sundays

this is one of my all-time favorite albums.review from: Trouser PressThe Sundays:Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (1990)The Sundays burst on the British scene in an artful shimmer of catchy guitar folk-pop, topped off by Harriet Wheeler's enchanting, melody-melting little girl voice. On the London-based quartet's debut album, David Gavurin builds subtle tension into wonderful tunes like "Can't Be Sure" and "Hideous Towns" by picking out beguiling demi-acoustic guitar figures in songs that ache for the release of a satisfying strum. Elsewhere, minor-key contemplations ("My Finest Hour") evoke a rainy afternoon feel with poetic skill. Unlike other bands in a related vein (the Cocteau Twins, Everything but the Girl, the impending Cranberries), the Sundays burble with energy-exploding with uplifting sweeps of melodic joy ("Skin & Bones," "I Won"), getting faintly funky ("A Certain Someone"), even raising a cloud of mild guitar smoke now and again. The band's lyrics — bizarre fragments of opaque introspection that reveal themselves slowly in Wheeler's uncommon phrasing — only add to the record's sparkling charms.