Sunday's Best

Item: The Californian
Author: Tom Bastian

The Californian

(2002)

Reviewed by Tom Bastian

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Label Polyvinyl Record CompanyDecapolisAugust 2002

indie pop indie rock pop rock

"The Californian" is Sunday's Best 2nd full-length release on Polyvinyl Records. Sunday's Best is a 4 piece band from Los Angeles California that formed in 1997. One of their founding members Pedro Benito has since left the band and is now with the Jealous Sound. The band's first release was the EP "Where You Are Now" on Crank Records.

Sunday's Best is a band I have heard in passing, but never really had the chance to give a good listen to. With a sound that could easily get passed by in today's scene, "The Californian" may be a release that gets overlooked by many. Solid songwriting, musicianship and vocals on this release, Sunday's Best may be missing that edge that sets them apart from so many of the other bands in the scene today. With reviews I often tend to draw comparisons to other bands and probably the biggest comparisons I can draw, at least vocally, is to Poor Old Lu with a bit of Death Cab for Cutie for some reason. I guess it's all in the delivery. But ultimately the comparisons are good ones to have.

Overall Sunday's Best offer us a solid pop rock album. Nothing too heavy, nothing too experimental and from what I can remember "The Californian" is a bit more slowed down than the band's previous efforts. For those of us on the East Coast the album will give us a nice album to put on during those long summer drives. For those of you on the West Coast I guess you can pretty much keep this one in all year long.

B-