Emo Council - Debating and ranking the albums of Sunny Day Real Estate.
Debating and ranking the albums of Sunny Day Real Estate.
What is the Emo Council?
The council is a group of bands, writers, music industry executives, regular folks and even parents all passionate about the genre that came together to debate once and for all, the best bands, albums and songs of the emo era. All council members were actively involved in the scene or a fan for each debate and/or topic.
Every member sends in his or her thoughts and rankings of the topic at hand. Those rankings are tallied up and presented as the Emo Council’s final list along with quotes related generally or to specific albums. All of the council’s quotes are posted anonymously.
If you have any questions about the council and why we’re here, read this.
This week’s question:
What is the best release by Sunny Day Real Estate?
Years Active: 1992–1995, 1997–2001, 2009–2013
Band Members:
Jeremy Enigk — lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards (1992–1995) (1997–2001) (2009–2013); bass guitar (1999–2001)
Dan Hoerner — lead guitar, backing vocals (1992–1995) (1997–2001) (2009–2013)
Nate Mendel — bass guitar (1992–1995) (1997–1998) (2009–2013)
William Goldsmith — drums, percussion (1992–1995) (1997–2001) (2009–2013)
Jeff Palmer — bass (1998)
Joe Skyward — bass (1998)
Albums:
Diary (1994), Sunny Day Real Estate (1995), How It Feels to Be Something On (1998), Live (1999), The Rising Tide (2000)
Quotes from
the Emo Council
The first time I heard Diary, it was technically live. Sunny Day Real Estate were opening CBGB for Velocity Girl and I fucking LOVED Velocity Girl. But then I heard “Seven,” “In Circles,” and “Song About an Angel” — in that order, just like the record — and I was like, “OK, fuck it, I’m leaving after this band I’ve never heard before finishes because what the fuck is Velocity Girl gonna do to top that?” The album’s not perfect, but the peaks are colossal.
The first time I heard LP2, someone actually played it to me over the phone and I literally teared up like a One Direction fan because it sounded so good OVER THE PHONE. This album was a big deal to me. Nine songs, in and out, no filler. Everything I love about SDRE in one quick shot.
The first time I heard How It Feels to Be Something On, it was also technically live. They played their big New York comeback show at Irving Plaza and instead of playing the “hits,” they played this album from front to back. It was a good album in a lot of ways, but it wasn’t what I loved about Sunny Day Real Estate at all. Jeremy Enigk’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan phase wasn’t about to hold a candle to Jeff Buckley’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan phase, so I wasn’t having it. Also, I felt like the quality control was dipping over all. If Diary had lyrics like “Never again my dear / Shall we come dancing here / We’ll play guitar and video games,” I probably would have stayed to watch Velocity Girl that first night.
The first time I heard The Rising Tide I just thought, “Well, fuck. That ended badly, didn’t it?”
The first time I heard Diary, I was at a girl’s house. She was a drummer for a band and she invited me back to her place after a show with our bands. Late 94 or early 95. I was so into her. She was a hot chick and a good drummer. That was a rarity in my book.
We had a short relationship and I’m not sure how it ended, but those days, we didn’t talk on the phone much, we wrote a few letters and whatever, and I think it just sort of fizzled out. We both stopped trying. She took me to Steak n’ Shake for the first time. At like 3 in the morning. We started a band for a short time with another couple of guys — practiced at her mom’s place. We never played any shows, I just wanted to hang out with her. She was a woman, and I was barely legal. I think I remember her being embarrassed at our age difference, but I didn’t care. I was stoked.
That first night we hung out, she threw on the ‘Diary’ LP and I couldn’t believe how amazing it was. I also couldn’t believe how amazing it was that I was at her house with her. I couldn’t believe she was a beautiful drummer of a cool band and she was into me. Like into me into me. She was 24 and I was 18… Needless to say, I think that sort of sums up how I felt about that record. Rare, amazing, and the kind of talent that was hard to find.
Sidebar: Emo Council Email Chain Regarding “The Rising Tide”
Council Member #1 — Fun fact: I once saw you essentially end a friendship with someone at Bowery Ballroom when that person said “The Rising Tide” was one of the best albums of 2000.
Council Member #2 — Not ONE of the best records of 2000. He said it was THE BEST album of that year!!! I never spoke to that guy again.
Council Member #3 — Yo, that was the year “White Pony” came out, that dude’s out of his fucking mind.
Council Member #4 — OK, but “White Pony” is better than every emo record we’ll talk about here so let’s just give up now.
LP2 is a fascinating listen but ultimately feels unfinished, while The Rising Tide never fully connected and hasn’t aged particularly well. From there, though, the only thing that comes close to moving me is How It Feels To Be Something On.
Diary is the only record that I have a real emotional, and historical connection with.
I saw SDRE play at Terminal Five on my 30th birthday with the Jealous Sound and halfway through the show my back started to hurt. I thought “what’s going on?” and soon realized that this would continue to happen at every show for the rest of my life because I was old.
How It Feels To Be Something On is probably the better album overall (the production is stronger, the band sounds more focused and the opening and closing tracks alone make this one of their best records) but Diary set the pace and is a classic. I don’t love every song on it, but I think it features their best songs.
LP2 is their most consistent and easiest album to listen to, but there’s something about Diary and How It Feels that just edge it out.
The Rising Tide is, well, you know…
The competition for the top three spots is really tight, but I always gravitate towards LP2. I love the the tension of the band falling apart and the ambiguity of the presentation, and whenever I throw it on I want to listen to it again a few times before moving on. How It Feels To Be Something On is something I can listen to in its entirety at any point, though a couple songs haven’t aged well (for me, at least). And Diary is a monster, though I stick to the A Side.
And The Rising Tide is, um, interesting. I think I actually like that Fire Theft album more than The Rising Tide.
I think Diary is clearly the most important and influential SDRE album. It’s an essential document of ’90 emo, more so than How It Feels, more so than a lot of ‘90s emo albums. And if I ever talked to a person who had never listened to SDRE before, I would suggest starting with Diary. That said, I think the songwriting, the experimentation, and just about everything about How It Feels is superior to the rest of their discography. It’s the album I play the most, and the one that gets me the most excited every time. A lot of Diary songs get me that excited too, but I think it’s a harder album to get through than How It Feels. The highs are very high but I can’t say I never skip a track.
As for LP2, I do love that one, but just a tiny bit less than I love How It Feels and Diary. The Rising Tide… yeah that one was kinda unfortunate.
Musically, How it Feels To Be Something On was my favorite SDRE album. It has the most variety, and is the most compelling to listen to front to back. Even the slow, quiet songs are heavy. Out of every SDRE, it’s the one I find myself listening to front-to-back the most. When I want to listen to SDRE, this is what I play.
How It Feels To Be Something On is a perfect album to me. The sound still holds up and could come out today if it wanted to. I was also enamored with the live show on that tour. In 1998, I saw the tour in North Carolina prior to the smoking ban in restaurants and bars. We’re on tobacco road remember. Sunny Day Real Estate put up small signs on either side of the stage requesting people not smoke during the set and to my surprise, no one did! It was also my favorite Sunny Day Real Estate live show I ever saw with the beautiful closer “Days Were Golden” effortlessly done. For that song, each band member stopped playing the song one by one leaving William Goldsmith drumming the familiar coda.
Unforgettable.
I strangely started with SDRE’s live album. (I bought it in a used bin solely based off of hearing the name from my friends and couldn’t find an actual album). And, I know I’m going to lose all credibility right off the bat by saying this, but I actually like The Rising Tide. I definitely don’t think it was the best album of 2000, but it was the 2nd album of theirs that I found in a used bin, so maybe it’s just because of the sentiment attached. As a teenager, on first listen, I thought the production was great, the vocals were otherworldly, and the guitars were lush. It was something sonically different than what I had going on during that weird musical time in life. Having gone back in the catalog though, I can see how it would be a disappointment, but, I don’t really think it’s all that terrible. Probably in the same way that I started with the Deftones’ ‘Adrenaline’ and think ‘White Pony’ is good but not as good as the first two records. Sidenote: I’m stoked someone else likes the Deftones!
I do love LP2 and Diary, and all of their records really, but How It Feels did it for me. It just felt complete.
Also, I liked The Fire Theft. But I kind of think Jeremy Enigk’s first solo album trumps all.
If we were counting “Frog Queen” this would be a much, much more difficult list.
In fact, if I were Enigk and I had written Side A of “Diary,” “Frog Queen” and “How It Feels” all before I was 25 I too would have probably said, “Forget it, there’s no place to go from here BUT to write a song as terrible as ‘Television.’”
I got into SDRE the only way anybody should get into SDRE — a girl put one of their songs on a mixtape for me. It was about 1997 (I was late to the game on these guys!) and she put “Song About An Angel” on this tape. And that was it. I was in love — with the band, rather than her, much to her dismay (I assume). For that reason, Diary will always be album number one for me, because I’ll also have that first time connection, but LP2 is a close second. I remember when they got re-released the other year and I just shut myself in my room and listened to them again as if for the first time. It was pretty magical. I saw them play London, too, a few years before, which was pretty special. But beyond that, I thought The Rising Tide was so terrible I actually took the CD back to the shop, and I’ve never really given How It Feels to Be Something On the time of day. I probably should, especially as a close friend truly loves it, but I really only need those two records, because they’re pretty much perfect.
While Diary is not my favorite SDRE album, it’s simply one of the most important albums of this generation of emo, if not the most important. This site, and probably dozens of bands that it covers, would not exist with Diary. Not ranking Diary #1 seems almost blasphemous. Also, “Seven” is one of the most badass Side 1 Track 1's ever.
To be perfectly frank, I always found The Rising Tide pretty boring, to the point that I actively dislike it.
I’m not sure I even like LP2. At all. Or whether I soldier through it for the greater good of The Cause, which is to say, the one emo band I can go to war with in my sphere. As with The Promise Ring discussion, I assume a certain degree of “you had to be there” with this album, but I was not there. I mean, I was alive but completely unaware of this band’s existence outside of a vague recollection of seeing the “Seven” video on 120 Minutes and thinking, “hey, Little People! And what a silly band name. I hope they show ‘Possum Kingdom.’”
In retrospect, it’s strange that Sunny Day Real Estate has become the definitive emo band when they really sound completely divorced from the lineage of emotional hardcore or Midwestern emo or what have you. They’re a total outlier, and the foremost reason is that they sorta sounded “arena rock” from the jump. Or, even like a peer of their Seattle counterparts rather than an antithesis. And I greatly appreciate their grandiosity and ambition (you’ll hear more about this later), none of which is apparent on LP2. I guess it’s somewhat fascinating in that the band was falling apart or not speaking to each other or freaking out from what little fame they had acquired to that point. But even after all of these dutiful listens, I can barely recall how any of it goes. The production does even more to make this record sound unfinished and abrasive. If this thing came out on Count Your Lucky Stars in 2015 — and it could have — I’d probably give it as much thought as just about everything else they put out, which is to say…not much.
I will always associate The Rising Tide with White Pony because they came out on the same day. I remember this because I went to a record store to pick up White Pony, having heard “Change (In the House of Flies)” and reading a positive review in Rolling Stone that suggested they’d gone all emo and wimpy. I heard those vocals and the lush production and guitars playing over the PA and asked the clerk what I was listening to. As it turned out, it was The Rising Tide, and I bought it on name recognition — beyond seeing the “Seven” video, I had given a few cursory listens to How It Feels to Be Something On based on some favorable reviews. So there was some leap of faith involved. And truth be told, you could hear how The Rising Tide and White Pony could share slots on the same playlist. I’ve told folks that A Perfect Circle’s “3 Libras” sounds like a deep cut from The Rising Tide and I still believe that to be true.
Make no mistake, this is a dumb record in a lot of ways. You can play the “Killed By An Angel” riff at Guitar Center and get nods of approval, plus the lyrics are beyond silly (yes, Jeremy…let’s say all these whores will lick the membrane). “One” could be a Creed song, and that’s not because Creed has a song called “One.” “Disappear” makes an unintentional reference to “My Own Prison.” The way Jeremy Enigk pronounces “MAWK-IT-PWACE.” Add in “Television,” the audio sample in “Tearing in My Heart,” the vocoder effects in “Snibe.” I mean, there’s something deeply silly about almost every single song on this record.
Almost, though. I don’t give a shit if “Rain Song” and “The Ocean” are also the names of Led Zeppelin songs, they’re amongst the best things SDRE have ever done. That alone elevates it over LP2. I’ll take Sunny Day Real Estate’s big, dumb alt-prog album over…whatever point they were trying to prove with LP2. Plus, you can’t account for personal attachment. In the summer of 2000, I was working at Ben & Jerry’s and eating DiGiorno’s almost exclusively, not to mention drinking at least one Steel Reserve per night while I wrote songs that tried to find a missing link between Bright Eyes and Swizz Beatz. And I think I actually lost weight. Beyond that, The Rising Tide was sharing a lot of time in my car stereo with Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, which is his big, dumb, prog-folk album with a lot of terrible songs on it. I mean, shit’s obviously going to get personal with lists like these — you just can’t replicate the attachment that comes from spending $16 on a CD, one of maybe 100 or so you might buy in a year. I can’t really justify a lot of my feelings regarding The Rising Tide from a critical standpoint, but those feelings are embarrassing and genuine and I can’t say the same about the begrudging respect I have for LP2.
Now, HIFTBSO against Diary…it’s sort of like pitting Led Zeppelin III or Houses of the Holy against Led Zeppelin IV, i.e., the acoustic, pastoral and pretty one against the titan that tops just about every “best of” list and will for eternity. Siding with the former almost always feels like an inherent act of contarianism, even if you truly believe they’re better. Let’s go to the tape: Diary is the reason we’re here. I’m assuming that without Diary, there’s no Washed Up Emo. However, what is Sunny Day Real Estate without their 1997 reunion? They’re a band that released one brilliant record and flamed out a year or so later. They’re not Sunny Day Real Estate, they might be a bigger version of Mineral or Cap’n Jazz. The opening trio of Diary should be shot into space, bands can spend entire careers ripping those three songs off over and over again. But the closing trio of HIFTBSO is almost as good. I’ve put more HIFTBSO songs on mixes for my girlfriends, I’ve put more Diary songs on “emo starter kit”-type mixes for fellow writers. There are a couple of songs on Diary that are somewhat forgettable, HIFTBSO has “The Prophet” (which I find kinda charming, but still). The production on Diary is very 1994, the drums on “In Circles” sound like they’re made of tupperware. The production on HIFTBSO is immaculate, it sounds like it could’ve been made in 2015. But is sounding “dated” kinda underrated? I think there’s a value to Diary sounding like it couldn’t have happened in any year besides 1994, it’s a perfect time capsule of what “emo” was at that time.
It comes down to this: I feel like bands can study Diary and come up with a facsimile that would sound pretty decent. I think it’s impossible to do the same with HIFTBSO, the elements are so much more inscrutable and unique. Diary is the platonic ideal for an emo album, whereas how would a band even begin to set their coordinates to HIFTBSO? “Yeah, our roots are in emotional hardcore, but we’re gonna write power ballads about video games and throw in some Qawwali melodies, but also some environmental consciousness and nostalgic love songs.” We’ve been hearing Diary for the past twenty years. We’ll never hear the likes of How it Feels to Be Something On ever again.