Pain

Description

Pain, a cassette-only seven-track mini-album, is the debut effort by the American alternative rock band Sometime Sunday, independently released on Fearless Donkey Records in 1993. Instruments tracked by Drew at Dogfish Sound in Newberg, Oregon, with vocals tracked by Dean at Northstar in Portland, Oregon. Mixed by Dean at Northstar. Produced by band member Mikee.

Sometime Sunday features MIKEE on vocals, K.C. on guitar, ZIP on bass, and JAKE on drums.

I wanted to take a quick moment to review one of my favorite underground tapes of all time (mainly because it looks like one of the members followed this blog). I can pretty much write this one from memory as I wore my tape out back in the day. I think I got it from True Tunes. I know that grunge became a highly mocked genre due to the fact that, like hair metal before it, too many bands became their own worst cliches. But I still enjoy many grunge bands that did it well and made it their own. Sometime Sunday was always more like a heavy alternative band that was influenced by the Seattle scene. After this tape they signed to Tooth & Nail Records and released Stone. The songs «Blur», «Home», and «Rope» made it onto their debut full-length (although «Home» was re-imagined as an acoustic track). My favorite track on here is the driving «Words», but there really aren’t any bad tracks here. The tape was also remastered and released on BandCamp by the Corral on Spincycle for your listening pleasure. Also loved the cool clear purple cassette tape. [Christian Tape Underground, January 26, 2020]

This was a band that could easily play the gnarliest clubs on Saturday night in Portland, OR; scare youth pastors at church shows the next afternoon; and fit right into the scene and the other scene. Deep-fried in Alice in Chains’ abject audio vicissitudes, the music for this 1993 debut EP (on purple cassette!) sounds like a ruby Doc Marten on the nose of the era. The guitars were elegantly bold, the drums were AC/DC tight, the bass sturdy and strung low, and front man Mikee seemed to channel Lizard King energy with fierce intuitional intelligence. They ended up putting out two albums on T&N, but this is the glass-shard groovin’ existentialism that lured me down to the City of Roses to live in Mikee’s attic that next summer to witness. Mikee went on with other bands like Tragedy Ann and running the best Christian Alternative festival; we met because he did the Portland underground zine and I did the SEA one, both pretty much because no one else would. As honest as he is charming, he is a renaissance man of edge-kissed Evangelical music and art and performing energy, with the heart of an actual missionary. His band was perfect in the bridge between grunge and anti-asshole Christianity. [Chris Estey, April 2024 (“Chris Estey’s Esoteric List of Top 5 Christian Grunge Era Releases”)]

Cassette tracklist:

Side One
A1. “Blur”
A2. “Think”
A3. “Trip”
A4. “Home”

Side Two
B1. “Words”
B2. “Death”
B3. “Rope”

Note: Available at Bandcamp: https://erinbrockwaycollins.bandcamp.com/album/pain

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