Static & Silence by The Sundays

Static & Silence, the third and last album from the Sundays, came out on Parlophone in Britain in September 1997, and it's the sound of a band that had grown up and slowed down. David Gavurin admitted they'd mellowed with age, and he and his wife Harriet Wheeler had been soaking up Van Morrison, Frank Sinatra and 1960s French film music. You can hear all of it: Gavurin's guitar chimes softly, Paul Brindley and Patrick Hannan keep a gentle pulse, and Wheeler's voice floats over the top as clear and weightless as ever.

Morrison's influence gives several songs a folky lilt, and "Folk Song" even borrows a phrase from his "And It Stoned Me". "Summertime" is the sunny, breezy one that everyone remembers, and it became their most successful single. The title comes from the closing track "Monochrome", which is about watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on TV, and the cover photo nods to the same moment.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.