While the North Atlantic’s reputation is rooted in Celtic music and power pop, in recent years, Halifax has been churning out wave after wave of avant-pop oddities. Take, for instance, the mathy jitter-pop of Long Long Long, who eventually evolved into Montreal weirdos Each Other. Or the lucid eccentricity of Dream Friends. Or the buzzsaw teenage trash of Outtacontroller. Or… We could go on. But the city’s finest — and perhaps most idiosyncratic — pop minds belonged to twin brothers Mark and Scott Grundy, whose penchant for hyper-caffeinated melodies made their punchy main gig, Quaker Parents, one of Halifax’s de facto treasures.

So, naturally, when the Grundys announced a new project in Heaven For Real — who recently released the Wanton cassette — we were transfixed. Those signature, woozy harmonies are still evident, but with Heaven For Real, the brothers indulge their A.D.D. tendencies: Driven by the tireless drumming of Nathan Doucet, Wanton skips between effervescent power pop and grease-finger jazz chords, often to delightfully dizzying effect. It’s a genre the band’s calling baby jazz — and we gave Mark a call to make sense of it all.

AUX: Did you know that when you Google your name, the first hit is this evangelical website from Nebraska? It’s called Heaven is For Real.

Mark Grundy: I did know that! It’s a story about a kid who goes into heaven and returns with fruitful knowledge. That’s the gist, right?

That’s it. How do you feel about people searching for your band, but stumbling on some weird religious website?

It was unplanned! We should’ve planned something where our bio [stated that] we were the ones that had direct interaction with heaven. We could’ve talked about how we were cool with them using our band name. [Laughs]

It isn’t too late. So, what’s your mandate with Heaven For Real?

Well, myself and my esteemed brother, Scott, have been together in bands for a really long time. We started this project a long time ago, because we both had songs we were collaborating on that didn’t necessarily fit in with Quaker Parents. So we asked our friend Nathan Doucet, who’d just moved from Toronto, to play drums. We messed around, and we managed to eke out a four-song tape in March.

What were you hoping to achieve with the cassette?

We effectively just wanted to get something out there—we have a huge backlog of material. We’re putting out two songs on Craft Singles, too. We’ve also recorded what could be the makings of an album a couple months ago, but we’re working through that heap too. We have a lot on the conveyor belt.

Membership aside, how does Heaven For Real differ from Quaker Parents?

The main difference is that Scott plays drums. With Quaker Parents, it’s more like I write songs and we build around them, sometimes with our friend Brad [Loughead, of Each Other]. Over the past year, we’ve also arranged songs with Jon McKiel and other people who’ve been gracious enough to play with us. [With Heaven For Real], it’s less of a traditional band structure. Scott brings his songs to the table, and we work with them, and Nathan has some cool ideas too. It’s a different kind of collaboration—we flesh out ideas together, for the most part, obviously with different percentages and weights each time.

A lot of your friends—like the guys in Long Long Long, for example, who are scattered across Montreal and B.C.—moved out of the city. What keeps you in Halifax?

Well, I mean, we still have friends here! [Laughs] For now, anyways, I like Halifax. I like living here, and there’s still a great music scene. There’s lots of great bands I could go into many details about—like Monomyth—and there’s a lot of cool, creative shit going on in Halifax. And it’s not even just in music. I love that I come into contact with people who I haven’t met yet that are doing cool, creative things. I think that if you asked the people that move away, they wouldn’t say they moved because it’s stagnant here. They move for bigger and better maybe, but as far as the scene goes, it doesn’t mean that the old crop is totally sown.

What’s your songwriting chemistry with your brother like? Do you guys have a weird, creepy twin thing going on?

I don’t know. I guess to me, it’s just my life. We fight a lot, but mostly, we’re on good footing. But when we’re putting songs together, we have similar perspectives. That can go really far. But really, it’s nice to play people who are your friends. In my limited experience, in life, you gotta play with your kin or people who are near-kin.

You guys have labeled your genre baby jazz. What does that even mean?

It’s trying to make it seem like you have great musicianship when you’re generally lacking it. [Laughs.] The idea’s to not even define that genre—it’s more that we want to make pop music, and we want to make music for us. But it’s not something that’s easily explainable; some of the songs we make are baby jazz, but there’s a few genres we’re hoping to play in.

So what do you have planned for the rest of the summer?

We’re playing NXNE at Killer Haze showcase — they’re a recording collective based out of Sackville, N.B., which is going to be exciting. We’re also playing at Sled Island; we’re playing as Quaker Parents, too, and Nathan’s other band, Crossses, is also playing. We’re also hoping to do a larger tour into the States with Heaven For Real, but [it isn’t planned yet], so hopefully it’ll be in late summer or fall. It’s super exciting!