With members hailing from England and France ‘The Eternal Summer’ is a melting pot of cultures, genres and emotions.

Diverse, upbeat and wonderfully bizarre, Sourface’s debut album, ‘The Eternal Summer,’ captures the band’s optimistic outlook. Overflowing at the brim with an amalgamation of artistic styles smoothly transitioning from one to the other, post-punk is paired with sunshine pop, jazz is jumbled with disco-house and funky rhythms creep into the most experimental moments. Piled together tightly into a unique vessel, the long player effortlessly flows as it floats along a meandering river lined with brightly coloured flowers, blue skies above and an overall sun-drenched golden hue drifting amongst the solid air of an early morning.

Having met each other at university in London and worked on many creative projects together in the past – from a failed covers bands to DIY short films, the four piece is made up of members hailing from England and France. Vocals are sung primarily in English by Ludo Aslangul (guitar/vocals), with a couple of exceptions. On ‘JMFC’, a funky, jazz-tinged freakout, and album opener, ’Solaire’, a synth laden slice of psychedelic-funk fusion, Alex Brunstein (bass/vocals) takes the lead delivering vocals in his native tongue, saluting towards his proud Parisian roots.

Recording in 2022 in the suburbs of Paris at a family home, the band converted a cinema room into a cobbled together studio. They prepared their own soundproofing and gathered pieces of equipment where they could. Not wanting to sacrifice on sound quality, the group spent much of their part-crowdfunded budget on renting a quality amplifier and went on to invite saxophonists, trumpeters and cellists over from England in order to complete their wide-ranging sound.

Before even reaching the halfway mark of the record, your head spins at the variety of genres presented, sometimes subtly, sometimes heavy-handedly. Second track, titled ’The Lizard King’ in honour of Jim Morrison, is served up on a plate like a dense slab of cake with a thick layer of glimmering marzipan. The glimmer in this case comes in the form of a heavy industrial sounding post-punk guitar riff.

Fourth track ‘Sonny’ has a light airiness of sunshine pop flowing through it, with high vocals and catchy melodies assorted with bellowing jazzy horns. It then races towards a jazz fusion breakdown, crammed with glorious flutes. ‘Hello Tomorrow’ is almost more disco, in a mode Ian Dury and the Blockheads capitalised on and which even Red Hot Chili Peppers adopted particularly in their early 80s era.

The album comes to an end with a rather theatrical piano driven song, ‘Now and Then,’ which keeps up the optimistic strain that rings throughout this various collection.

‘The Eternal Summer’ constitutes a melting pot not only of genres but also of cultures and emotions. The band defy conventional methods of album construction, refusing a stylistic theme, and in doing so an optimistic open-mindedness comes to define the album.

The release is accompanied by a short comic telling a story of ‘The Eternal Summer’ and showcasing further the band’s flair for conceptual creativity. It takes place in a fictional world where solar energy is the eternal source of life. The band’s manager, Toni Bossi, plays the villain otherwise known as ‘Lizard King’ (extending the celebration of Jim Morrison), who invents a machine which absorbs all sunlight and therefore controls the people. Employed to feed the machine with their music, Sourface rebel by overcharging the machine with enough energy to blow it up and once again spread the sun to where the darkness had long gathered. The group’s eclectic debut album reflects this fantastic story. An outpouring of pleasure and positivity goes into each song, adding up to an album which smiles from ear to ear.