Sonic Power Pop: The Sundays

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The Sundays were an influential British indie group of the late 1980s and 1990s. Singer Harriet Wheeler and guitarist David Gavurin formed the band in college at Bristol, soon adding bassist Paul Brindley and drummer Patrick Hannan.

Drawing comparisons with Cocteau Twins and The Smiths, the band was widely heralded by the British music press after early gigs in London in late 1988, followed by the group's first single, "Can't Be Sure", which was released in 1989 and was voted number one in John Peel's Festive Fifty that year. The band achieved a measure of success in 1990 with its debut album, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, which went gold in the UK and US. Subsequent albums Blind (1992) and Static and Silence (1997) also went gold in the US, though still moderately acclaimed. The band's music, whilst not ground-breaking, is characterised by Wheeler's 'dreamy' beautiful voice, 'jangly' guitars and suspension-rich harmonies.

During his time at Bristol University Gavurin formed a friendship with David Baddiel which would lead to The Sundays providing the song "Another Flavour" from Static and Silence as the theme tune to the Newman and Baddiel in Pieces series.

The band is currently on an extended, possibly permanent, hiatus; like fellow British musicians Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn of Everything But The Girl, Wheeler and Gavurin are a couple and are raising their two children out of the spotlight of the music industry. A survey of various Sundays-related websites show that no significant news or updates about the band has been released since 2000. Despite the length of The Sundays' disappearance, Wheeler remains, in 2006, widely acknowledged as a top female voice - according to various lists and Internet polls that track such things. The uniqueness and subtle power of her voice, coupled with the remarkably melodic machinations of her band, have helped to create a timelessness to their otherwise "old" music.