SUNDAY (1994)

Sunday (1994)

Sunday (1994) is a story of love. A love that turns lonely long-haul flights into emotional dramas, and bad apartments into settings. A love that starts with a meet-cute and never ends. A love that was born out of music, bonded by music, and now explored in music. Sunday (1994) is a soundtrack.

Directed by Sofia Coppola’s angst or John Hughes’ faith in the feeling, we open on a scene of Paige Turner and Lee Newell in their one bed on Kenmore Avenue in Koreatown. The year is 2020, police helicopters buzz overhead and their dog barks incessantly. It’s a Sunday, but a bittersweet one.

That was the day the band began, but it had been on the drawing board for nearly a decade. “When we met, I was like ‘Oh we’re going to have to spend forever together,’” Lee says to Paige, recalling their first meeting backstage at a show. Soon after that meeting, 10 years ago, he moved his life from Slough to Suburban California, into Paige’s busy Italian family home, which is a whole other film scene in itself. Despite having played in bands for years prior, this is where Lee found his musical soulmate, combining his British indie streak with her affliction for wistful pop and her family’s classic rock vinyl collection. Their relationship was always going to be musical, so they mark the day the band was born from that very first moment.

“I've learned everything I know about songwriting from being with you so much, and we write so much music together,” Paige tells Lee. “You're underselling yourself,” he cuts in. “She’s always had an amazing natural instinct for writing and singing. I’m a billion times better songwriter now than I was before we started working together.”

“It feels like this band has been 10 years in the making,” they said. Both have been in other bands and projects prior, Lee having been in Viva Brother as Paige explored alt-pop as Xylo, but Sunday (1994) feels like the band of their life.

“I feel like it knew what it was from the moment we started writing it. We didn't really have to question what it would sound like or feel like, or even what the artwork would look like. We already knew,” the pair explained.

From the second Paige played the progression of ‘Tired Boy’, made up of the first chords Lee taught her to play on guitar, the project was brought to life as a thorough and vibrant thing. It was always going to be Sunday, stylised with Paige’s birth year like a movie. It was always going to be wistful, poetic pop meeting indie and grunge. It was always going to be cinematic and vaster than anything they’d ever done before. And it was always going to be the two of them.

“It sounds so obvious to say, but when you enjoy making something, it tends to be quite good, because it comes from a real place. It's not a place of desperation or trying to make something work. It just works,” Lee explained of those days writing in Koreatown. Finally pulling together all of the ideas they’d shared throughout their 10 years together; their debut project came together quickly and effortlessly.

Having both squirrelled away precious lyrics and thoughts for years in waiting for this moment, Sunday (1994) is a montage of everything that had come before for the couple, both together and separately. On ‘Our Troubles’, Lee’s pen takes the band back to Slough and moments of personal struggle before having ever met Paige. Now sang through her voice, it’s a healing sound. Similarly, in ‘The Loneliness Of The Long Flight Home’, a reference to the Tony Richardson film, The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner, Paige’s voice is lent to a love song about leaving her, when they navigated long distance from opposite sides of an ocean. Not only is it beautiful, but it makes them better. “He'll bring out different sides to me or places that I wouldn't necessarily go to,” Paige says. “He'll play me something and be like, ‘Can you sing this?’ and it might be darker than what I would write, but there’s no apprehension.”

All coming to fruition and entering the world outside of their apartment like two characters walking onto the screen, Sunday (1994) are ready for their premiere. Along with their enigmatic, anonymous drummer, ‘x’, their sound is cinematic in the truest sense. It’s music you can imagine characters running through airports to, racing after love. They’re songs for bedroom floor tears or the first time two hands touch. It’s a release that captures a love story, and every love story that has ever and will ever happen, in all of its sweet, daydreaming and dramatic beauty.

Host or Publisher POPSCENE