London Weekend by Another Sunny Day

Another Sunny Day released five singles on Sarah Records, and all are collected here, along with Anorak City, a tongue-in-cheek (sadly, not everyone realised this....) critique of the post-C86 world of flowery skirts and bowl cuts with which Harvey was less than enamoured, despite the fact that everyone kept telilng him he totally was (see previous bracket). Anorak City was – obviously – originally released as a five-and-three-quarter-inch flexidisc, tucked inside the first Sarah Records fanzine. A flurry of handclaps and fuzzed-up caterwauling guitar pressed on a piece of plastic so flimsy it would, according to the press release, self-destruct after six plays – immortalising itself in so doing as the perfect pop artefact – it received Single of the Week accolades in both NME and Melody Maker, possibly the lightest object ever to do so. ASD's first "proper" single, I'm In Love With A Girl Who Doesn't Know I Exist – 99 seconds of unrequited love sighed through a shower of teardrops disguised as guitars – became an instant classic. The follow-up, What's Happened?, contained two songs recorded at home on a 4-track, because they sounded better than the studio versions, and three songs punctuated with question marks, because Harvey wanted to know what the answer was. Then came another Sarah landmark, You Should All Be Murdered, a list of people that Harvey thought, on balance, the world would be better off without. "People who don't know how to forget and forgive: these are the people who do not deserve to live." Almost thrown away on the B-side was Green, a startlingly honest admission of jealousy made all the more poignant by being wrapped in a melting tune ("I know that he still loves her... but I could love her better..."). Rio was yet another 3 minutes of shimmering guitar pop perfection with a chorus to tear red raw lumps from any still functioning heart ("perhaps I should admit that he'd be better for you; but I could never say that, because it's simply not true..."), while the final ASD single caught Harvey in more reflective mode: there are, he argues persuasively on New Year's Honours, displaying a firm grasp of probability theory, so many beautiful girls in this world – surely there must be one somewhere for him?... before admitting, on the B-side, that his odds of getting second chance were small, so he might as well move back to Penzance, which is where it all began.

Hailing from Penzance, Harvey Williams recorded six singles for Sarah Records (if you include the flexidisc-only Anorak City) under the name Another Sunny Day, playing all the instruments himself. For live performances, he was often helped by members of other Sarah bands, such as the Field Mice and the Orchids. He also joined the former as guitarist and, when that band ended, he joined Blueboy.