For two and a half glorious minutes, two of the California Bay Area’s best indie bands team up to bring you incredible music. Oakland’s Super Cassette has long been one of my favorite bands of any genre. Pacing is another amazing artist with an incredible and loyal following. However, I never realized the latter was from San Jose, making them an excellent partner to Super Cassette for a collaboration.
“Heaven Isn’t Real (But Hell Is)” is a little more of a pop song than I was expecting. The song starts with a chorus, and it does one of my favorite things a song can do: It rhymes one of the lines with the “whoa-ohs” which I think is a lot of fun, especially in a chorus. I always enjoy when a song has lots of “whoa-ohs” and other sung noises that aren’t actually words, but so few songs actually rhyme them with lyrics to make them an integral part of the song.
Pacing’s (Katie McTigue’s) vocals in the song are a nice addition for the first verse, and the duet in the second half of the second verse is an excellent joining of talented vocalists.
The song begins with a muted, lo-fi guitar phrase before kicking in with the main guitar rhythm. In between the verses and right before each chorus, the song returns to that distant lo-fi sound with a vocal callback. To me, the song feels like it’s about uncertainty and disassociating; the idea that nothing good can happen (“Heaven isn’t real”) but terrible things are ever present (“but Hell is though”).
“Heaven left the earth at San Francisco” – the final line from the chorus – feels like the city holds a special memory that is gone now, but it also opens up a fun undercurrent in the song. During the echo of the final chorus, you can hear someone singing under the main vocals. While its difficult to make out what that voice is, the lyric video makes it clear they are singing other cities and locations that all rhyme with San Francisco. This would make the song more fun to sing at concerts when you get to customize those lyrics for the location the band is playing, or at least shout out the nearest city mentioned in the lyrics.
This is just another great song in a long line of amazing songs by Super Cassette, and joining with Pacing adds another layer and more breadth to their repertoire. Take a listen below.
Written by Gimp Leg
