Sunny Day Real Estate
Diary
»
Sunny Day Real Estate
Diary
Sub Pop, 1994
RiYL: Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, Fugazi, U2 |
Although the term "emo-core" was only stuck on this 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, which remains 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 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 separate 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 (often co-written with guitarist Dan Hoerner) 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.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"