Transcribed by Craig Parker
EYE OF Dolores, tongue of Jewel, sprinkled horn-break, Morissette's stool. The cauldron bubbles, a pint of frothing green slime is syphoned off and gulped hungrily down. At last! After five long years of pet sacrifices, satanic incantations and smoking the bones of the record company reps that had dared to come round to see if they were still alive, the potion is complete. Harriet Wheeler and David Gavurin join hands, whisper a few ancient words of invocation. A flash of smoke and the pair step through the flames. They still look like The Sundays. They still sound like The Sundays. They are still, essentially, as dull as The Sundays. But their souls have finally been unshackled from their credibility and possessed forever by the spirit of Fairground Attraction.
Alright, so The Sundays actually spent the five years since their last album - 1992's bland effort, 'Blind' - wiring up their home studio, dropping a sprog and avoiding 'proper work' like Nagasaki nappies. Bar the rising cost of rusks and the odd change of presenters on The Price Is Right, nothing has changed in the cosseted, patchouli-scented Sundays World since their 'Reading, Writing And Arithmetic' debut in 1990. Baggy, shoegazing, NWONW, Britpop, grunge, new grave, skunk rock, big beat, the Gulf War, a Labour government, God's Gift, the '90s in general: all mere blips on Harry'n'Dave's never-changing stenograph of popular culture. "You can stuff all yer flash-in-the-pan musical malarkeys," you can almost hear them cry during the majority of 'Static And Silence', "piddling indie-folk whining about flowers, bunny-wunnies and having unmanageable hair has been around FOREVER!!"
So the Zeitgeist has sailed repeatedly past in the distance, the Peel endorsements have built rafts and fled and The Sundays have become Monarchs In Mimsy of Twanglefolk Island just as everyone leaps on the last freedom jet ski to the horizon. And now - WOO-HOOO! - here's 'Static And Silence', 11 songs (that's over two songs per year! Your move, Guided By Voices!) with all the vibrancy and imagination of setting concrete.
You'll already be familiar with 'Summertime''s anodyne horn parps, its impression of Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic' sleepwalking off a cliff and its valiant attempt at recreating the world's biggest girl's blouse flapping in the world's drippiest fart. And - wahey! - you'll be familiar with pretty much everything else here as well. There's the way that the string suffocation of 'Folk Song' so obviously yearns to be sung by a cartoon mouse in Snow White And The Seven Hand-Knit Cardigans. There are the countless Texasified howlers ('Your Eyes', 'When I'm Thinking About You', 'Gone') on one of these three thrilling topics: a) wail, why have you left me? b) sob, it's my turn to feed the little git, or c) blub, they've cancelled The Great Antiques Hunt. Or, most nagging of all, there's 'Another Flame', which has already gnawed its way into the nation's subconscious as the theme to a thousand gags about David Baddiel's penis on Newman & Baddiel. Cheers.
In fact, only the delicate and understated 'Cry' comes close to shuddering the soul like yesteryear. The rest is merely the sound of all the world's oceans being simultaneously trodden.
When shall we three meet again? Another five years, y'say? Couldn't bring a bit less static next time, could you...? 3/10
Mark Beaumont