Sylva Faye’s Sunday Forever feels like a sun-drenched day that stretches endlessly, a dreamscape of folk-tinged melodies laced with nostalgia, loss, and quiet revelations. As the follow-up to Space Before Sleep, an album steeped in grief, Sunday Forever turns towards lightheartedness while still carrying echoes of the past. It’s a delicate balance—joy peeking through the cracks of melancholy, never forced, never false.
From the outset, Faye’s signature multi-instrumentalism and lyrical introspection shape the record’s ethereal yet grounded atmosphere. The album is brief but deliberate, each song a vignette rather than a grand statement. The stripped-back production allows the core of Faye’s songwriting to shine, with cello contributions from Dave Donaugh and bass from Joe Doyle lending subtle texture without overwhelming the delicate fabric of the compositions. The album also features several instrumental pieces, serving as gentle interludes that enhance its dreamlike quality, offering breathers between the more lyrically dense moments.
Tracklist and Highlights
- Golden Heart – A standout, a song that feels like a warm evening spent reliving a memory. The recurring imagery—the Golden Heart pub, young people spilling wine onto the street—evokes a scene that is both deeply personal and universally nostalgic. The melody meanders like a conversation, intimate and inviting. Lines like “Honey, in my dreams it’s sweet, we go out to eat and it’s on repeat” create a loop of memory, underscoring the song’s bittersweet longing. There’s a lingering sense of what-could-have-been, a longing for a time or place that may never return.
- Bones – Perhaps the most haunting track, rooted in an encounter with the Grim Reaper that, rather than instilling fear, offers an oddly comforting perspective on death. The repetition of “Three for a girl / Four for a boy” evokes a nursery-rhyme eeriness, reinforcing the song’s spectral presence. The line “The bones in my chest will be left behind, the wind will uncover the buried blind” is especially powerful, embracing mortality with an almost poetic acceptance. There’s something deeply personal in the song’s gentle confrontation with the unknown, making it one of the most striking moments on the album.
- Bible – A brief but poignant interlude, rich in metaphor and gentle instrumentation, serving as a reflective moment between two more lyrically involved pieces.
- Honeysuckle – Drifts between dream and reality, its lyrics capturing fleeting moments of transcendence. Faye’s vocals, breathy and vulnerable, create a sense of longing that never quite resolves, much like the oceanic fragments of memory she sings about. The imagery in “There are fragments of you all across the ocean, even parts we cannot see with our eyes” is particularly striking, making the song feel like a meditation on loss and the way love lingers in unseen places. The theme of fragmented existence and the quiet presence of the past runs through the album, and this track is one of its most affecting.
- Angel – Another atmospheric instrumental interlude, evoking a feeling of weightlessness and transition, almost like a lull before the emotional peak of the album.
- Sunday Forever – Serves as the emotional and thematic core of the album. The contrast between its wistful storytelling and almost wry self-awareness makes it particularly compelling. Lines like “They don’t make films I like no more” and “What a stupid little lamb they say” add an edge to the otherwise wistful meditation on a relationship gone awry. The chorus, “Every single day is my Sunday, it’s Sunday forever”, captures a sense of longing for a peaceful permanence, a desire to exist in a moment of unchanging serenity. The song embraces the comfort of nostalgia while recognizing its limitations—an eternal Sunday might sound idyllic, but it’s also a kind of stasis.
- One More for the Road – Inspired by the live energy of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this track stands out as a sudden burst of energy amidst the dreamlike pacing of the album. It offers a contrast to the more reflective tracks, almost like a jolt back into reality before the album fades into its final echoes.
Production and Emotional Energy
Sonically, Sunday Forever feels like a companion piece to artists like Kishi Bashi, with its layered harmonies and folk-inflected instrumentation. Yet, there are hints of something more unexpected—flourishes of accordion, mandolin, and flute that recall the baroque pop of artists like Joanna Newsom or the textural folk of Vashti Bunyan.
The production process itself adds to the album’s deeply personal feel. Faye’s approach—laying down vocal harmonies over guitar riffs, crafting arrangements intuitively, and then refining them in the studio—lends a sense of organic cohesion. Keeping the instrumentation relatively sparse allows the songs to breathe, making space for emotional nuance. These recordings have an undeniable intimacy; each track feels like an invitation into a private world. The presence of so many instrumental interludes adds to this atmosphere, giving the album an almost cinematic quality—each song feels like a scene from an old film, steeped in nostalgia yet alive in the present moment.
Unlike its predecessor, which was more instrumentally expansive, Sunday Forever embraces restraint. There’s a quiet confidence in its minimalism. It never feels sparse—only intentional, like a well-placed pause in conversation. Each note, each harmony, feels carefully chosen, as though Faye is letting the music tell its own story without embellishment. The result is an album that feels deeply human, reflective, and beautifully melancholic.
Final Thoughts
If Sunday Forever had to be distilled into a single image, it would be its own cover art: a depiction of Sylva Faye’s ideal state of rest. There’s a sense of ease in these songs, but also depth—the kind of album that unfolds slowly, revealing new details upon each listen. It’s the sound of someone finding peace, even in the company of ghosts. The combination of lyric-driven pieces and instrumentals creates an ebb and flow that mirrors life’s own rhythms—sometimes overwhelming, sometimes quiet, always moving forward.
More than anything, Sunday Forever is a testament to the way music can hold emotions in place. It is at once deeply personal and universal, a collection of moments captured in sound. Faye has crafted an album that doesn’t just document a passage of time, but makes the listener feel as though they’re moving through it too. A Sunday that stretches forever might be a dream, but in Sunday Forever, it’s a dream worth living in.
