Surf Curse are back with a very different record.
Heaven Surrounds You isn’t as spiky and raucous as Nothing Yet or Buds if you take it track-by-track, but that would be missing the point. Heaven… is a much more cohesive and comprehensive picture than those records. What it lacks in individual intensity it makes up for in holistic ambience and a wonderfully immersive sound. (Which is just a fancy way of saying this works better as an album.)
All the tracks hang together wonderfully, building a picture and feeling through lots of individually structured moments that slot together to form something greater than its component parts.
All made even more impressive by the range of influences they are pulling from. Throughout the album you hear hints of everything from Modern English, The Danse Society, Surfer Blood, Girls and so much more, giving the album a beautiful, soft eclecticism that only adds to the its charm.
Map To The Stars introduces you to a Modern English slash The Chameleons jangly retro-indie feel that permeates the rest of the record, setting things up very nicely for what’s to come. And there’s a lot to come: Labyrinth has a lovely pastoral shuffle, River’s Edge is gentle but builds enough to give real impact and substance, Safe has something of an early-90’s Cure thing going on, full of passion and power.
Then you have more upbeat moments like Dead Ringers, which lyrically lacks the intensity of the music but still entertains, and Trust which is energetic, fun and unusual. What you think you know quickly disappears when it hits the ‘chorus’ (for want of a better word), but in a wonderfully mind-blowing way. It’s a wholly unique moment on the record.
There are a few moments that get a little lost in the mix; Midnight Cowboy is hard to recall after hearing it, but these moments still serve an important function, helping to nicely bridge the tracks around them. Think On The Run on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, not a single or a star but there to do a job, and doing it well.
Which all goes toward making the overall feeling of Heaven Surrounds You work. Songs aren’t blasters designed to stand alone, but the atmosphere created across the record really pays off.
The pay-off creates brilliant moments and gives them spaces to breathe. As a record it’s not trying to knock you out, it’s trying to win you over. It’s not trying to get in your pants on a first date, it’s trying to court you and make you fall in love. And ultimately it’s hard to resist what is happening here.
So don’t skip, shuffle or jump. Heaven Surrounds You takes an old school approach to music and treats the listener like a grown up with taste and an attention span, ready to handle everything it has to offer.
So start at the start and wait for what’s to come.
