Sunny Day Real Estate

Photo: Brian Tamborello

Don’t blame Sunny Day Real Estate for Fall Out Boy. The genealogy of emo is unfortunately traced back to the quartet, which sounds nothing like the dozens of bratty bands filling the Warped Tour each year. Now that it’s reunited (again), it’s time to rescue the band from the musical ghetto.

At first, nobody knew what to make of SDRE. The shadowy Seattle adolescents granted only one interview and released a lone publicity photo—a blurry black-and-white live shot in which singer Jeremy Enigk sports a vest and necktie while screaming. The mystique was catnip to introverts drawn to SDRE’s vague, cathartic epics. Early tours saw the group appropriately paired with dreamy, weird, feminine rock acts: Velocity Girl and Shudder to Think. In songs often titled with only numbers, Enigk sang in delicate high registers, backed by guitarist Dan Hoerner’s gruff yelps and Nate Mendel’s stormy, undulating basslines.

After finishing a second (nameless) album, Sunny Day split up in 1995. The posthumous release veered more closely to Midwestern post-rock and shoegazer, its obtuse tunes utilizing stop-start, loud-quiet dynamics and pained, gibberish vocals to underline a new priority on evocation and mood. Rumors swirled of band members becoming priests and beekeepers.

By their 1998 return, the members of SDRE seemed normal, goofy even. Enigk had cut a silly orchestral solo work filled with faeries and frog queens. Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith had joined the Foo Fighters. Subsequent releases sounded happy and intelligible, proving these were just dudes who loved their dad’s Yes records.

Sub Pop recently reissued Diary and LP2, so expect a set drawn heavily from those fantastic first two records—and a foursome looking to distance itself from the E word with thundering drums and guitar squalls. Okay, fine, someone in the crowd will probably cry.

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