For anyone familiar with only the Sundays' albums, getting psyched up for one of their shows is no easy task. Songwriters and band leaders David Gavurin and Harriet Wheeler make beautiful music for quiet dinners, afternoon teas and college all-nighters, but how, one might cynically sigh, could such fragile songs hold together on stage?
\\Just fine, actually. While on album the story begins and ends with Wheeler's meltingly lovely powdered-sugar voice, on stage the rest of the group (Gavurin, drummer Patrick Hannan, and bassist Paul Brindley) break out of their studio shackles and step out of the murky studio mix and into the sonic foreground.
\\Gavurin/Wheeler and Co. bravely opened with the strongest song of their nine year, three album career: "Can't Be Sure." Bolstered by Hannan's assured backbeat and built as much around Gavurin's ringing guitar chords as Wheeler's vocals on the nursery rhyme chorus, the song immediately recaptured all of the early promise of the Sundays' remarkable 1989 debut, "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic."
\\You would expect the band to deliver the goods on its hit single, but it also kept up that momentum for most of the 16 songs that followed. "I Kicked a Boy," also from their debut, was another highlight, but it was neatly outdone by Gavurin's rolling, Stonesy guitar riff on "Another Flavour," from the group's new album, "Static and Silence."
\\Gavurin's strength as a guitarist lies in his sense of economy. His chiming chords (never far removed from the Byrds/U2 style book) are sparse and elegant, providing a perfect latticework for Wheeler's considerably more eclectic vocals. But Wheeler, too, was a model of consummate taste, coaxing her warm, lilting voice around even the highest melodies without ever straying into the red.
\\Of course, the Sundays never really stray anywhere, and if the band has a major shortcoming, it's a lack of diversity. Strong as it was, the Sundays' set suffered slightly from the streak of sameness that runs through the bulk of the band's catalog. Many of the slower, more introspective (i.e., hookless) songs dragged live as much as they do on record, although Wheeler's self-effacing charm counterbalanced such low points nicely. "This next one is still quite quiet, so feel free to chat," she offered good naturedly by way of introduction to "Monochrome." (So polite, these Brits. Not at all like those boorish Gallagher brothers.)
\\Of course, any band -- particularly one as normally reserved as the Sundays -- is pushing the envelope by indulging in three encores. To their credit, h