Someone said that The Sundays’ bandmembers provided a canvas for Harriet Wheeler to paint her voice on. That’s the most beautiful and accurate phrasing I’ve ever heard about one of the most exquisitely transcendent voices in music.

That song still holds up and is an all-time great.

When “Goodbye” comes out of its very long bridge (really, it’s two bridges mashed together¹) and Harriet breaks in at 3:58 with that “Oh, as the heavens shudder….” — that is pure frickin’ music magic there.

1. Most longer songs have something like intro then verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge then chorus/verse/chorus/chorus then outro or something like that. “Goodbye” is an atypical song because it doesn’t have a chorus and the middle is either a really long bridge, two bridges mashed together, or an interlude and a bridge, depending on your inclinations. The outro is short and inconclusive — which of course is deliberate. It is intended to leave you unsettled and unsatisfied, while the rest of the structure of the song is also supposed to sonically mirror a lack of conclusion and unfocused frustration, anger and questioning. The repeating interrogative-like bass figures and the interspersed musically-disconnected guitar lines mimic unfocused thoughts in the wake of a betrayal. The declaration near the end of the song that “I belong to you” is manifestly untrue, and this is why it’s asserted so forcefully. It’s a wish framed as a romantic declaration, a lament posing as a confirmation.