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 generation gets the luxury problem it deserves. For Soft Vein, the problem is abundance without communion, pleasure without recognition, comfort with the emotional temperature of a waiting room. All We’ve Known of Heaven, the second single from their forthcoming album, takes aim at a world where every appetite has been serviced, every impulse has a machine waiting for it, every ache can be soothed by delivery, distraction, sex, shopping, screens, or a little curated self-erasure. Heaven, in this song, has been downsized into convenience. You can have anything at the touch of a button except the one mercy worth having: another person connecting with you honestly in the room.
The track moves with a sleek, wounded poise, opening in a near-liturgical hush before the bass synth starts its low prowl and the electronics gather around Justin Chamberlain’s tender voice like expensive furniture in a room no one lives in. His singing is close, breath-held, controlled, and uneasy, giving the song the feel of a private crisis staged inside a glass office tower after everyone else has gone home. The old Soft Vein gloom has been pressed into a cleaner, more refined synthpop shape here, but the polish carries unease rather than distance. This is dance music for people who have mistaken motion for progress, touch for intimacy, and access for love.
In this world, excess acts as a double agent. It seduces because comfort is real. Warm rooms, full glasses, obedient devices, endless options: none of these are imaginary pleasures. The trap begins when ease starts replacing understanding, when desire turns people into consumers of one another, when convenience trains the soul to expect no friction and then leaves it unable to endure closeness. Chamberlain writes from inside that contradiction, where modern life has made loneliness more efficient. The song’s ache comes from recognizing that people keep searching for warmth in the wrong rooms, asking systems built for extraction to provide tenderness, asking appetite to do the work of faith.
Sydney Mills’ video pushes that idea into the body. Drawing from Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities, Severance, Mad Men, LCD Soundsystem, and Talking Heads, the clip plants Chamberlain among corporate suits whose movements turn office drag into holy roller possession. He takes the David Byrne position without winking too hard at the reference: the frontman as anxious office oracle, surrounded by workers whose neat clothes barely contain the pressure underneath. These people are dressed for discipline and behaving like their nervous systems have filed a complaint.
Lark Detweiler’s choreography gives the video its charge. The dancers flail, snap, recoil, lean, and collapse as if St Vitus himself embodies them; their bodies seem yanked by invisible management, private want, algorithmic command, and buried panic all at once. The suits become masks, but not simple disguises; they are uniforms of permission, tools for passing through the day, costumes for people trained to look composed while being pulled apart. The corporate setting makes the frenzy funnier and crueler. Here is the modern professional subject: medicated by amenities, measured by output, trapped between the wish to perform properly and the need to tear open the seams.
The dancers (Lark Detweiler, Cat Bauermann, Aimee Smyke, and Kitrell Poe) are not merely “freeing themselves” through movement in some easy cathartic arc. Their motion is jagged because freedom itself has become confused. Even rebellion has been folded into style, even freakiness can be absorbed by the conference room if the lighting is right. The clip treats the body as the last honest witness in a culture fluent in euphemism. The mouth can lie, the job title can lie, the suit can lie, the calendar can lie. A body thrown sideways under invisible pressure tells the truth fast.
The result is a review of modern intimacy disguised as a sleek synthpop single and a choreographed corporate fever. All We’ve Known of Heaven asks what survives after every need has been converted into a market, after longing has been routed through devices, after pleasure has become both anesthesia and debt. Chamberlain’s answer is not grand redemption. It is smaller, stranger, and more painful: the body still craves warmth, the spirit still recognizes absence, and even inside the most efficient rooms, some buried part of us keeps reaching beyond acquisition toward meaning.
Watch the video below:
Mastered by Jason Corbett (ACTORS), All We’ve Known of Heaven finds Soft Vein widening his frame without sanding away the nocturnal pressure at the project’s core. The song leans into the clean lines and grand emotional surfaces of 80s pop, yet its darkwave blood still moves beneath the gloss. There is a useful parallel in producer Phil Thornalley’s own history, stretching from the stark gothic weight of The Cure’s Pornography era to the polished new wave ascent (and sultry sax solos) of ABC, Human League, Tears For Fears, and Wang Chung. For Justin Chamberlain, that breadth feels less like a stylistic swerve than a sharpening of purpose: severity giving way to elegance, dread opening into desire, the basement door swinging toward brighter rooms while the old hurt keeps its hand on the light switch. I’ll have what he’s having.
Listen to All We’ve Known Of Heaven below and order the track here.
Catch Soft Vein live:
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Jul 23 Dickens Calgary, AB
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Sep 11 Zebulon Los Angeles (LA), CA
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Sep 20 Photo City Music Hall Rochester, NY
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Sep 22 Mahall’s Lakewood, OH
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Sep 24 Underground Music Cafe Minneapolis, MN
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Sep 26 White Rabbit Cabaret Indianapolis, IN
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Sep 30 Club Dada Dallas, TX
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Oct 2 Paper Tiger San Antonio, TX
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Oct 3 White Oak Music Hall – Upstairs Houston, TX
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Oct 8 New World Music Hall Tampa, FL
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Oct 9 Respectable Street West Palm Beach, FL
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Oct 10 The Abbey Orlando, FL
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Oct 14 Stanczyks Music Bar Durham, NC
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The post Soft Vein Dances Away the Hollow Excesses of The Modern World in Video for “All We’ve Known of Heaven” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
