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the sundays
S T A T I C & S I L E N C E
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D G C______
BY GINA ARNOLD | as lush and as wistful as a college freshmen's diary, the Sundays' new LP, "Static & Silence," is a real back-to-school special, carefully timed to blare out of dorm rooms all autumn. The record is the Sundays' third, and its first in over five years -- a rate of non-productivity rivaled only by Boston, the Feelies and Guns 'n' Roses. The band's two leaders, singer Harriet Wheeler and guitarist David Gavurin, spent the interim having and raising a child -- living, no doubt, on the ill-gotten proceeds of cash earned from a beer commercial. Nevertheless, this LP has been eagerly awaited by the band's rabid fans, and they won't be disappointed by it -- amazingly, "Static & Silence" was neither produced nor remixed by Moby or the Dust Brothers, and it's blissfully lacking in all ironic content. Instead, "Static & Silence" is remarkably similar in sound and texture to the band's previous LPs, 1992's "Blind" and 1990's even more successful "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic." An REM-like wash of leadless, strummy guitar textures has proven itself a surprisingly durable sound, and, similarly, eight years into their career, the Sundays' terminally collegiate outlook has turned out to be an item that simply doesn't date either. The band's music doesn't discuss social ills or issues, but its songs are still suffused with the willful sadness of the well-to-do post-adolescent. The overall atmosphere recalls the kind of exquisitely painful pleasure one got, as a child, from forcing oneself to re-read the sad bits of "Black Beauty" or imagining one's parents dead. In fact, Wheeler's lovely, arching soprano and the rest of the band's equally solemn orchestral aspect is the perfect embodiment of those romantic years when everything seemed possible and simultaneously unattainable. Vocally, Wheeler wallows in sentiment like an unstable 18-year-old; lyrically, she is able to weep at the drop of a hat. Seemingly everything makes her cry: trees, train stations, weekends, you name it -- and if it doesn't make her cry, it puts her to sleep. "Swallows overhead," she sings on "When I'm Thinking About You," "while the traffic snarls below -- could I keep dreaming for a little while longer?" And, on "Cry": "Standing on a platform, now I'm staring from a train -- all the trees roll back beside themselves, oblivious to the dark, to the light, it's all the same." Although it's easy to make fun of such determined emotional fragility, it's something of an achievement to put such quiet and gentle sentiments into an aesthetically pleasing context without being corny or vulgar. And, like their peers the Cranberries, 10,000 Maniacs and the Cocteau Twins, the Sundays excel at the exercise. Throughout "Static & Silence," Wheeler's lovely voice soars and dips across jangly folk-pop songs like the remarkably pretty "She" and "Summertime." Both numbers call to mind the Sundays' biggest hit, "Here's Where the Story Ends," but the time lag -- seven years -- is long enough to mitigate the resemblance. In fact, the Sundays could go on with this stuff indefinitely with few complaints from me. After all, there'll always be another incoming college freshman -- and another long, gray afternoon.
Gina Arnold is the author of the just-released book "Kiss This: Punk in the Present Tense" (St. Martin's Press), a columnist at the East Bay Express in Berkeley, Calif., and a frequent contributor to the San Diego Reader, the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice. |
