Brazil enters the pop race with Pale Sunday, a lovely little jingle-jangle pop group. Their singer has this lovely, affecting voice, made even more saucy by his accent! At times, they sound like a South American Lucksmiths, which, believe me, couldn't possibly be a bad thing! "A Weekend With Jane" kicks off the single, and oooooh, it's dreamy! "Go Ahead" is a bit more rockin', though "Today" slows things down and gets a little more romantic. "The Girl With Sunny Smile" ends with a P!o!p!, and I'm enthralled and, once again, left eager for their next record! Hurry hurry, Jimmy Matinée! Single Of The Week.   --Mundane Sounds

 

This enterprise of mine, shouting my mouth off about my favourite records, it was born of frustration originally. You’d hear something wonderful and look around for affirmation from other sources and find nothing – at least nothing locally. So you have to do it yourself and hope you’re the affirmation for someone else. Me and you honey, we’re like islands of sanity while all the bullets are flying, blood is flowing, black oils gush through pipelines, and the rich get richer and poor get poorer. This Pale Sunday single might well get lost in the slew, the river of plastic and cardboard that gets released every week, ignored against the larger backdrop, the tidal wave of hype. But it’s this sort of record I find the most motivational and uplifting. Firstly, ‘A Weekend With Jane’ is simply a joyous pop song all about love and being in love and seeing someone and falling in love. But it’s also the title, the typefaces, the sleeve, the aura. For some reason my mind keeps rearranging the name ‘Jane’ to “Jean’, further exacerbating an impossible love of Jean Seberg. It’s probably lust, you’d say, and it won’t do no good cos she’s dead and gone. But I can’t get that bedroom scene from A Bout de Souffle out of my head. Pale Sunday give it a soundtrack. I’ve been hearing good vibes about Brazilian guitar pop for a couple of years or so now. Well, here’s the confirmation. Wonderful.   --Wide Open Road #10

 

Pale Sunday is from Brazil, and trades in pleasant, guitar-based indie pop. The vocals are sensitive, the guitars strummed politely, the drums lightly tippy-tapped (probably by machines), the synths set on weepy orchestra. The four songs on the group's debut EP breeze past on a cloud of pleasant nostalgia for bands like the Chesterfields, the Field Mice, and East Village -- bands that jangled nicely and harmonized and wore sweaters. The members of Pale Sunday probably don't wear a lot of sweaters, but their music does. Even when they rock out a little on the single's best track, the catchy and most Sarah Records-sounding -- no, make that most Sunday Records-sounding -- "The Girl With the Sunny Smile," it is done in such a way that no one's beverage of choice is likely to be upset, much less toppled. If you like your indie pop by the book and Charlie Brown sweet, Pale Sunday is a band to keep your eyes open for.   --All Music Guide

 

A trio from Brazil playing perfectly toned English pop, now let’s face it that don’t happen that often so time to make merry while it lasts. A debut release that on first hearing sounds nice, and yes I do mean that in a tad derogatory manner until that is the third track ‘Today’ where upon something magical happens and forces you to reconsider your initial gut feelings. Pale Sunday, a name quite fitting as their songs do have a strange chemistry that marries upbeat pop to downcast storylines making it ultimately appear as though the band permanently walk beneath gloomy clouds or ride off in search of storms to annoy. Again like the Razorcuts it’s by and large all about jangly guitars with the prevalent air of C-86 shimmering brightly throughout. ‘Today’ wrapped in sugary string arrangements all set off over a seriously twisting bass line takes a laid back teasingly sophisticated approach that overall gives it then edge among the quartet of tunes on offer. That said ‘the girl with sunny smile’ points to rainy afternoons stuck indoors watching the days drift away listening to old Bus Stop, Sarah and Summershine records, ostensibly American sounding, very much with a plural hint of Chris Stamey, the Mayflies and a more pop orientated Moviola, fizzing guitars and jabbing hook lines and very tasty with it, while ‘Go Ahead’ has that same emotionally stinging resonance as Another Sunny Day. Leave the disc playing a little longer after the closing track to hear a bonus un-credited cut recorded onto a female friends answer machine, stripped down and pretty much in the BMX Bandits / Speedboat scheme of things, in other words quite dandy.   --Losing Today

 

Pale Sunday may hail from Brazil but their musical style is nothing short of pure British indie-pop. A Weekend with Jane is acoustic guitar-driven goodness that only lasts for thirteen minutes and thirty-four seconds. This release will certainly earn the band comparisons to Belle and Sebastian. Definitely buzz-worthy.   --Erasing Clouds

 

I first slipped A Weekend with Jane into the player on the day the East Coast rain finally stopped and everyone in the world emerged, pale and knobby-kneed, into the belated summer sunshine. I drove the CD around through preternaturally verdant hills dotted with neon dandelions and smelling unearthly sweet. It was, I felt, the only way to break a long winter's worth of difficulty, to pop it all in a single rainbow-colored bubble. It worked. Pale Sunday is a near perfect soft pop band. They are Belle and Sebastian with a heart-breaking grin. They are the Smiths all through with irony and truly, madly, deeply in love. They are from Brazil, and I tell you this only because you won't know it otherwise. They sing in utterly unaccented English, hailing from an imaginary country abutted by California and bisected by the Mersey. Their jangling guitars and gentle, percolating drumbeats have not a whiff of tropical flavor, and yet there is something undeniably warm and sunny about A Weekend with Jane. There are just four tracks here (five if you include a brief throwaway hidden after a silence in cut four), and every one has a shimmering life to it. "A Weekend with Jane" is jangly, gangly vulnerability, the hushed main voice countered with glowing guitar and intoxicating sha-la backup. "Go Ahead" bubbles with Shame About Rayish lemony energy, while "Today" is quietly, gently luminous. "The Girl with the Sunny Smile", the most Belle and Sebastian-like of the four, is all undulating melody and pulsing power pop beat. The fifth, hidden track, less than a minute long, is lo-fi and plaintive, asking "Why don't you love me instead of hate me? / Why don't you kiss me instead of kick me?" If you've been getting more than your share of kicks, A Weekend With Jane might be just the record to turn things around.   --Splendid

 

pale sunday's fatal but understandable faux pas is being from brazil in 2003 rather than bristol in 1986, but they overcome this gamely with our joint favourite single from this mass of 45s. their first outing for matinée is actually tight, focused, jangly indie, drawing much from the pristine international tradition of compatriots brincando de deus as well as the european likes of brideshead and aerospace, and bookended with the two best tunes, a title song that skips tunefully and daintily through sunlit streets before one of those great two-note closing guitar lines, and the final track "the girl with sunny smile" which is a storming indie pop number, made by the second guitar part which curves into the chorus and smilingly deployed "sha-la-las", turning this reviewer for its duration into the boy with sunny smile. if you're looking for something with a bit of edge, pale sunday may be unable to provide it, but otherwise you are unlikely to have any complaints to the management.   --In Love With These Times In Spite Of These Times

 

Apparently Postal Blue is not the only fabulous Brazilian indiepop group. Oh dear, just how incredible this 'A Weekend With Jane' by Pale Sunday really is. I've listened to it about dozen times during the weekend. It's a new release by the ever lovely Matinée Recordings. If you have any interest in jangly indie pop, you'll love this.   --One Chord To Another