The Sundays

In the early 1990s (myself in my early 20s) I took a part-time job as an assistant to Judy Onofrio, a sculptor who lived in Rochester.  It was a word-of-mouth ,degrees-of-separation bit of circular fortune that brought me to her door.  She was married to a cardiovascular surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, they lived in a fancy part of town (up on “Pill Hill”, where many doctors lived), and outside of a couple of random high school friends, I never had any reason to be in her part of town.  Meeting Judy was a revelation; she instantly became the coolest person I knew!  Her wooded backyard was filled with various sculptures, some her own and some given to her by artist friends (I’ve always wanted to shoot a CD cover there).  Above her garage was a studio space filled with wood-working power tools, bins of “found items” like old buttons, sea shells, and who knows what else.

Judy’s thing was to take a series of wooden forms, bird houses at one point, later large 6-foot “shields” that looked like coffin lids to me, and she’d smear glue all over them, populate them with found items, paint it all black, attack it with a power sander, repeat, then finally she’d add a few large found items, add a few splashes of paint and glaze, and the outcome was a charismatic blend of whimsy and unsettling.  It was my job to build the wooden forms.  It sounds like I’m reviewing Judy Onofrio, doesn’t it?!  Well, she’s worth it, check out her website!  But the reason I am starting this CD review with Judy is that she would CRANK the music in her studio, and I heard a lot of new music there.  One such album I first heard there, and instantly fell in love with, was The Sundays “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic”.

So, now is when writing this review gets hard.  Really?  This is the first CD I thought of reviewing for Simply Read, and now what do I say about it?  This CD feels like “home”.  It makes sense.  It calms me, relaxes me, it fits into almost any situation I can think of.  This CD feels like leaving work after a long week and there is nothing but the weekend and no stress ahead of you.

I think, back in 1990, I was drawn to this CD because I had never heard anything quite like it before.  I had gone through the 80s, my teenage years, rotating my musical admiration between U2, The Cars, The Cure, The Church, Bob Marley, The Grateful Dead, Rush, Iron Maiden, and so on.  Various genres there, sure, but nothing too far off the beaten path, except for (maybe, sort of, in a way) The Church.  The Sundays “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic” was seemingly simple, but it was a complex percolation of inspired and divine guitar lines and guitar tones, ringing out in bell-like wonder, a rhythm section both subtle and tribal, all mere accompaniment to the most amazing instrument ever, the human voice, this time deliciously and gloriously brought to life by Harriet Wheeler.  When alternative guitar pop nerds lost Natalie Merchant to mainstream popularity, Harriet Wheeler became the new, popular girl in our cultured minds and hearts.  I could write a novel of metaphor and hyperbole testifying to how perfect and pure Harriet’s voice is; it is sweetness and femininity personified.

I think too, this CD helped to foster my fascination with Great Britain.  It always seemed to me, growing up in the bland Midwest of the USA, that there was some very cool stuff happening in the UK.  The Beatles, Monty Python, Doctor Who, James Bond, The Young Ones,  Steve Kilbey (of The Church), and The Sundays all dug deep into my heart and haven’t let go to this day.  It doesn’t surprise me at all that I love Simply Syndicated, by the way.  As the article on The Sundays on Wikipedia states, “The Sundays released their first single “Can’t Be Sure” in January 1989, which topped British indie charts and received acclaim as one of the best singles of 1989.” And as Harriet sings in that song, “England my country, the home of the free, such miserable weather.  But England’s as happy and England can be, quite right.  And did you know desire’s a terrible thing?  The worst that I could find.”  I don’t know what it might feel like to have that lyric resonate within me at an existential level, but I’d love to stand in the English rain and feel a new sort of hopelessness rather than the American version I’ve known too well and too long.  Which is to say that any band that can convey the allure of the foreign even under the grey skies of their own unique struggle has got and can deliver “the goods”, musically speaking.

Sadly, The Sundays only ever released 3 albums, “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic” in 1990, “Blind” in 1992, and “Static and Silence” in 1997.  From what I’ve read in the past, I gather Harriet and David Gavurin (Sundays guitarist) never had being famous as a goal.  They just liked making music together, and having some success with it was just a bonus.  The two got married, had two kids, and withdrew to private life.  Nothing wrong with that, and good for them.  But I’ve read they have a home recording studio, and I often think of what amazing unreleased musical gems are sitting around quietly in their house.  The world is full of wannabes screaming digitally, “Look at me!”, yet these two obviously talented artists have consciously chosen to remain silent.  As humans, they have every right to be true to themselves, but I lament not hearing more of The Sundays beautiful sound.  And that makes me cherish even more the music they did give to the world, such as their first and arguably best album, 1990s “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic”.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

THE SUNDAYS “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic”