ASNN

24) Static and Silence - The Sundays

Okay, I'm following the trend. I'm going to post my top 24 (since I'm one less cool than Ron for coming up with the idea) albums of all time. These should only be construed as my personal favorites, and not any sort of exhaustive or official list of the best albums ever.

The Sundays was one of the first bands my wife introduced me to while we were dating. S&S was their 1997 album that featured the released song, "Summertime", that saw a little radio play. Until then, I had written them off as "my wife's music" and knew only their song, "Wild Horses", which had been featured in the 1996 flick, Fear. I bought S&S for Nase when it came out, but ended up listening to it pretty heavily, which I still do.

Harriet Wheeler's voice is ethereal, beautiful, and vulnerable. The tenderness extends into her lyrics, including songs like "When I'm Thinking About You" and "Summertime":

two-minute hailstorm then melts into rain
(oh) sing me a rainbow it's sunny again
swallows overhead while the traffic snarls below
could I could I keep dreaming for a little while longer?

oooh yeah, hope I'll never wake
when I'm thinking about you
so that you know - I never want to wake
cause now I'm thinking about you
-- "When I'm Thinking About You"

and it's you and me in the summertime
we'll be hand down in the park
with a squeeze and a sigh and that twinkle in your eye
and all the sunshine banishes the dark
and it's you I need in the summertime
as I turn my white skin red
two peas from the same pod yes we are
or have I read too much fiction?
is this how it happens? 
-- "Summertime"

The songs in which Harriet expresses her feelings of love (requited or returned) constitute the majority of the album, but by far the best song on the album is "Monochrome", a remembrance of the night the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. It's a beautiful story about how a girl and her sister crept downstairs to view the landing on a black-and-white ("monochrome") television, and the excitement that they felt.

and something is said and the whole room laughs aloud
me and my sister
looking on like shadows
the end of an age as we watched them walk in a glow
lost in space, but I don't know where it is

they're dancing around
slow puppets silver ground
and the stars and stripes in the sand
we hear a voice from above and it's history
and we stayed awake all night

they're dancing around
it sends a shiver down my spine
and I run to look in the sky and
I half expect to hear them asking to come down
(oh) will they fly or will they fall?
to be excited by a long late night
-- "Monochrome"

Needless to say, anyone who can sing about space travel and make it a thing of beauty is pretty high in my book. (And yes, I considered Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and I wouldn't exactly call "Major Tom" a "thing of beauty".)

Overall a beautifully crafted album with excellent lyrics and a voice come down from heaven.

Posted by pcg at November 16, 2003 11:29 PM