A Moment Of Complete Suspension.

I was inspired by a listen to th' remarkable Sundays remarkable 1992 gem Blind recently en route this week. It was the last thing before my cassette player blew.

It is on Blind that the young and lithesome Harriet Wheeler creates the definitive moment of her career with her breathy, ferocious, tour de force vocal on the song "Goodbye". All the vocal halmarks are here, the spartan overdubbing of ascerbic countermelodies, the perfectly-pitched, wide-open delivery, the un-comped performance.

"Goodbye" is clearly designed as even more of a vocal showcase for Wheeler than the rest of The Sundays' vocal-dominated canon. It's such an impressive piece of work and so affecting that it simply pulverizes their first medium-sized hit, 1990's "Here's Where The Story Ends". It reveals volumes about the fickleness of the market, the right-place-right-time absolutism of radio and the whole thing that this song didn't make any sort of splash.

I saw The Sundays on this tour at the beginning of '93 at The Belly Up in Solana Beach CA and I knew the live version of this song would make or break this band for me. They'd either be really good amateurs that struck on a sound and a great singer or they'd be In The Circle; Greats, craftspeople of th' highest order.

And when they opened with "Goodbye" Wheeler delivered the song note for note, every inflection intact, like it was Leider, you know? It was one of the five most musically impressive things I've ever seen. There was such a confidence, an off-handedness, about the way she sang it that it was clear she'd been doing it for two weeks running and would do it just the same for the next month. And never give it a thought. She was like a waifey Callas.

I think The Sundays might have run out of steam, victims of a crummy and sort of indifferent marketplace after their not-particularly-hailed, whisper of a record Static And Silence in th' mid-90's. Grunge edged out a lot more great bands than we'll ever even know. I think of the mighty Dada. Of the incomparable Jellyfish. The Elvis Costello of my generation, Michael Penn.
The Sundays got a little lazy as a band on their last effort, the rhythm section sounding a little phoned-in because they had the Wheeler vocal magic and her and soulmate/guitarist David Gavurin's dreamy turn of melody.

All that aside, this recording from 1992 is a little chilling in its canny encapsulation of every thing that was good about The Sundays. And as a widely experienced musician I point to Wheeler's performance on "Goodbye" as nothing less than supernatural. A moment of complete suspension.