The Lizard Review
Lizard (1994)
(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Lizard Review, a weekly music extravaganza hosted by a lizard. And that's me, my name is Madeline, and I just wanna say I have no sponsors. I can't be compelled to say much of anything, not being paid to say any of this. And I tell you that. I say that before this episode of all episodes, because you're about to listen to the rantings and ravines of somebody who sounds like they're being paid. But I'm not, that's the thing. These are my real genuine opinions. I need to warn you all right off the bat before we go any further. A disclaimer at the top of the episode here. To inform you all that I really did sit down to write a well-rounded informational and researched episode on a new artist. That's just our releasing music. I wanted to make it journalistic. I wanted to have integrity. I wanted it to sound like I'm not being paid. But what I actually wound up with was an eight-page diatribe from the inner workings of a fan girl. This episode feels like it was written by somebody who is trying to brainwash you. It does. It does. No, it does. I have reached a point with this new artist where I can no longer be unbiased. I can no longer step back and simply report on the facts. I can really only speak in Twitter stand language. I can only say slay Queen Mama House down boot wig. I can only say ended careers. I can only say greatest thing that's happened in music since the invention of the guitar. And I need everyone to know that this is mentally where I am at right now with this artist. I try to be unbiased. I try to have integrity with my approach to music. Specifically this band. And I have failed miserably. And I keep winding up like speaking in tongues. And it's all about how the face of music is forever changed by this EP. Yes, an EP. It's not even an album. It's an EP. And nothing will ever be the same again. Yeah, I just wanted to know. I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know. Nobody's paying me. I mean, I wish I were being paid. It would make a lot more sense. It would make a lot more sense. But I just wanted you to know that I am no longer mentally well about this band. Today is New Music Friday. It's Friday and there's new music, so let's talk about it. And today we are talking about a record that came out two weeks ago. It did. It came out two weeks ago. And it has rocked the very foundations of my reality and everyone's reality. I think it's rocked everybody's world. I think it's changed the fabric of reality as we know it. Today, I am excited to inform you all of a band and experience a film, really. It's a film. It's cinema. That's what you don't get. It's a cinema. It's an EP. It's cinema. It's a movie. It's an EP. It's an experience. It's a lifestyle, okay? It is unlike any other band in the history of the world. Now this is a band. I repeat again, all they have is an EP out. It's a single nine song EP. And that's the deluxe edition of the EP, mind you. It was even shorter before. It was only six songs long before. Now this nine song EP has fundamentally altered the space-time continuum and put a dent in the existence of our universe and how we have come to understand it. And I reiterate, I am not being paid. I am not being paid. This is a band called Sunday in parentheses 1994. Now I discovered them through a little something I like to call a music leak. Can I talk to you guys about music leak for a second? Because I've been dying to talk to you guys about music leak for a fucking minute now. This is actually a perfect time to bring up music leak because well, it is football season. And I do believe that music leak was directly inspired by fantasy football leagues. Now I won't explain fantasy football to you guys because the truth of the matter is, I barely fucking understand what fantasy football is. But what I do generally know is that you build a little fake team on an app or what have you. And then as real live football games are being played, how these little football players essentially dolls in your fantasy football league perform on the real field directly influences your fantasy football score. And that is as in depth as I'm willing to get into fantasy football, I will not research it. I will not learn about it. But by the same token in music league, you can make themed leagues, for example, a fall league or a league about being a girly or a pop girl league. And then based on these themes, you make rounds. So for a pop girl league, one round could be your favorite pop girl song from the 2010s. And for another round in the same league, it could be favorite pop girl song from a Gen Z pop girl. So then everybody in the league submits a song that correlates to the theme of the league and that fits the stipulations of the round. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And then everybody votes correct. You can up vote a song or you can down vote a song. Now I had joined musically because I thought it was a tool for discovering new music. That's what I thought it was. Little did I know it's actually just frantically submitting a chapel round song as fast as you can so that you can win. It actually sort of stands to reason that by and large people who submit actual new songs that most people might not be familiar with don't usually win rounds let alone leagues. Because obviously you and anyone would give more points to a song that you do know and already like on account of the fact that well, how can you know how much a song that's brand new to you actually fits the theme of the round or is even that could have a song for that matter. You just discovered it. How do you vote upon a song that you've just discovered? It's the name of the game and it is quite literally a game. And the goal of the game is of course to ultimately win. That is what everybody wants to do. They want to submit a song that they think will win. And what will win nine times out of 10 are songs by artists like Chappell Rhone, Lana Del Rey and et cetera, et cetera. Artists that everybody knows, songs that everybody knows because they're popular songs. And if it happens to fit the bill of the round that you're playing well, you'll probably get top three in the round. Now to tell you the total truth, I was pretty disappointed. I was, you know, I was disappointed at the start and how seldomly people would submit songs from off the beaten path. And I was also disappointed with how, if I did submit a song from off the beaten path, I would get down voted to help because it wasn't Chappell Rhone. Yeah, I was disappointed. And then I started playing the game just like everybody else. No, I conformed and I became a slave to the game. Nonetheless, as time has gone on and as me and the same people have been playing more and more and we've seen so many of the same songs by the same artists over and over, people have been starting to get more comfortable submitting random fucking songs that they know not everybody is going to know. Less popular songs by artists than not everybody knows. And slowly we've begun weeding out the same five pop girl songs. And we've been starting to get more varied and more interesting responses that actually do lead to music discovery. And on one such occasion, this occurred for me. In the midnight coded round of the Taylor coded music league that I am in. The premise of the league is to go through all 11 of Taylor Swift records and pick songs that you think are quote unquote coded to each album like a red coded song or a midnight song. And it was on that fateful day in that midnight coded round that I discovered something that blew me sky fucking high. Now this wasn't the first time that I ever discovered something new on music league. I discovered a handful of new songs on music league as a matter of fact. But this was the first time that it lit my ass up the way that this shit did. It kind of felt like I had just discovered the Rosetta Stone. The specific song by Sunday 1994 that was submitted for the midnight round is a little song called Blonde. And what's important to note about Blonde is that this song is kind of making its rounds in indie alternative sort of quote unquote underground areas. For example, and I know this because Sunday 1994 put it on their Instagram page and I stalk them because I'm their number one fan. I'm obsessed, et cetera, et cetera. But they put on their Instagram story that John Mayer actually played this song Blonde on his SiriusXM channel. I think it's called something like conversation with John Mayer or the new music with John Mayer, something like that. And he played this song. Obviously that would be a big deal to a brand new band like Sunday 1994. I was disgusted, but the point is this is kind of a song that's picking up a lot of traction to the point where John Mayer is playing it on his SiriusXM radio station. And if you listen to Blonde, I think you will understand a little bit of why this song was submitted for. Of all the Taylor Swift rounds, it could have been submitted for it was submitted for the midnight round. It also performed fairly well. I will have you know in the round it came in fourth, which is not bad at all for a song by an artist that almost nobody in the league was familiar with. Blonde is a song about being into somebody who was into another girl. And in your kind of woe and misery about how this person doesn't like you back and he instead likes this other person, you decide to go absolutely nutter butter and bleach your hair blonde to be more like this other girl. And also to just like be a brand new you and totally change yourself essentially to get with this person. The subject matter of this song, I think is what really gives it that midnight's coding. And of course, it's only midnight coded in hindsight. It's only midnight coded with the help of tortured poets insight. Only with that insight do we know that that is literally what was going on in her mind behind the scenes. Being into some other guy out there and fixing it on him and obsessing and fantasizing and imagining herself radically changing just to get her out of the same old situation and into this new situation with this person. So I was cheering for the lyrical element of the song. Productionally, no, it doesn't have the same fantastical sort of tinkling magical spaceship element to it that her and Jack were messing around with on midnight's but I do think lyrically it has that midnight's to it, midnight's nis to it and many others agreed. Hello, it came in fourth place, but you know the fuck of it all is I was hopping on the train with this song, whether it was fucking midnight's coded or not. Now, musically creates a playlist on Spotify automatically out of all the songs everyone submits so it's easy to just listen to them and then vote upon them. And I put this midnight's coded playlist on and it was listening to it as I went about my morning routine and blond by Sunday, 1994 came on. And for those of you who have ever seen my torture poets reaction video, it's actually, this clip is on TikTok, but my reaction to Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus for the first time was as if I was being spoken to by an alien that entered my bedroom and it said to me in alien language but that I somehow fully understood this is for you. You know who you are. I love you literally an alien entered my bedroom as I press play on blonde by Sunday, 1994 and said, this is for you. And I said, what is this? What is this? What's happening? What are they doing? What band is this? What's going on? I need to know everything about this right now because it was one of those magical music moments where it just immediately had me by the fucking throat. Maybe it was the production. Maybe it was the vocals. Maybe it was the vocal delivery, which she absolutely excels at and we'll get into that later. Or maybe it was any number of things, but it didn't matter because I was on this shit like white on rice. I said, this is it for me. Something's happening here. Something is happening that I feel was meant specifically for me and those walking around out there who are like me. I felt a kinship. I was seen. And I said when I first listened to the song that the only song that has ever made me feel more like I wanted to go blonde was a little song called "Teen I Know" by Marina and the Diamonds. And that came out when I was about 18 years old. And I did go blonde. That's the scary part. I heard "Teen I Know" by Marina and I went blonde. And I listened to this song and I said, you know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I did a little bit of suicide blonde moment. I won't. I will never go back down that road again. I'm 30 years old. Going blonde is the act of somebody in their 20s. It is not the act of somebody in their 30s. You can't be doing that. You can't be 30 and doing suicide blonde unless it's like your look. And that's been your look for a long time. Going suicide blonde in your 30s is saying goodbye to the hair that you once had. You will never have, it's over. You can't do that to your hair in your 30s. So I'm saying get out of my fucking head. I'm saying, "Dop whispering your evil ways to me." But it does. It makes me want to go blonde so bad. ♪ I want to be blonde if I split my ends ♪ ♪ Maybe my heart will mend ♪ 'Cause I'm gonna be blonde. It's seriously like do it, dye your hair. Come on, do it. It's powerful. It's fucking powerful. This moment of listening to blonde was powerful. So my first impressions of this band, of course, came from listening to blonde. And what I gleaned, what I ascertained from blonde other than a deep desire for myself to go blonde. I ascertained a gloominess. I certainly did ascertain gloom, doom. I also ascertained a 90s sort of cranberries vibe. Yes, a grunge. I also ascertained that we were dealing with a girl who was singing. Yes, well, she's singing. But after that, after that initial first impression of blonde, my next first impression of this band was that they had chosen a truly, truly terrible name for their band. That was the genuine first thought that occurred to me because you have to admit Sunday and then in parentheses 1994 is sort of a choice. And when you're a new band or a new artist starting out, the name really matters. The name is gonna give you something. The name is the very first thing in most cases that you'll experience from a band. And my initial knee jerk response to the name Sunday in parentheses 1994 was girl, I do not know about that. It does give some modicum of pretension. I will say that. And how many of the best bands of all time have that little taste of pretentiousness? I ask you, let's call it spade a spade. Sometimes to be great, to be truly great you have to be pretentious. It's part of, it's like faking it 'til you make it. I'm gonna take myself so seriously in the hopes that people out there will also take me seriously. That's kind of what it gives. But it also gives movie. It gives this is the title of a movie. It's a movie title. When you see movie titles written, they're always written exactly like that. The title and then the year in parentheses, especially when you're talking about older films, films that are not of our time. So it gives nostalgia, not just the fact that it's referencing the 90s, but the fact that it's referencing cinema in a way that immediately gives you old cinema. And incidentally, that is precisely what the band is referencing by stylizing their name like that. Their entire thing as a band is based in a belief that, quote unquote, you listen with your eyes. And that the visual aspect of a song or an album, or even just a project as a band, is just as important as what the music actually sounds like. Paige Turner, who is the band's lead singer, said, "I think that the visual world of our band "is also so important. "And that's what I love about film. "And I feel like when we're writing our music, "and when you listen to it, you can, "or at least the goal for me is, "to be able to step into the world "of what maybe a film would be like." They are self-described cinephiles. And I have to say that this is the thing that both makes them special, and the thing that makes the work good. They, as a group, have a very, very firm, solid, pressed and folded vision of what the band is, and what the EP is, and what they are trying to do with it. It comes across very clearly as you listen to the record, which is deeply sonically cohesive, but in a specific way, like the way a film soundtrack might be. When I first listened to it, and I did listen to it over and over and over again, I'll repeat for nearly an entire day when I first sat down with it, I think I listened to it like, I had like a hundred plays on it in a single day, which is crazy, but I had a very specific image in my mind as I was listening to this EP. So the band gives, the Smiths meets the cranberries, meets the cure sonically, for points of reference, like already you're getting something out of that. And it's giving 80s and 90s, and in doing so it gives nostalgia right off the fucking bat, which again is exactly what they were going for. But I also had a specific image in my mind before I had seen absolutely anything other than the cover of the EP. I hadn't seen their faces, I hadn't seen them as people, I hadn't seen their outfits, nothing. And I had this image in my mind before I saw them of a kind of Lana Del Rey meets the Arctic Monkeys kind of a moment. And then lo and behold, you look at a fucking picture of them and it's goddamn Paige Turner in a floor length buttoned up gown and she has a tiny cross tattoo by her right eye. And then her bandmates are just like Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. Go figure. I also had visions in my mind as I was listening to the songs of lots of like roads, winding roads, lots of sidewalks, walking, like streetlights, cars, driving. And those images came relatively unbidden. I mean, she doesn't really mention cars, she doesn't really mention driving or streetlights and not enough to make it like the vibe, but it's there nonetheless. Seriously, there is a stone. You can't understand it, but you know it's there. So when you have a band and really a group of artists that can curate their vision and put their own images from their minds that they had intended to give you and they take those images from their own heads and put it into your head with nothing more than vibes alone. That's pretty special. Having a vibe and having a vision as an artist is something that many people have tried and failed to achieve. Look at something like CXOXO or the Katy Perry record, 143. What is the vision? What is the reason that this exists? What is the driving force behind the creation of the record? In both cases for Camila and Katy for those two most recent albums, there's not an answer to that question. By contrast, there is an answer to that question when you listen to this EP. When a project has a soul and when it has like a heartbeat and a direction, it forms as like a living experience. Which is exactly what they were trying to do. And this is all a long-winded way of saying that even though at first, I felt like the title of their band was absurd and ridiculous and kind of like not a wise idea for a new group trying to make their first impression. Ultimately, I did come around. I did a full 180 on the title. I came from that is a horrible idea all the way around to the exact opposite of that spectrum, which is these people are geniuses and you either get it or you don't. Because what Sunday 1994 as a title does is it invokes a visual medium into your sonic medium and it molds those two things together. It takes the visual and the sonic and it puts them into one with just the band title alone. I mean, it works. If you get it, it does exactly what they want it to do. And I get it. I'm saying I'm reformed. I'm saying I understand it completely and the haters and the losers won't get it, but thank God I do. Thank God I do. Now you can imagine that a band that believes so strongly in visuals being aids to a project would have some interesting music videos and chuckle they certainly do. Now their first single a music video was for a tired boy and the music video itself, you can tell cost $10 to produce as you can fathom for a brand new project by brand new artist. And what it reminds me of the most is probably video games by Lana Del Rey. It's shot on film and actually everything that they do is shot on film. They are big believers in film. They've even said when shooting band photos or music videos we intentionally only use film, never digital. Film is tangible. It's imperfect and it's not easy to navigate. That's just how life is and that's what our music is about. To that end, the film is grainy. It has like, you remember in old movies you might notice this like sometimes when you're watching there's something called like cigarette burns in the film. They're very old school and the shots are dark. Like they're not well lit. She has a camcorder and you'll see it in mirrors in the videos a lot. And these mysterious shots of them in mirrors and them doing everyday common things are interspersed with cartoons, old cartoons, black and white cartoons. And those cartoons kind of give it an eerie vibe at the same time that's very nostalgic and an entire boy and really all these videos. The shots that they have of themselves are then like being normal. They're like sitting on bleachers. They're reading books. They're standing there just holding hands staring directly into the camera. There's like unsettling zooming in on religious statues that give you the fucking creeps. They're driving around in like a big old 90s lifted white jeep Cherokee. They're eating fruit loops in a kitchen from 1945. There's tattered American flags. They're driving a Ford truck. It's very Americana in a big way and it's 90s Americana specifically. And they heavily lean into LA imagery, beaches, palm trees, driving around. The music video for Blonde is exactly the same as this. It's beaches, it's driving. It's them just existing on film. And then the video for stained glass window is exactly the same except they're in a church for most of it and there are lots of stained glass windows. TV car chase is the same. All of these videos are the same. They have probably hours upon hours worth of footage of themselves because they seem to always be filming and looking for things to film and creepy little shots to do. And it's like page turners spinning around in dresses with their long hair and like little outfits and the guitarist and the drummer being mysterious and like reading books, Americana cars, driving roads, fields, pools, on and on and on. Not a single video that they have released so far is anything else but those exact things. It's imagery, film, nostalgia, long dresses, cars and America. It's wistful and cinematic. It's a very tight, very clear set of images and they do not deviate. The project has a direction and it never steps off the path. And there's really nothing more to mind from the videos other than this is the direction, this is the aesthetic. And perhaps really just this is the band in general. And I really think that this is the thing that people are responding to. This is a group of people that knows what they're trying to do and what they want to accomplish. And this is a project that accomplishes exactly what they set out to do. I also, personally, I mean, for me, this shit was cooked up in a lab. It was cooked up to attract me personally into it. All of their visuals make me utterly fucking gag, G-A-G gag, they're choking on the wig. They love to shoot in black and white film for pictures. Specifically, that is their bag. And the pictures themselves really look like they crawled out of 2011, 2012 Tumblr. And that's my bag. That's my adolescence, girls. That's who is still inside of me. That's a wolf that still exists inside of me. We hearted dark indie pictures from 2012. Oh, that's me. It's just pictures of them being serious. Page, in particular, is very gifted at looking gloomy. Oh, she looks gloomy. But she's also very soft and very feminine. And for lack of a better word, demure. She's also got on very kind of conservative dresses, which is for the aesthetic. And you can read that aesthetic immediately. She wears a cross, like a real crucifix with the dead guy on it and everything. And she also has, like I said, that little cross on her face next to her eye. In many pictures, you even can't see her whole face because she shields it with her hand or with her hair. Honestly, the boys are just kind of there. I don't really care about them. This is about the girly. This is the girly. And she is serving up, I'm a 1950s housewife, but also I exist in 1994 in the most delectable fucking way. For a lot of the art associated with the album, it's all mostly like in black and white. And it's unclear in a lot of these like album arts, if it's page or if it's just a model. But it's shit like there's pictures of a girl choking. There's pictures of mouths. There's like a girl strewn out on a bed looking miserable. And there's a picture of like knees with knee-high socks and a skirt. It's very religious almost. And it's very clear what you're supposed to get out of it. It is very clear. And I get exactly what I want out of it as well, which is like demented '90s miserable whore. Yeah, miserable whore realness, I said it. That's what I want and it's what I get. And I'm obsessed. I'm completely obsessed with the visuals. I feel like I keep repeating myself, but they have very, very good visual instincts. And it's really rare to have a band that operates, of course, mostly sonically, it's a band, but then they also have fantastic visual instincts. Again, they know what they're doing and they know what they want to do and you can tell. And the visuals really translate so perfectly well to what the music sounds like. To me, it's not just that they're creating music and then coming up with visuals that fit that music or that they have visuals in their minds and then write the music based upon the visuals. To me, it really feels more like it's all happening at the same time. When they write the songs, they are writing the songs from a visual place and a sonic place at the same time, as though they are filming and scoring this movie at the exact same time. Take TV car chase, for example, where the song opens with almost what sounds like a VCR booting up type of a sound with like an organ, you know, an old-timey kind of a movie score sound and then there's a distorted and wistful spoken statement of "and never again will I run from life, and never again shall I run from love." Which sounds like it's a quote from an old movie, but it in fact is not. It in fact is completely not. It sounds almost like a prayer in a church and you get the visual of a woman kneeling with a rosary in her hand saying that in a prayer and as the song continues on, you kind of get visions of like home life in 1954 and in fact, my first description of the song is that it's what you would write if you were a zanned out housewife in 1954 who's obsessed with her husband and then kills herself by putting her head in the oven and that's insane and that's a really weird thing to immediately get in your mind but it comes across so fucking perfectly, both visually and sonically in the song. It's romantic at the same time it's very stifled and it's yearning at the same time it's very miserable all at the same time, which is kind of like what the 50s feel like, especially in hindsight, there's a romanticism to the 50s, at the same time you know that it was being zanned out and wanting to put your head in the oven, especially as a woman and you can see it, all of that, existence, that life of a person who does not exist and you see it when you close your eyes. This is not something that they just made. Do you understand me? This is music only for the truly enlightened amongst us and they do shit like this in song over and over and over again on this EP. Even in the moments on the EP that don't grab me as much like on the loneliness of the long flight home, I can still close my eyes and see it all, baby. It's like a film behind the eyes. I close my eyelids and it takes me there. It's a very descriptive, emotive form of songwriting and sonic landscaping. Not just anyone can do that, not just anyone can take you to a time and place in a song. It is a gift, ladies and gentlemen, but we do have to address the elephant in the room. I discovered something really horrible in my research. In my research, I discovered a horrifying fact about this band that does not bode well for anyone involved and least of all, for me. In this band, there are three members. We have Paige Turner, who is our Gorgina American queen. We have a drummer who goes by X and this drummer is intentionally mysterious and they give nothing away. They're never involved in the interviews that the band does, so I'm just letting them cook. And then we also have the guitarist and the co-writer of many of the songs, of all the songs, I think, actually. And his name is Lee Newell. He is kind of transatlantic. He's British and he came to America to do music. He's been in a couple of failed projects, as a matter of fact. One of those projects toured with the neighborhood, which is really funny in a lot of ways, because if you've ever listened to the neighborhood and you're listening to this episode, I would assume that you are understanding the picture I'm laying down for you. But I'm telling you this to inform you that Lee Newell and Paige Turner are the main duo of the group. They invented the project. They write the lyrics. They are the creative mind behind it. And then they just have this person who's drumming for them. And unfortunately, Paige and Lee are dating. This is bad news. They have been dating for 10 years. This could not possibly be worse. When I read that, I put my phone down and I stared into space for five uninterrupted minutes, because it was like I was seeing it all slipping through my goddamn fingers. We don't even have the first album. All we have is the EP and it's vanishing in front of my eyes because they're dating. This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad news. This is not good news. This is not good news for rock and roll. Oh no, you know the other piece of the tea? They started making music for the fuck of it. They actually hadn't considered releasing it. And then they just decided to do it on a whim. Oh, don't say that. Don't say that. No, this is your dream. This is your dream. This is the only thing you want to do. It doesn't matter. If you guys broke up tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. That's what I want to hear. That's what I want to hear. But they're not saying that. Oh, they're not saying that. They met at a show. They've been together for 10 years. And they say they have always wanted to do a band together. So this has been a thing that they have been planning and talking about. Really, the interesting things that they say about one another is that when they speak about each other and their shared creative process is they talk about one another as if they can read each other's minds. And they talk about them understanding each other on a fundamental creative level that they feel that no one else can understand them at that same level that they understand each other. They describe themselves as being attached at the hip and sort of just a tad codependent. I mean, I won't get psychoanalytical on them because I do not know them. They've only done a handful of interviews. But this is what I'm cleaning based on what they have said. That's how they talk. This is bad news. This is bad news. I just have a really bad feeling about that situation. And you know, here's the fuck of it all. I'm speaking to you directly, my queen. He could disappear tomorrow and I would know a thing page. That's what I'm saying to you personally as if we were in conversation together. He could be gone tomorrow, I wouldn't know anything. I'm telling you that. Although I should admit that they do write together, but they also do write separately and bring songs to one another. So he is like deeply involved in the creative process. And probably a lot of why the band is what it is and why the project is what it is is because of his influence. But I can't help but shake the feeling that this is going down to smoke before it even really gets started. I mean, not to be fatalistic, not to be fatalistic on this podcast where I'm essentially sucking them off and saying how great they are and how awesome of a new project this is. But I'm just telling you straight up, I discovered the romantic aspect of this band and it silenced me. It silenced me in a big way. My knee jerk response to that information was, oh, it's over before it even starts. And I can't help from feeling that way. And that would be a goddamn shame because I'm telling you right now, I've only known that they've existed for two weeks, but I'm not kidding. I need them. I need them in a big way. They can't go. I need it. I need it. I need it. That's sad. I don't even know who these people fucking are. I feel based on nothing, a sense of total distrust towards Lee. And I don't even know if Paige Turner is her real name. I don't think it is, but I can't prove that because all that's out about them right now is their interviews and things they themselves have said. And the personas that they are giving to interviewers, the drummer has no name, just X. And there's something really, really fascinating about like in all days and ages, this day and age, not knowing anything about these people. The only thing that I really know about them is they have made a project that I am interested in and that I really like. That's all I know. Maybe that's all we need to know. I wish I never knew that they were dating. I could tell you that. I wish I could unknow that information. The thing that I gravitate towards the most in regards to their music is, of course, the melancholy and the sonic landscape, which again is very the cure. It's very the Smiths. It's Lana Del Rey. It's the cranberries. It's also, you know, a little letters to Cleo. What the hell? Why not throw them into the ring as well? It's deeply nostalgic. It's very morose. And they again have genius visual instincts. They seem very adept at bringing their visions to life as creative people. But what I really overall am so attracted to with this band and what has drawn me to them and has kept me into them and keeps me putting this EP on repeat over and over and over again, is really, quite frankly, page as the lead of the band. And when you put someone at the forefront of your band, it does very often make them the face of the band and quite literally the voice of the band. And it just feels to me that what is being given to me, the aesthetic, the mood, the vibe of the music, all of that is being given to me by page to the point where, without page, there is no Sunday 1994. It couldn't be just any other fucking blonde girl. It couldn't even just be any other girl from LA. It needed to be page and it always needed to be page. She is the literal soul and breath of the band. She is what gives the songs their deep, wistful yearning and misery and melancholia. It is her vocals that do that, frankly, because in many instances, delirics could possibly just fall flat without her there to sing them, the way they need to be sung to give them that life. She is what gives their visuals, the pictures, the videos, the films, all of it, all of that shit has their eariness and their nostalgia because of her as the focal point. She is the kind of person and the kind of talent that I heard her voice and I saw her and it was over. That's a person, perhaps even, I'll go so far as to say, that's a persona if you'd like. That's something that is speaking to me. That's a persona that I feel kin with. When I see her, I see her in a way where it's like, she's seen me back and anybody who's ever had that experience with an artist knows exactly what I mean when I say that, in scene, you are being seen and finding something like that is incredibly rare. So if this all goes tits up because these two clowns are dating, I'm gonna hang myself from the curtain rod. That's what I'm singing. Don't mess with me, don't play with me. Now, when we don't even have the first album girls, they are writing it and recording it as we speak. It's kind of impossible to imagine at this point that first album, when it does ultimately come out, because they're so committed to this vibe that they're doing right now for this EP. And I say again, is this the vibe of the band as a project, or is this just the vibe for the EP? With so little out and so little to work with, it's hard to say. We just don't have enough of it to go off of, but I will say as a listener, as a fan, I have gotten the sense that this is the thing. This is what we're doing, girls. This is it. We're doing nostalgia. We're doing melancholia. We're doing the Smiths meets Lana Del Rey. We're doing the floor-length white gowns and we're doing the crosses. We're doing the Virgin suicides. We're doing copilot. Like this is it. At the same time, I do think that they have more underneath, because this EP is, I get the sense, the surface level layer of what they're trying to accomplish. This is the taste. And there's more underneath, kind of like an iceberg. I mean, listen, I'm not a good person to ask because I can't be unbiased. I really feel like a deranged fan, girl. I can't be asked these questions. Personally, to me, the first album is gonna be the greatest album ever made and the girl should be scared when it comes out because it's coming to end careers and make your own faves look like they've been playing with ticker toys this entire time. And they're on some other shit that your fave couldn't even begin to conceptualize. Yes, I'm employing Twitter's fan language to talk about Sunday, 1994. Yes, that's where I'm at mentally with the band. I've made this very clear to you. I'm not unbiased. I'm amazed we'll be getting paid. I may as well be getting paid 'cause I will never utter a word against them. No, not right now, not at this point. Now, I had intended with this episode to go through every single song and talk about them all one by one, but I can't do that. And I say that I can't do that because what I mean is that I can't do that in a way that lends itself to being any better of an experience than you actually sitting down and listening to this band and listening to this EP. This entire episode is nothing more than a fanatical cry, begging you all to sit down and listen to this band and listen to this EP because first of all, you're listening to the list of review, I feel seen by this, first of all. First of all, I'm being seen and I've told you this. And second of all, it feels like the exact thing that I've been waiting for to happen for years. It's the exact sound and vibe and energy of this thing that I made up in my own head. And now it's out there in the world and it makes me feel like I'm alive. It makes me feel like I'm alive. Where in this time period of music right now where everything is very nostalgic and everything is harkening back to a better time quote unquote or at least what we think is a better time. And we're also living in this time period where everything is new and what people really, really want more than anything is something that feels old. This is a band that takes the best of some of the most famous bands of yesteryear like the Smiths, like the Cure, like the Cranberries. And for me personally, it takes those things about the Cure, about the Smiths, about Lana Del Rey that I've always been kind of irritated by and it kind of takes all the annoying stuff away and just leaves me with this perfect blend of all of the best parts of all of those projects. This is the Cranberries without the annoying vocals. This is the Smiths without Morrissey. This is the Cure without it being incredibly pretentious but it's everything about all of those projects that I really, really like and it's removed everything that I don't. I haven't felt this way about a new musical act in years. It's gripping me the way that Taylor gripped me. It's gripping me the way that Halsey gripped me. This is a very elite club in my life of people who from day one, from song number fucking one, I was logged in, I was lining up. I was considering flying to Kansas City to see Sunday 1994 open for fucking girl in red. That's how serious I am about this. I bought merch, I bought merch, I bought merchandise. They have one goddamn EP out and I'm fangirling at the front of the line. I really almost can't even begin to express to you the degree to which this EP has changed me fundamentally as a person. So to that end, I can't do a song by song. I'm not mentally well enough. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? I'm not right in my brain. All I can do is desperately beg you to listen to this band because I need to be seen and understood. I need attention, I'm begging for attention. I need to be seen and understood and only listening to this EP will draw you to the conclusion of who I really truly am, okay? Thank you. Will I fly to Kansas City to see Sunday 1994 open for girl in red? Well, it's not impossible, I'll say that much. It's not impossible. This show is in December. I don't have anything going on in December other than it's Christmas. And, you know, things could be arranged. Maybe I'll go to Kansas City for Christmas. You don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm a random lady. I have been trying to tell myself, Malin, they're going to tour again. And you cannot, I don't have any problem with girl in red, but I do know one thing, which is that I cannot have the first time that I see Sunday 1994 live in person. It cannot be a girl in red. It just can't be. No, it can't be a girl in red. I cannot be standing there. I cannot fight my way to front barricade to stand next to girl in red stands who are gonna go blink, blink, blink as Sunday 1994 plays. No, I need to be with my people. I need to be at a Sunday 1994 headlining show. I should have been in London. They just performed a headlining show in fucking London. I should have been there, me! And everybody who was there, I want you to know that your face and your picture is on my wall and I'm throwing darts at it. It should have been me. I need to be at Sunday 1994 live in London. In fact, I can't, they need to tour and they need to go to London and I need to be there physically. Nothing will stop me. I need to be there. I can't have my first experience be at growing red, but you do need to stay tuned for this journey. I will see Sunday 1994 live. I don't care what I have to do to do it. So to find out more about my journey to see the Sunday 1994 live in person, please subscribe to the Lizard Review at thelizardreview.substack.com. You can also find me on Instagram where I'm constantly posting about Sunday 1994. You can also find me on Spotify and Apple Music where you can see in real time me listening to Sunday 1994. Additionally, you can always find me on the evolution of a snake, which is of course the Taylor Swift podcast where sadly and unfortunately Sunday 1994 will never be mentioned. So was that really something you want to listen to? I'm kidding. Of course you want to listen to the evolution of snake the Taylor Swift podcast. And there's just no Sunday 1994 element to it. And I'm having a hard time not folding them into everything that I do in my daily life. Thank you all so much for listening to this hour of me fangirling over a band with only nine songs out. Please immediately follow this episode up with a streaming of all nine of those incredible songs and have a wonderful day. Again, my name is Madeline and this is the Sunday 1994 review. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]