madison. “It’s not like we were ever like, ‘Yo, we should get together and practice for no reason at all.’ We would practice before a show because I forgot how to play literally every single song.”
The success of “Youngest Daughter” transformed Superheaven into a festival band in the ensuing years, as they played Manchester’s massive Outbreak Fest in 2022, leading into a 10-year anniversary tour for Jar. As they conceived a comeback album, they had not only leverage as a free agent looking for labels, but also the ability to engage in Madison’s favorite pastime: turning things down.
“We’re not afraid to say no, and so many bands are afraid to say no,” he notes. “I love to say ‘no,’ and then have our team listen.”
Superheaven exists simply because they can be more choosy about their touring regimen and, like many of the ’90s bands to which they were once compared, a sound once dismissed as derivative has become a staple influence for a wave of younger bands. And while their sound is certainly timely, the sentiment of Superheaven is even more so — song titles include “Stare At The Void,” “Cruel Times,” and “Numb To What Is Real,” and those are just the singles. Meanwhile, opener “Humans As Toys” has already convinced European critics that Superheaven do politics now. “I’ve been doing a lot of German press, and they really want to talk about it,” Madison jokes.
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet,” but Madison flatly rejects the idea that he’s accessed any unique insight to the American condition, so much as the struggle of being himself. “I don’t want to leave my house, but I’m also like, man, I’m sick of being in my house,” he muses after I ask him how he plans to use the rest of his Saturday. “But every day of the week for me is kind of like that.”
How much have you kept up with the Superheaven discourse online? There’s some pretty fascinating stuff happening in the “Stare At The Void” YouTube comments section.
Madison: Some stuff shows up in your feed because social media can tell you are involved with something. And I hate it. I don’t want to see any of it. I used to, because you work so hard on this stuff and you want to know what people think about it. I don’t know if this is the case for everybody, but I’m extremely sensitive. Way less so now. It used to be that if someone said something negative, it would hurt me bad for days. And now I’m just kind of like, whatever. But if I see the same person repeatedly saying negative stuff, I do plot their demise.
I often think about the times right after Elon Musk bought Twitter and the site kept breaking down, or those few days where it seemed like TikTok was going to be banned in the United States — a lot of people seemed ready to be relieved of the burden of participating in social media, since it’s so hard to force ourselves to quit.
Madison: Honestly, I feel that way right now. And I mean, we’ve benefited from social media at this point, obviously, but there’s just nothing on there that I want to see anymore. I open up Instagram and I might like two posts or watch six Stories or something, and I’m like, “Who gives a fuck?” And then I close it and open it up 20 minutes later out of habit, and then the same thing happens. And that’s the case with every app. I don’t have TikTok, maybe it’s because I’m 38 and I’m just like, ‘”his isn’t for me.” It’s surprising when I see some guy in a hardcore band that’s 50 years old and extremely active on Instagram. I mean, God bless him, but I don’t know what he’s getting out of this. I’m surprised that he’s maintaining some sort of relationship with this because I just like fucking hate it all around.
Clarke: I’m here for the tutorials. Like, how do I change the light bulb in this certain car that I have? And I go there and there’s some eight-minute-long video by a guy holding his phone. I’m like, “Thank God that you uploaded this because I’d be fucked.”
Madison: YouTube is a godsend.
I think a lot of people are worried about what would replace social media in their lives if they deleted it. Most people say “I’d meditate more” or something and they’re not sure they really believe it.
Clarke: Meditation would be nice. I wish I had that kind of brain. I try to learn how to cook every once in a while, but my wife’s so much better, so I just kind of end up cleaning dishes.
Madison: I wrestle with that exact thing. I would have deleted it by now, but I don’t want to be the person on tour having a conversation with somebody, and every 30 seconds I have to be like, “Oh, like, what are we talking about?” because my ass doesn’t have fucking social media.
Did you feel like Superheaven’s recent success overshadowed what you were trying to do with Webbed Wing?
Madison: Dude, I like it. I like the thought of creating a new thing and I at least try to make it different. My voice sounds the way that it sounds, so there are people that think [Webbed Wing] sounds like Superheaven. But I do notice with bands, they are really afraid to start from scratch again if they have any kind thing built up. I get it because it’s like, yo, you did a lot of hard work. You don’t want to do that hard work again, especially me. But it’s fun to have to create a new logo and a new identity. Music is the only thing I like to do. I would love for people to be like, “Oh, the guy from Superheaven!,” and then everyone loves Webbed Wing just as much, so when Superheaven’s not doing something, I can go do this and pick up [Webbed Wing] right in the same spot. But it’s not that way. But Jake has his separate things, and Zach has his separate things, and I do think all of us get enjoyment out of having these vacation homes.
Once Superheaven started winding down, was there a point where you started to think, “man, we might have to get day jobs from now on”?
Clarke: We didn’t really make any livable money out of it. But we tried our hardest, you know? Through the eyes of people who aren’t us, it was like, “Oh, you guys are successful!” But it wasn’t success when we came back home. I can’t afford to make six months of rent.
Madison: I don’t really feel like I have to do this anymore, but the amount of people I’ve debated that referred to Superheaven as a “successful band” before like 2022… I was just like, “We’re not successful in any capacity.” I know to the layman, it might seem that way because we toured Europe too many times. And I’m like, “Listen, it sucked. I fucking hated it.” I can let them slide now but once we stopped touring, all of us were like, “Well, time to get a job.”
What kind of jobs did you have in the meantime?
Clarke: I was literally directionless, so it sucked. But I was like, “People work in coffee shops, right?” So, I got a job at a coffee shop. I did a fill-in tour with Balance And Composure once and that was fun, but it’s weird if you’re not on tour with your band. So, “What do I get out of leaving home?” Nothing: You get to play some cool shows, but I don’t know what else.
And then I found myself doing AV work, and that shit was grueling. You need to wake up at 5 a.m. to set up for these business people and think, “I hate these people.” They make so much money and you’re running around like, “Is your lav mic okay, sir?” I ended up finding my way into doing coding and tech stuff and that’s been nice. It’s still internet stuff where I can sit at home.
Madison: We went on millennial career paths. Jake did coding, and I went with graphic design. And then once Superheaven started making money, I was like, “I’m not ever doing this again because I don’t like dealing with bands.” I don’t like them. I think that musicians are the worst fucking people of all time. I don’t want to debate what looks cool to a band member that has never had a cool shirt design before the one I presented to them. I’m not a customer-facing kind of guy, unfortunately.
But one could argue that being a musician is literally a customer-facing job, even if it is one where being antagonistic towards the customer might actually be a good business practice.
Madison: I think our band has a bit of an outward standoffishness where… it’s not like we’re unfriendly to anybody that approaches us. But the thought of doing a meet-and-greet, I’d rather lose two fingers, to be honest.
Even if the lyrical themes are similar to those of Jar or Ours Is Chrome, I sense a more self-deprecating, or at least self-aware, treatment of depression and despair.
Madison: I think it’s a little more hopeful, but I’m also more aware of everything going on. I’m just here doing my best. Speaking for myself, after recording like four LPs total between Superheaven and Webbed Wing, I felt like a lot of the lyrical content is “me me me me me.” I’m pretty inward-looking, and not necessarily in a positive way most of the time. I feel like I wanted [Superheaven] to be a little more broad and speak more in terms of my outlook on life and the world. I don’t know anyone else’s perspective, so I don’t feel comfortable making something that’s like, “He wrote this from George W. Bush’s perspective.”
I lived through that era where people tried to do that in the early 2000s. And man, those songs weren’t good. When you talked about the disposition being more hopeful this time around, what brings you a glimpse of a better future?
Clarke: I think my relationships with my friends and family and, as a band, our relationship is great, better than ever. That gives you hope in the world. I also got married and so it’s nice to have someone you can center [your life] around and you weed out what you don’t like. You don’t have to deal with as much bullshit as you get older. It’s like, hey, “I don’t like these types of people. I’m sure they’re very nice, but they’re just not for me.”
Madison: I don’t think I’m hopeful at all, to be honest. I feel like anything I think about after thinking about it for longer than like four minutes, I’m like, “Nah, man, I think that’s going to end badly.”
Superheaven is out 4/18 via Blue Grape Music. Find more information here.