The Sundays - Blind [2LP]

Blind is the record The Sundays made when they stopped being the band everyone compared to The Smiths and started having an unmistakably clean sound, now laid out on a 2LP pressing.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic made them indie darlings in 1990, with their clean sound and Harriet Wheeler's incredibly clear vocals floating above David Gavurin's crystal-clear guitar. Three years later, this second album from 1992 on Geffen arrived more melancholic and more introspective, the melodies being just as magnificent but the arrangements less eager to charm. Wheeler and Gavurin, a couple who have always written together, took their time and deliberately created something less immediate. It confused some people at the time and has aged much better than the hyped records surrounding it.

Love is the beating heart of the album, a slow build-up which leads to one of the most beautiful choruses of the decade, while Goodbye takes the opposite path, lively and luminous, hiding a real melancholy under the tempo. Blood on My Hands allows Gavurin's guitar to get truly dark, and their cover of Wild Horses is a little lesson in mastery, Wheeler singing the Stones without an ounce of arrogance and finding something sadder underneath.

Three albums in twelve years, then silence. It is the one that rewards patience the most.