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Interviews & Reviews:
- The Sundays Return (article in Muse, Jan'98)
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Interviews & Reviews ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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From: earthlink.net!sesor
Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 00:38:57 -0800
Subject: The Sundays Return (article in Muse, Jan'98)
----------
THE SUNDAYS' RETURN
The Sundays' musical career kicked off like a latter-day fairytale
back in the summer of 1988. At the band's first-ever gig - a support
slot at the Camden Falcon - music journalists there to review the
headliners ended up focusing on the opening act. After rave reviews
in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker the Sundays' career was
launched.
Facing them were the tasks of refereeing an avalanche of record
company offers and trying to slow the wave of publicity engulfing
them. Harriet Wheeler, the angelic voiced lead singer of The Sundays
recalls the daunting challenge of making the leap from hopeful
songwriters to professional artists: "We knew next to nothing about
the music business and felt we had to act as our own managers to
educate ourselves, if only so we could tell a decent manager from a
duff one further down the line." "We definitely weren't complaining
about the press or the music business interest in us," adds guitarist,
band co-founder and Harriet's husband, David Gavurin. "But we'd
barely played a gig - let alone recorded a note - and we didn't want
the hype to turn people off."
The Sundays signed to the independent Rough Trade label and recorded
their debut single, "Can't Be Sure," in 1989. The track became an
Independent charts #1 and the band soon signed with DGC Records in
America. In early 1990, the band released their first album, Reading,
Writing and Arithmetic. The rest of the year was spent touring
worldwide. Meanwhile, the album went gold on both sides of the
Atlantic.
The Sundays released their second LP, Blind, in late 1992. The album
prompted a second world tour and another gold record in America.
Gavurin and Wheeler then took some much-needed time off. They
rediscovered their social life, had a baby, painted the bathroom red
and put together their own studio, where they wrote and recorded the
bulk of the recently released Static & Silence.
The new album does not represent a radical shift in musical style for
the Sundays - no jazz or jungle here - but more a difference in mood
and sound. "It's an atmospheric record," says Wheeler. "It's less
grounded in ambient music than Blind, and while Static & Silence, like
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, is very song-based, it's not as
youthfully 'pop' as the first album." Assesses Gavurin: "It's a
slower, more emotional record than our other albums. We didn't set
out with this in mind - it just turned out that way."
Though they didn't have a particular musical agenda for the new album,
the Sundays did know they wanted a more direct, less effects-based
sound. "We regard the songs as quite simple and intimate," Gavurin
continues. "We wanted the treatment they received to reflect that.
Even where we've used orchestral instruments, it was never as an
afterthought, a 'production idea' intended to add a touch of grandeur
to a basic song." Wheeler picks up the thread: "It was more a case of
having a musical idea in our heads already and being open-minded
about its instrumental form."
Despite the largely introspective, sometimes melancholic nature of
Static & Silence, the Sundays insist the making of this album has
been the most enjoyable experience they've had in terms of writing
and recording. "Right from the start, the songs seemed to come in a
very natural way," says Wheeler. "In the past, we'd usually write the
melodies after the music. We generally liked the results, but the
process sometimes felt a bit clinical. This time - either when we'd
work things out with me singing along, or when Dave had already
written a song line while coming up with the chords - the melodies
were created at the same time as the music and so, in turn, could
shape the way the music developed. The whole process felt really
fluid and organic."
The writing of lyrics, a duty Gavurin and Wheeler share, took a
similar path. "We didn't really search for a specific lyrical style,"
Wheeler recalls. "The mood and sound of the music suggested one for
us - one we hadn't really explored before." Whereas Reading, Writing
and Arithmetic featured a fairly light, frequently ironic tone and
Blind favored largely abstract, impressionistic lyrics, those of
Static & Silence are more straightforward and expressive. "This
doesn't mean they can't be poetic or evocative," Gavurin hastens to
point out. "But they're quite simple; we've never been into the
willfully obscure or ornate."
The Sundays' current stylistic methods thus uncovered, Gavurin notes:
"We don't feel part of the current trends in British music, be they
Britpop, New Grave, Big Beat or whatever. We're just plowing our own
furrow somewhere to the side of what's going on."
"We like to think we've got our own style, our own character,"
Wheeler comments. "But nobody writes in a vacuum and music
continually seeps into our consciousness, whether it's an old Sly
and the Family Stone track or the latest Oasis single. Still, there's
no particular artist or style we're trying to emulate. If anything,
we're influenced by the mood of certain records more than the style
of the music itself. With the new album, we didn't set out with the
idea of writing more emotional, personal songs, but we'd been
listening to a lot of Van Morrison toward the end of the Blind tour
and had really gotten into songs like 'Sweet Thing,' 'And It Stoned
Me' and 'Have I Told You Lately' - music that really touched us."
Another factor contributed to the contentment surrounding the
recording of the new album. Having their own recording setup was
something Wheeler and Gavurin had been thinking about for a long
time, and their dream of their own studio was realized preceeding
the sessions for Static & Silence. Harriet explains, "We'd never
particularly enjoyed performing in a studio. Live gigs are one thing,
with adrenalin flowing and an audience in front of you. But 11:00 in
the morning in front of a row of faces in the control room is another
thing altogether."
Adds Gavurin, "There's something satisfying about understanding the
process you're involved in, not just being shunted off into the live
room and told to start playing." The major downside of taking this
route was time consumption; the band had to investigate what gear to
buy, have it installed and learn how to use it - all with a
one-year-old running around trying to drink tape head cleaning
fluid. "To be honest," Gavurin concedes, "promptness has never been
our strong suit, and once we decided recording ourselves would allow
us to experiment and perform more freely, we just went for it."
Ever candid, the couple conclude their discussion of Static & Silence
with some explication of its title: "Firstly," Gavurin illuminates,
"we were really pleased with the imagery of that line in the song
'Monochrome,' remembering when we were children watching the moon
landings, how those moments of nothingness - when the screen went
fuzzy and the sound died - seemed only to heighten the excitement
and sense of anticipation." Says Wheeler: "It also works as a
description of a more general, shifting state of mind - one minute
all is confusion, the next minute there's peace. Oh, and of course,
we liked the sound of it."
----------
Is it just me or did this magazine lift excerpts from another article?
Doesn't this one echo that intro on the Parlophone website? Also, I
noticed that the article refers to David as Harriet's husband. Have
they gotten married? Hmm, strangely enough, I'm starting to feel the
discomfort of jealousy creeping through me. I don't know why this would
be since it's not the status that I envy... it's the sex. :o
I'd sleep with Morrissey before Harriet,
John
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~~~~~~~~ Thank you for reading this week's Arithmetic Extract ~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~ Extract compiled by Patrick Asselman ~~~~~~~~~~
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