The initial instruction was to make something heavy. There were, however, five other people to consult and a batch of songs with inconvenient ideas of their own. "But eventually I stopped trying to shoehorn these songs into something I deemed 'cool.' We stopped considering genre and instead tried to serve each individual song best, knowing that continuity wasn't a concern; we were the only throughline needed."

Consider the work Anya brought to 'The Whale': among the collected sounds is a little girl talking to a parrot, with the bird answering back. Elsewhere, 'OBL' has a session fiddle player, and 'Queens' gives Anya a piano part on a song written for her. Heaven's writing had begun in Nashville folk music, so there was already room in the project for more than one idea of what a Grumpy record ought to contain. "When making music, I think my top two priorities are melody and sense of humour," Heaven says. "I want to tell jokes and funny, true stories in a way that is really satisfying to sing and play."

On the lyric sheet, those stories can involve refusing to water plants because they won't answer questions, worrying about the health implications of sitting near a router, or mistaking an evening's kissing practice for something the rest of the world might call a relationship. The narrator of 'George Clanton' has an uncomfortable outfit and an uncle who's their biggest fan, but absolutely no intention of remaining in the crowd. It is a very persuasive account of wanting to be a pop star while still having relatives.

Heaven doesn't tend to edit much. "Often when I'm writing, I will cringe at something I say," comes the explanation. Rather than cutting those lyrics, Heaven works at getting them into the song. "It often can be some of my most honest confessions. So, I really look to embarrass myself." Asked for a favourite, Heaven picks a passage from 'Cool Ranch', where the neglected plants and the same old trousers give way to someone leaving slowly, by long division. The arithmetic is considerably less funny than the horticulture. Heaven asks: "If we can't have fun with this, what's the point?"

The album takes its name from the opening song, whose narrator dives for a ring in the hope of making an impression. Across 'Unfindable Ring', Heaven describes the songs as running almost chronologically through relationships with Anya and Ellie, including love lost and found again. That makes for an unusually personal set of material to bring into a band rehearsal, particularly when some of the people in the songs are also writing the arrangements.

"This album, like the previous EPs, deals with my trying so hard for perfection in love that it leads to my clumsy demise over and over," Heaven says. "But unlike in the past, this era is about how I start to recognise the patterns that hurt my cause and begin to accept myself as the redeemable fool that I am."

In 'yr bitch', cooking dinner and doing the dishes fail to secure the kind of love being sought; 'Football Tour' finds someone changing tactics even as a partner pulls away. 'Twenty Five', written about Ellie, takes a more fantastical route. Her wish to have transitioned as a child becomes a time-travel story, with Heaven asking for a clue that will let them find each other again in the present. Alongside the dressing up and growing their hair long is the anxious question of whether changing the past might also erase their meeting. For someone who says "my favourite hobby is love", Heaven gives the pastime a fairly demanding itinerary.

There are also stops as ordinary as buying food on the road. 'OBL', short for One Beautiful Life, moves from magic tricks and infatuation to an unwelcome stare at a petrol station. Five of Grumpy's six members are trans, and the song draws on the band's experience of travelling together, looking out for each other and finding affection while worrying about how strangers will receive them. On the page, a tiny change turns the chorus's ecstatic declaration into the imagined satisfaction of someone who would rather they weren't there. The couple still have their van, their meal and a tentative plan to marry in ten years.

With 'The Whale', Diego, who also makes music as D.A. Crimson, helped Heaven move away from recounting personal events and into fiction. Mother Mary gets a ride on a Ferris wheel; a whale's breakfast becomes a promise that someone else will get to eat. The song grew partly from the pair's conversations about their prospects in music. "Opening up to this collaboration in writing really opened me to us writing as a band, which I think will be a lot of the next album we make, so I'm excited for what we will reveal!"

"Some days I'm in total agony over this, and other days I don't care how it shakes out as long as we can keep doing it," they admit. "All of my bandmates are so talented and work so hard, and they deserve to not have to break their backs at their day jobs. I want to make something so big that it frees us from working on anything that isn't art and our own peace."

"When making the songs, I don't worry about what they're about, I just focus on catharsis," Heaven says. Looking back at 'Unfindable Ring', "It solidified our bond and our greater belief that we have something special together, something worth continuing together." Away from music, the group keep ending up at Coney Island. In the diary, though, there's a more extensive excursion: "Tour the fuck out of this album. Get out there and kiss hands and shake babies. Then make another banger album." (Please double-check that middle instruction - Ed.)

Heaven spends 'Unfindable Ring' trying to get love right, while the people closest to those songs help turn them into a record none of them could have made alone. That's a better outcome than the flawless romantic gesture Heaven keeps reaching for. Back in the studio, nobody needs to be swept off their feet. Five of them are on the floor already.

Taken from the November 2026 issue of Dork. Grumpy's debut album 'Unfindable Ring' is out 23rd October.