Our ‘Track By Track’ guide sheds light on the stories behind some of our favourite artists’ music.
It’s time you got to know Sunday Lendis, an up-and-coming Leeds-based vocalist/songwriter who caught our ear with her debut single just a while back. If you’re a fan of Jasmine Myra and Rosie Frater-Taylor, you’ll adore Lendis because she shares a penchant for drawing on the former’s jazz and electronic influences and the latter’s relatable lyrics. Her debut EP, ‘Long Exposure’ is soulful and melodic music that speaks to the heart. It’s a beautiful reminder of music’s power and how it can bring comfort in times of uncertainty.
Lendis collaborated with renowned producer and guitarist Ed Allen (MABGATE) for the creation of a five-song project. The EP also features the musical talents of Theo Goss on drums, Joe Wilkes on bass, Glen Leach on piano, and Jed Bevington on strings.
Sunday has written a track-by-track guide to the EP. You will gain a deeper understanding of the music with Sunday’s guide. It’s a great way to connect with the project and appreciate its nuances. Sunday has put much effort into her guide, which is worth reading.
1. With Ease was written at a time I felt very lost and unsure of myself. We all have those dizzying moments in life where we find it difficult to figure out which path we’d like to be on. In the music community, people tend to find themselves here just after they have graduated – we refer to it as “the void”. It’s an odd place to be and was accentuated greatly by the pandemic for me, I didn’t have anybody to play music with and it was just me, in my room with all this ‘potential’ and I found it paralysing. I actually found this song very comforting to write as it helped me through this frozen state, and gradually I began to frame the adversity I was experiencing as a valuable less (reflected in the words at the end of the tune).
2. Deepest Blue is the first love song I have ever written. It was very important to me as a woman not to portray the idea that I am nothing without the person I love, but I very much wanted to pay homage to a very wonderful person in my life. Lyrically I wanted to express the importance, the beauty and the symbiosis of the relationship without invoking a sense of dependence, desperation and need (often portrayed in old Hollywood love songs) – this for me feels ugly and the opposite of my experience of love.
3. Bricks and Mortar is easily the darkest track on the record and seems to be a favourite all-round. One of the first tunes Ed and I wrote together, I love how playful it is in it’s use of instrumentation and production to show the internal dissonance discussed in the track. One of my favourite moments in the studio while working on this record was recording the drums for this song – we asked Theo to veer into stormy chaos away from the other music, and it was just exactly what I had in my head translated perfectly onto the music. Ecstasy!
4. Breathe Again is the embodiment of Spring. I had been wading through and unpacking a lot of stuff that felt like it had been holding me back for years. It eventually got to a point where I wondered “will I ever feel light again?” And all of a sudden I could see the work paying off, as if tiny daffodils or tulips had been growing under ground all winter and then decided to show their faces. My favourite lyric on the record is off this tune “Rain so fertile, it must care so ferociously. Skies that open, they seem violent but leave so much green.”
5. Alice is a little different from the others but a lovely place to end I think. The song discusses this inner child growing up and experiencing the harsh realities of the world and how painful that can be. Drawing more on folk influences this is just voice, guitar and some violin for the majority of the song. The band comes in at the end of the song and offers a big, warm hug – reassuring this inner child that everything will be okay.
