The Sundays were an English alternative rock band, formed in the late 1980s, which released three albums throughout the 1990s. The band’s beginnings came with the meeting of singer Harriet Wheeler and guitarist David Gavurin while attending Bristol University. Wheeler had played gigs with Cruel Shoes, an early incarnation of the band Jim Jiminee. The duo soon augmented the band with bassist Paul Brindley and drummer Patrick Hannan.
The Sundays secured a recording contract with Rough Trade Records. Their debut single was “Can’t Be Sure” was released in 1989. It topped the British indie charts and received acclaim as one of the best singles of 1989. Their first album, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, followed in 1990 and became a UK top 5 hit. The album’s lead single “Here’s Where the Story Ends” was a number one hit on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the United States.
The band experienced some hardships leading up to the recording of their second album. In 1991 Rough Trade Records went bankrupt, which caused the band to sign with Parlophone Records in the UK. Their debut went out of print in the UK and would stay that way until 1996. Constant touring coupled with their decision to manage themselves hampered the group’s creative output, which was already slow due to Gavurin and Wheeler, the main songwriters, “being chained by pokiness and perfectionism when it came to writing and recording music.
The Sundays’ next single, “Goodbye”, did not emerge until 1992. Their next album, Blind, arrived the same year, reaching the UK top 15. The single “Love” reached number 2 on the US Modern Rock charts. The Sundays toured Britain in the winter of 1992. The shows were “rapturously received by fans starved of fresh product or gigs.” An American tour was greeted with sold-out shows.
The band holidayed in Thailand and, upon returning to England, “put their music career on the back burner for a time.” During this time the only appearance of the band was their cover of “Wild Horses” by The Rolling Stones appearing in a 1994 American Budweiser television commercialIn 1997, their third album, Static & Silence, was followed by the release of their most successful single, “Summertime”, which made the UK top 15. The album itself reached the UK top 10. However, the band has been on a lengthy hiatus since those releases, with Wheeler and Gavurin focusing on raising their two children; Wheeler and Gavurin married after the band breakup.
