The Sundays - Reading, Writing And Arithmetic

Rought Trade - LP

US, 1990

Indie Rock / Pop 

A summit of devastating indie pop led by Harriet Wheeler's era-defining powerful singing. A semaphore for the hopes and fears of the 1990's. Sitting next to mbv's Loveless, Slowdive's Souvlaki Space Station and Elliott Smith's self-titled album, it's one of the best ever. Pristine original UK pressing.

Only a few albums marked a turn of decade as precisely and violently as Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, released on the January 15th 1990. Stark, uncompromising and powerful, The Sundays' debut LP widened the horizon of what pop could be, ratifying the influence The Smiths were to have on alternative rock throughout the 1990's. 

Definitely suburban (the album's name is a reference to Wheeler's hometown, Reading) and middle-class, The Sundays' Wheeler and Gavurin fell in love at Bristol University and ended up writing music after in their shared flat after they graduated, living of unemployment benefits. A classic cursus for many music acts, rendered less and less probable by policies of governments obsessed by productivity and subsidy-cutting. The music on Reading, Writing And Arithmetic exhales a perfume of city center boredom and damp pavements, underlined by the band's name - the only one the four musicians could agree to settle for.

The rage that irrigates the 10 songs ("Hideous Town", "I Kicked A Boy") is subterranean, and that's probably what makes The Sundays' debut album so striking : apparently armless - not twee but dreamy at least - songs are sung as if Harriett is standing at the edge of a cliff. It's an inextricable mix of anger, sadness and joy,  that overflows the band's polite intentions, barely conscious of the generational rage boiling inside of them. No wonder it feels so relevant in the middle of the ferocious and disheartening decade we're living in.

"England my country the home of the free

such misreable weather

but England's as happy as England can be

why cry"

From anger bursts hope. (VG+/VG+)