The Sundays Static And Silence Rar
Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Building on the jangly guitar pop of the Smiths and the trance-like dream pop of bands like the Cocteau Twins, the Sundays cultivated a dedicated following in indie rock circles, both in their native England and in America, in the early '90s. Although the sales of their first two albums were strong, the band never crossed over into the mainstream, as so many observers and critics predicted they would.The Sundays formed in the summer of 1987 in London, England. Originally, the group consisted of vocalist Harriet Wheeler, who had previously sung with a band called Jim Jiminee, and guitarist David Gavurin. After the duo had written several songs, they added a rhythm section, featuring bassist Paul Brindley and drummer Patrick Hannan. In August of 1988, the Sundays performed their first concert, playing at the Falcoln 'Vertigo Club' in Camden, London. The concert generated good word-of-mouth within the industry, and the group became the target of a record label bidding war. By the end of the year, the band had signed to Rough Trade; they would sign a deal with DGC Records for American distribution within a year.
'Can't Be Sure,' the Sundays' first single, appeared in January of 1989 and entered the U.K. charts at number 45. The group took a year to record its first album, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. The debut was released in early 1990 to very positive critical notices and unexpectedly entered the U.K. charts at number four. Upon its American release later in the year, the album became a modern rock hit, peaking at number 39. Its success in the U.S. was largely due to heavy radio and MTV airplay for the single 'Here's Where the Story Ends.' The single wound up topping the modern rock charts in America. The Sundays spent the rest of 1990 successfully touring America, Europe, and Japan.
During 1991, Rough Trade collapsed due to financial mismanagement. After the label went out of business, the Sundays signed a deal with Parlophone Records in the U.K.; Reading, Writing and Arithmetic went out of print in England and would not go back in print until 1996. Even considering the setback of Rough Trade's implosion, the Sundays took a long time to write and record their second album. They finally delivered the follow-up to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in the fall of 1992. The resulting album, entitled Blind, was greeted with mixed reviews but was an immediate hit in the U.S. and U.K. In America, 'Love' became a number two modern rock hit and 'Goodbye' peaked at number 11. Although Blind was initially successful, it didn't have they staying power of the debut and dropped out of the charts by the summer of 1993. The Sundays supported the album with an international tour.
After the release of Blind, the Sundays were quiet for the next several years. The only sign of the band was the use of their cover of the Rolling Stones' 'Wild Horses' in an American television commercial in 1994. It would be five years until The Sundays would release another album. Wheeler and Gavurin got married, had a baby girl named Billie, and yearned for a normal life during this time. This obviously explained their absence from the music world, but it was well worth the wait. The Sundays again achieved mainstream success with their third album, Static & Silence (1997), thanks to the popular hit single 'Summertime.'
The first great album of this decade is something that looks likely to be up for debate for some time yet - Acolyte? Contra? One of the many delights still ahead of us on the schedules? - but there was a time when things were rather more clear-cut; specifically, twenty years ago last month. Of course, to really appreciate the impact of the Sundays, it's instructive to look back ever so slightly earlier, to a time that, for a significant sector of the music press readership, was something of an annus horribilis some time before that phrase had really developed much cultural currency, namely 1988. This, you'll recall, was when the still-going journeyman phase of Johnny Marr's career really began in earnest, when the notion of things as post-Housemartins referred to their dissolution rather than their figurehead status, and when the indie charts were overrun by - wah! - house music and - double wah! - Kylie Minogue. Yes, we know, but it was a far more purist age. Anyway, imagine the collective sigh of relief when Camden started regularly playing host to a band who could actually be the Smiths and the Cocteaus IN THE SAME SONG. Come to think of it, that'd be quite the sight to behold even now..
Needless to say, the obligatory A&R bunfight ensued, followed by a solitary single that went on to top by a whisker the most top-end-classic-heavy (at least since punk) of John Peel's Festive 50s and then a for-the-time substantial hiatus that led to this being arguably the most salivatingly-anticipated album of its era. Little wonder it was so adored back then, but what's perhaps surprising is the potency it retains even stripped of all that context. This, it must be said, is down most of all to one salient point: nothing at all wrong with the rhythm section, of course (in fact, drummer Patch Hannan would go on to appear on one of the decade's most underrated albums, theaudience's splendid debut), but the Sundays' charm has survived chiefly because they were helmed by two thoroughly stellar talents.
Harriet Wheeler's voice is a genuine one-off, giddy and effortlessly gymnastic without ever losing sight of the humanistic warmth at its core - the crystalline prettiness she brings to 'You're Not The Only One I Know' lends it a gorgeous quality brilliantly at odds with the mundane minutiae of the lyrics, while her hurtling from punchy gurgles to stage-whispery confiding makes 'Skin & Bones' a terrifically arresting opening. Conversely, David Gavurin is one of the great overlooked guitarists of the entire canon; he might display shameless debts to more familiar figures at times (the aforementioned Marr on 'A Certain Someone', James Honeyman-Scott on 'I Kicked A Boy'), but there's a passion and a very real sense of release to his excursions in spangle'n'jangle that make for listening that's much more bewitching that any mere xeroxing could be.
What's also especially striking - and, given the title, wholly appropriate - is just how strong a reflection of student-age life this is, which, on reflection, is a rarer gift than might initially be assumed (consider, if you will, how much easier it is to rattle off lists of artists whose oeuvres correlate with adolescent experiences or properly grown-up concerns). At times, this can be remarkably specific - the excellent 'I Won' is perhaps the only song to ever build itself around flatshare politics - but it also captures the sensation of a life spent in preparation for a rather daunting sense of possibility. 'Hideous Towns' best expresses the intimidation this entails ('never went to Rome / I took the first bus home' etc), but it rears its head repeatedly, Wheeler at one point taking solace in the thought that 'there's no harm in voicing your doubts' and, on 'Can't Be Sure', reflecting with perhaps an overly optimistic confidence that absolute conviction in what lies ahead is bound to emerge. Eventually.
On top of this, there's a fearless smartness in abundance here that it's all too frequently been reasonable to contend has been the great casualty of indie's exodus from the ghetto. The Sundays were never as prone to flourishes as, say, Wild Beasts, but there's a similar enthusiasm for language, punning on the militaristic aspect of the phrase 'Salvation Army', opting for more poetic turns of phrase when lesser artists would have unthinkingly travelled a far more prosaic path ('it's that little souvenir of a terrible year that makes my eyes feel sore,' for instance, is a lovely touch), and coming out with throwaway jewels and joltingly organic observations at regular intervals - it's difficult to think of anyone else, even back then, whose finest hour in 'My Finest Hour' would be simply 'finding a pound in the underground', and even listening now lines like 'fit the flowers in the bottle of fake cologne' leap out as inspired and uniquely evocative.
Admittedly, these are heights that would never be repeated; a second single apparently couldn't be plucked from this because the band had no more songs that they could've put on the B-side (an issue reminiscent, in a curious parallel, of a certain New York band, also on Rough Trade, who could be said to have kick-started the decade that followed), second album Blind didn't feature on anybody's best-of-'92 lists, and the marked improvements of Static & Silence (containing their Newman and Baddiel theme a full four years after the fact) got somewhat swallowed up as the indie implosion began gathering pace, and, while a formal split's never taken place, there's been no activity to speak of since. Moreover, this sets down a blueprint that would be followed with spectacularly diminishing returns by the Cranberries, which we're sure they'd rather not dwell on.
But its real influence is a more benign and lasting one: as the first key toilet-circuit-departing release in the wake of the Roses/Mondays Pops invasion, it kicked the door completely off its hinges, letting a thrilling glut of talents who would previously never have had a look-in on the Smash Hits (or, indeed, smash hits) side of things come haring through in the weeks and months that followed. Rmt mod menu. And, while the NME's review at the time was right to observe that it seemed unlikely you'd ever hear Tina Turner referring to sheds in a song, the alternative would go on to make such a good fist of setting the agenda for the mainstream through the decade that, come '98, the most played song on British radio was a cover of that selfsame shed-mentioning 'Here's Where The Story Ends'. As a signpost for a bewilderingly terrific time, then, Reading, Writing And Arithmetic remains impeccable, while, as an album in its own right, it's still a seldom-bettered affair.