Review Summary: who needs good lyrics when you have good melodies?
Sunday (1994) [that is, in fact, this band’s name] have almost everything they need to be an excellent dream pop band: mesmerising vocals, outstanding melodies, entrancing atmospheres and a refreshing sense of grandeur. Unfortunately, the duo are absolutely woeful lyricists. I would argue that dream pop is a fairly forgiving genre when it comes to lyrics: you don’t need to write about anything interesting, just make sure you’re not gracing each chorus with some of the most aggravating sentences of all time. Whether it’s a total misunderstanding of the concept of a metaphor (“Picking Flowers”), literally vomiting whatever unrelated strings of statements come to mind after what must’ve been a night filled with alcohol (“Still Blue”) or whatever the f
uck’s going on with all of “Doomsday” (“
when your hands are up my petticoat / my melancholy mind it slows / I’m depressed without your flesh upon my pretty body”), this band cannot dream up a decent lyric if their lives depended on it. As such, this new EP
Devotion makes for deeply excellent background music: at a distance, these songs embody what “American Teenager”-truthers have been craving for years. Just, for the love of god, try not to pay attention to the words that are shaping these gorgeous-sounding choruses.
