The Sundays

So I was listening to XRT Saturday morning (because I forgot my iPod) when "Here's Where the Story Ends" by The Sundays came on. I've never heard them on XRT before, but then I realized it was their "Flashback Saturday" which airs between 9am-noon on Saturdays, and the year they were reviewing was 1990. So, I was put in the mindset of The Sundays after that.

I'm not so much interested in going over their history (obligatory history here) as how I feel about them. I was introduced to them rather randomly. We had an open campus for lunch at our high school in Germany, so once in a while I'd walk down to the PX and buy a CD, just to run back in time so I wouldn't be late for Pre-Algebra. One time, I went down there and saw Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. This was also "back in the day" when CDs still came in those tall "anti-theft" boxes, you remember, the ones that made the CD a foot long and used half a tree of pulp. Something about the fossil artwork intrigued me, so I bought it and ran back to school.

Later on that night, I put it in with some headphones and I loved it. This was amusing since I was very big into punk at the time, but the formula of interesting music/morbid lyrics is one I could never resist (it should be noted this is also around the time I first got into The Cure and The Smiths). The music was simple, the vocals were stunning, it was rather to the point. I also was responsible for introducing many friends and the post to them, which I would do the next year with Nine Inch Nails. About a year later, a friend of mine really wanted my CD, so I stupidly traded it for a crappy 10,000 Maniacs CD. Yeah, that was stupid.

I did tape it, but I didn't get it on CD for another four years. A friend of my sister's, Miriam, was getting ready to sell some CDs, so I got to pick any that I wanted. Luckily, one of them was Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. I grabbed it and haven't let it go, even to this day. When my wife and I started dating back in 1997, I got her into The Sundays as well (it wasn't a hard sell) and she picked up Blind shortly afterwards. She picked up Static and Silence a year later, which she liked but I have only heard two songs off the album. I was disappointed that they became one of the bands that never broke up but just faded out of existance. I just prefer finality with bands that stop making music.

I have to admit that I do normally feel a sense of nostalgia when listening to them, but if the music wasn't good, I wouldn't listen to them as often. The band's basic formula holds up well, although it's well known that Harriet Wheeler (vocals) and David Gavurin (guitars) are basically the band and the bassist and drummer are faded into the background. I'm always surprised that The Sundays didn't have a more successful career. They are one of those bands (like Belly and Grandaddy) that could've been marketing to wider audience without changing the music and made serious money from it. At the same time, I really don't buy into the idea of forcing a band to put out music in a certain vein. Their music's nature is melancholy, with gorgeous acoustic and electric guitars and Harriet's sweet voice singing of sad things, creating an atmosphere not normally though possible with such sparseness. Their songs seem to come over like a haze but never seem to leave. I know "Skin & Bones", the first song off of Reading, Writing, and Arthimetic, always reminds me of when I lived in Germany and the first time I heard the album. I can saw that of very few songs in my CD collection.

I'm sure most of my friends have heard of them, but if you haven't, go get their stuff. I'm sure you can find them if you search well enough.