Release Date: November 7, 2025
Who Died & Made You The Dream? is perhaps the most sharply tuned version yet of Heaven For Real’s static-to-signal transmissions. Where previous records sounded like catching radio stations while speeding the roadways of the 80’s Pacific Northwest, 90s Athens, GA, and 00’s East Coast tape-label microscenes; Mark and J. Scott Grundy’s latest musical offering maintains the air of spontaneity, while simultaneously guiding the listener through the twists and turns of their precisely crafted universe.
Recorded using a cache of travel instruments in Victoria, BC with Austin Tufts (Braids, Marci) and mixed by Vancouver-scene staple Jay Arner, the band also enlisted a host of collaborators from across Canada such as Jen Yakamovich (Wallgrin, Troll Dolly), Laura Jeffery (Laughing, Fountain), Olivia Scriven (Cute Whore, La Baie Dorée) and Mark Sutherland (Doohickey Cubicle) who each add motion and multiplicity to the recordings.
Showcasing the first of Who Died’s three sonic suites, the opening songs roll with effervescent clarity through rock-y territory, featuring some of the Grundy’s strongest ‘big hook’ songwriting to date (“A Little Bit of Space”,” Unltd. Time”). After these moments of pure rock mantra come restrained centerpieces such as the world-building, emotional catch and release of “Thundering” and the coiled acceptance-earworm of “Hold Me Back”. Finally, H4R even things out to a close with twister rock stylings (“Sinister Gladness”), where the cerebral songsmiths tightrope over skeletal guitar lines and tender melody.
Lyrically, Mark Grundy writes like dreams remembering themselves. Lines like “I’m entirely a logo / when everything we’re gonna do is strange” or “speak with your christlike voice to the teachers” signal a logic equally aligned with John Ashbery and David Berman. Moving between concrete moments (“caramel colour gloves,” “bar-light lover”) and surreal or more driving metaphorical spaces (“downed a thimble full of ocean,” “a little bit of space and the heart starts dancing”).
From the woozy choral interlude of “Common Breath”, the tossed rock energy of “Improvement,” the record-skip call-and-response on “Sentient Brat,” this fractal avant-pop album pulls its form from the architecture of thought itself. As it was in the beginning, Heaven For Real avoid the obvious arc, choosing instead to build songs that progress without ever becoming capital-P Progressive; deliberately inviting everyone in on the ride.