Diary
Sunny Day Real
Estate
Sub Pop,
1994
Reviewed by
Jonathan Cohen
On "Seven" and "In Circles," the first two songs of its debut
album Diary, Seattle's Sunny Day Real Estate practically drew up the blueprints
for an entire genre of rock. Although the term "emo-core" was only stuck on this
rock substrata after the fact, the music itself had at least some precedence in the
pre-Fugazi Washington D.C. sounds of Embrace or Rites Of Spring.
But little post-punk music since then captured that immediacy like Diary,
destined to be hailed as a true classic years down the road (despite the fact that it's
probably not even the group's best album). Assembling itself from a variety of obscure
Seattle groups, Sunny Day Real Estate operate here as if the squalor of grunge from its
Seattle hometown never entered its members ears. Powered by lead singer Jeremy Enigk's
pinpoint-pitch vocals and emotionally flaring delivery, SDRE wastes no time getting down
to business on Diary.
There's absolutely nothing flashy about "Seven" or "In Circles," just
dead-on rock riffing, powerhouse rhythms from bassist Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith
and Enigk's empassioned singing (the shout-out during the chorus of "In Circles"
was the first of many passages that forged a direct musical connection between band and
audience). Indeed, there's not an overwhelming variety of emotion here: it pretty much
comes in "extra strength" and "make you cry" flavors.
Still,
the band knows better than to hammer the listener over the head, and the slower tracks
like "47" come off just as satisfying as the heavier stuff. There's a
mesmerizing quality to the gorgeous riffs on "48" and the dreamy intros of
"Shadows" and "Grendel" that really separates Sunny Day Real Estate
from the dunderheaded lumberjacks dominating the marketplace around the time Diary
was released.
Although there's barely a whiff of grunge on Diary, there's at least a glimmer of
Jane's Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins and even Soundgarden in various places. The restless
"The Blankets Were The Stairs" jumps from a scratched-throat verse to a chorus
full of guitar dirge, ala Siamese Dream-era Pumpkins. Enigk's voice bears more
than a passing similarity to Perry Farrell's, but he reveals himself to be a much more
thought-provoking lyricist as well as a better singer than the often mind-numbed Jane's
frontman.
While
he only publicly announced his Christian beliefs some time later, Enigk's lyrics
(guitarist Dan Hoerner co-wrote quite a bit of them) touch on universal issues of loss,
self-doubt and each man's place in the world with a style that is both cliche-free and
mysterious. Chris Thompson's artwork, featuring Playmobile-esque people in various human
settings and oblivious to the disasters around them (a toaster on fire, a building on
fire, a car wreck, etc.), underscores the daily personal desensitization with which Enigk
seems to struggle.
As good as it is, Diary is still a very early and often very
rough-around-the-edges portrait of Sunny Day Real Estate. The lyrics are somewhat hit and
miss, at times raising more questions than they answer (the narrator of "In
Circles" aches to heal the wounds of another, but winds up injured himself;
"Shadows," however, is too broad of a metaphor to hint at just what Enigk is
hiding from). The band also has a tendency to overly rely on soft-to-loud transitions, the
power of which are prone to draining by Brad Wood's no-frills production.
But all of these really are minor flaws compared to the music's pure power. Although the
band would become increasingly more serious and cryptic afterward, Sunny Day Real Estate
inadvertantly signaled "go" for the emo-core frenzy with Diary. What
happened next now fills clubs across the land and raises the clenched fist of many a
listener.
