The Sundays Ride a Second Wave
By Jim Sullivan
Globe Staff
"If my career disappeared overnight because we weren't on the rock 'n' roll treadmill and we weren't quick enough to keep putting out our products, then too bad. So be it. We're not prepared to sacrifice what's musically important to us just to keep a profile up. We're not prepared to rush and get involved in stupid situations just to keep a career going." So spoke the Sundays guitarist David Gavurin recently, when asked if he was worried about dropping from a fickle public's consciousness, during the band's two-year-plus gap between albums and tours. As it turns out, there wouldn't have been reason to fret. An English quartet fronted by Gavurin and singer Harriet Wheeler, the Sundays, who have sold out Avalon tomorrow night, hit it big in 1990 when their debut album "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic" sold almost 500,000 copies. They're currently riding second wave of success with their followup album "Blind" (250,000 copies sold), checking in at No. 10 on the Gavin Alternative Music chart. So, ideally, when might one want to pop the Sundays' pleasant pastoral music onto a sound system? Some possibilities. The Sundays make music to listen to while: * Reading Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." * Being gently splashed and soothed in a Jacuzzi. * Viewing a spendid sunset after spending a long, languid day with a loved one. "We can get into metaphors about walking along the cliffs in autumn," says Gavurin on the phone, trying to be helpful but also poking fun at the myriad of soft-focus stereotypes that suffuses the Sundays' music. "We don't describe it very satisfactorily, actually. What it means to one person, it won't mean to another. I would say our music, on 'Blind' particularly, has atmospheric qualities. That's important to us. "One of the things I would say, talking on a critical level, is that sometimes when we've got songs that are kicking a bit more, I feel we haven't produced them as hard as we would like to. But that's part of the learning process. And playing live, that side of our music comes across much more." On disc, though, the Sundays drift and float, moving in graceful, wave-like motions.There's a certain amount of pain, doubt and struggle conveyed in the lyrics, which, like the music, is cowritten by longtime couple Gavurin and Wheeler, but Wheeler's voice is not a commanding, forceful presence. "I think that at certain times we are not making it neccesarily easy work [for the listener]," admits Gavurin. "It's not to say we don't regard lyrics as an integral part - in fact, it's a very important part of what we do. It's just that the way we use lyrics is by weaving them in as part of the overall tapestry. Words obviously work on a number of levels like, I guess, any signifiers do. You can either think, 'This is a clear-cut sentence', or you can be left afterwards with certain images or feelings the words have sparked off in you. I think we write from the latter camp. Lyrics are important to us, but we don't write them as poetry. They come very much out of the music. We have a song, a melody, and then the lyrics go on last. They almost suggest themselves because they're already a prevailing mood and atmosphere." The Sundays, which include bassist Paul Brindley and drummer Patrick Hannan, formed in Bristol in 1988. Early gigs caught the fancy of the British music press and, presto, a career was launched. Though considered an "alternative" band, the Sundays travel in a much more tranquil sphere than atmospheric-noisy Brit rock bands like Curve, Blur, Lush or My Bloody Valentine. Do the Sundays see themselves as a rock 'n' roll band? "It's a convenient phrase that comes to mind," says Gavurin, "and we kind of like it because it sort of sounds ironic when it's applied to a band like ours. I think our music couldn't be much further from classic rock 'n' roll." But, Gavurin adds, the Sundays are hardly an excessively introspective lot off stage. "We're serious musicians," he says, "and I suppose we're serious people. But we're not only interested and obsessed by our careers or our music. I think it tends to be the case that our music comes out more melancholic than our personalities are." If people still tend to think of the Sundays as nice, soft, semi-sad, well, Gavurin can live with it. "There's always going to be misconceptions about you if you exist in any kind of public," he says. "I can think of many worse ones. I'd hate to think that people thought we were fascists or something." Transcribed by: Wendy Borges Wendy_Borges@brown.edu