Song of the Day 6/9: The Sundays, “Summertime”

Americans insist on regarding “summer” as the period between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. That’s the astronomical definition of summer, but it’s not the only one. The length of the astronomical seasons varies, so meteorologists break the year into three-month segments. For record-keeping purposes, summer consists of June, July and August, which pretty much corresponds to the warmest period of the year. As every American knows, true summer is the period from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend. So as far as I’m concerned – and the thermometer agrees with me – it’s already summer.

The Sundays are an unusual story – they’re the J.D. Salinger of Britpop. After three moderately successful albums in the ’90s, the British husband-wife team of guitarist David Gavurin and vocalist Harriet Wheeler went on hiatus to raise their children and have never returned. They were best-known in the U.S. for “Here’s Where the Story Ends,” a single from their first album that went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative chart in 1990. “Summertime” was their last single, from 1997’s “Sound & Silence.” It reached No. 10 on the same chart.

The couple is notoriously press shy. Sundays drummer Patrick Hannan said in a 2014 interview that Gavurin and Wheeler have never stopped making music in their home studio, and he played on some of it, but expressed doubt that they’d release it. That was confirmed by Gavurin. Last interviewed in 2019, he said he wasn’t sure they’d ever release more music or play a reunion concert.