Sunday (1994) - Sunday (1994) (2024)

Forgive me while I wallow in the melancholic wonderland that is Sunday (1994)’s debut EP, a melodic treatise that conjures such cool 1990s-era bands as Curve, Garbage and the Sundays. In fact, I’d argue that the six songs—which include their debut single “Tired Boy” and its addictive followup, “Stained Glass Window”—are tuneful portals to another time. When I close my eyes, it feels like I’m back in the living room of our first apartment, where Diane and I spent many nights enjoying the random mixes created by our Sony 5-CD player. (We each picked two discs and agreed on one.) The EP would have fit in with whatever we paired it with, from the bands mentioned above to Shawn Colvin to the alt.country gems we enjoyed at the time.

Yet, as much as a throwback as these songs are, they simultaneously sound fresh and new. The latest single, “Blonde,” is a good example. Paige Turner’s pouty vocals wrap around wistful lyrics that find her longing to be like her old beau’s imagined new girlfriend, while Lee Newell’s emotive guitar wrings slo-mo reverberations from minor notes. There’s more going on than just that, however, from (Racer) X’s steady drums to the handclaps to the profane shout-out that follows the mention of Chatsworth.

The other new songs—“Mascara,” “Our Troubles” and “The Loneliness of the Long Flight Home”—fall into the same mood-inducing mode. Theirs is an analogue sound in a digital age, if that makes sense. Newell and Turner are self-professed cinephiles and, now that I’ve heard the EP in full several times, it’s safe to say that though Sunday (1994) create 35mm-lensed music, wide in scope, they approach their songs with a noir-ish sensibility, filling them with many shadows and just a little light.