The Sundays : C or D

1. sordid loss-of-innocence sex / "i threw up on that dress"
2. rivalry / "sometimes i think about other people"
3. sordid loss-of-innocence sex / "i'm not really sure what i'll major in"
4. sordid loss-of-innocence sex / "i can be witty, though"
5. defensive fear of child-death / "teehee what if i did stuff?"
6. gagging for sordid loss-of-innocence sex / "i think i'll hide in the bathroom instead"
7. but sordid loss-of-innocence sex won't help / "what if i had lots of cash?"
8. tragic sun-on-behinds love / "remember when i kicked that kid?"
9. oh who cares about anything / "hey look, a pound!"
10. i can't relate to people / "i'm sad about the lone ranger or something"
11. child murders / [no track]

though i wonder, given nabisco's explanation of their appeal, whether it would reach me in my old age.

5. defensive fear of child-death / "teehee what if i did stuff?"

Priceless!

Mainly, I think that you neglect the romanticism.

Big caveat: my sense of this subject matter as "mundane" may have to do with my growing up (and loving the Sundays) mostly in the same general sort of quiet-suburban landscape they're always said to conjure. The everyday is a relative thing.

Love in an elevator? Never happened to me.

Sleeping in a chair? Happened quite often.

http://www.sirensofsong.com/Harriet/harriet.jpg

But I agree with you more now that you have admitted the romanticism of the mundane.

Yet, 'mundane' is a very unromantic word, and perhaps not the right one.

I think the Clientele a red herring here. I don't think they are about the mundane - more about a certain vocabulary. I think I, let alone the Sundays, am more about the mundane (and associated romance) than they are. But I only know their first LP.

http://www.originalscasualwear.com/item_images/299P-KH_FULL.jpg

unpleated pants:

I was listening recently to the first album and Gavurin's guitar work actually reminds me of Peter Buck's earlier style. Also, the last part of 'Hideous Towns' could have been written by the Wedding Present.

I can't and don't speak about the couple's actual relationship - that may be as nabisco describes. But the *records* aren't like that. And it was odd how nabisco kept going back to 'one day my life could be like that', as if they were a description of mature life or wedded bliss. I think they are not - I think they are a description of young, drifting life, which is where the Smiths comparison comes in again. I think that if the records really made one feel 'one day my life could be like that', it would be to feel: 'one day my life could be as romantic as that'.

There are Cocteau comparisons to be discussed too, I think, not in the traditional vocal sense but in the sense of how "likely" their respective worlds seem.

ilx was far better a year ago: only 4 years since the last Sundays LP.

N., this is a bad line that illustrates your weakness.

No, but neither did Buck. I'm sure of it and you're going to make me have to drag out my copies of 'Murmur' and 'Reckoning' and listen to them, aren't you?

I'm also puzzled by what you mean about "...shapes sliding up and down the neck in a slightly perverse fashion." Are you talking about the beginning of the album where you hear the slide on the guitar that then kicks into the riff?

I have often heard things that sounded exactly like it, but they were never guitars.

re. Buck, my memory is of his draping every other song in a pattern of notes off the top 3 strings, in certain very clear and indeed predictable patterns. Which I like, a lot. I have always been a tad vexed at the thought that I may have picked up more from him than those - Gavurin included, I guess - I consider my real heroes.

Possible example of what I mean: 'I Believe'. That absent-minded picking-at-a-G stuff is barely to be found on the Sundays' records.

Nabisco if you were this insightful as a guitarist when you were 15, then you're a better guitarist than I will ever be (which is quite probably true!)

Though I still think that slide at the beginning of 'Skin & Bones' is a guitar: it sounds like a descending slide on one string moving to two strings. It sounds like there's a pitchshifter or harmonizer in there too.

Can we all agree on one thing though? It's a telecaster Gavurin is playing. Y'all are not going to fight me on this are ya?

It's nice to be spot on, but unfortunate that I am implicated in teenage folly. Or is it?

I don't really know what Nabisco means by '8th note'. I think he is saying that Buck plays a lot of notes, but I don't know what the number signifies.

Though I still think that slide at the beginning of 'Skin & Bones' is a guitar: it sounds like a descending slide on one string moving to two strings. It sounds like there's a pitchshifter or harmonizer in there too.

I don't know the last items, but in any case I still don't get how you hear it as an axe. It sounds like a found everyday sound to me. But which sound?

Can we all agree on one thing though? It's a telecaster Gavurin is playing. Y'all are not going to fight me on this are ya?

How can you tell?

That Polewach essay is bloody awful. A classic example of a liberal arts education creating a monster.

It seems that I don't know about such things.

Well, when he goes "low" (snort) he sounds like Stevie Nicks!

Yeah, I finally heard the Sundays this year by accident from a radio on Primrose Hill. Then I heard them in a pharmacy in Dupont Circle. Then I heard them in my car on Chapman Highway, and I skreeeeed over to buy the damn cd. They followed me home!