We are asking the questions, we are lying to get by
We are lying on our backs, wondering about the sky
We are blind when it suits us, we still hear the noise
Are these delusions of our making? Is this the illusion of choice?
Every life eventually arrives at the same locked door: the one behind which the meaning of it all is supposed to be waiting. As the years burn, we gather love, pleasure, machines, money, memories, and little mementos of our existence, only to find the old questions still standing there, untouched, and unanswered. With “All We’ve Known of Heaven,” Soft Vein turns that existential ache into a sleek new wave confession, one lit by bright synths, bruised romance, and the uneasy knowledge that abundance does not always equal salvation.
The second single from his forthcoming album, Chekhov, continues Justin Chamberlain’s recent evolution into a more refined, sophisticated synthpop silhouette. Where earlier Soft Vein material often leaned heavily into darkwave gloom, “All We’ve Known of Heaven” moves with a more cinematic sense of yearning: a sighing, almost church-like introduction opening into a pulsing bass synth, rippling electronics, and a breathy vocal performance that feels suspended between confession and surrender.
Taken from Soft Vein’s forthcoming album Chekhov, the song follows the previously released title track in placing Chamberlain’s voice and writing at the center. The production, co-produced by Chamberlain with Andrea Mantione of Nuovo Testamento, has the sheen of expensive glass and the anxiety of someone staring straight through it. There is an unmistakable 1980s charge here: a nocturnal, Michael Mann-like glow; the elegant propulsion of new wave pop; and vocal harmonies that call to mind the grand emotional sweep of Simple Minds without slipping into too much of their new gold sheen.
Lyrically, “All We’ve Known of Heaven” circles the elegant catastrophes of modern life: desire, consumption, spiritual exhaustion, the little betrayals people commit simply to keep moving. The song asks what remains when everything has been acquired except meaning. Its central question — “Is this all we are?” — becomes less a cry of defeat than a flare sent into the cogs of our disconnected digital existence, in search of a sign of life beyond our modern appetites and illusions.
That tension gives the track its strange pull. Soft Vein writes about a world in which modern convenience has multiplied beyond imagination — machines for pleasure, endless means of contact, every appetite fed on command — yet we seem no closer to one another, and no nearer to knowing anything like heaven. The song understands excess as both seduction and trap: the comfort that dulls us, the desire that divides us, the little betrayals people commit while searching for warmth in the wrong rooms. By the time Rachel Mazer’s saxophone arrives near the finale, it feels like a final flare of feeling inside all that machinery: romantic, wounded, and gone almost as soon as it appears.
Mastered by Jason Corbett of ACTORS, “All We’ve Known of Heaven” suggests a Soft Vein expanding in real time, stepping further into an 80s pop architecture while keeping a darkwave pulse beating beneath the floorboards. There is a compelling parallel in Producer Phil Thornalley’s own arc, from the Gothic depths of The Cure’s Pornography era to the gleaming new wave heights of Johnny Hates Jazz. For Soft Vein, that kind of range does not feel like a contradiction or retreat, but the natural continuum of any good artist: a movement from severity to sophistication, from dread to desire, from the basement to the bright lights without losing the ache underneath.
Listen to “All We’ve Known of Heaven” below:
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