20September
Formed in Reading in the summer of 1987, the Sundays sounded like the Cocteau Twins with clear and discernable lyrics. Harriet Wheeler, David Gavurin, Paul Brindley, and Patch Hannan were signed to indie clearing-house Rough Trade by the end of 1988, and debut single Can't be sure
suffered the agonising fate of peaking at 45, caught behind six Stock Aitken and Waterman tracks. Thanks, lads.
After that, things went quiet for almost a year, until the album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
(geddit?!) staggered into the light at the start of 1990. Though it was released in a very quiet week, no-one quite expected the Sundays to crash into the albums chart at number 4, propelled in no small part by Gary Davies's limpet-like love for the track Here's where the story ends
. There were no further singles from the album, though Gary's favourite track would become a top ten hit for Tintinout in 1998.
Rough Trade was the record industry's casualty of the 1991 recession in the UK, and the Sundays wound up signing to Parlophone. Second album Blind
emerged in September 1992, with lead-off single Goodbye
giving the group a belated entry into the UK top 40.
After that, the group rather gave up: Harriet and David married, had a daughter, and eventually got back in the studio to record Static and Silence
, their third and final album in 1997. It was a more mature effort than the two previous works, with a homages to Van Morrison and 60s French music, and gave up the group's biggest UK hit, Summertime
. One further single, Cry
, would emerge before the end of the year.
Since then, all we've heard from the group is a whole lot of silence. Hannan drummed on Kimberley Rew's 2002 album Great Central Revisited
, and there was word that David and Harriet were working on a piece for a show called A Change of Light
. That came to nothing. We rather hope to hear Something from the Sundays in the near future. Or the dim and distant future, the wait will be worth it.
