Emo champions Sunny Day Real Estate have once again reunite! And the Seattle standard-bearers perform locally at Baltimore Soundstage on August 26, 2023.
A passion to create uncommonly expressive rock’n’roll fueled Jeremy Enigk (guitar/vocals), Dan Hoerner (guitar/vocals), William Goldsmith (drums), and Nate Mendel (bass) from the earliest incarnations of Sunny Day Real Estate. Hoerner, Goldsmith and Mendel formed the band as a trio in 1992 and went by three other names before settling on the permanent moniker. With Mendel on a European tour with another band, Hoerner and Goldsmith passed the time jamming with Goldsmith’s high-school friend Enigk, who was just 18.
It was quickly clear they’d all stumbled upon something new and exciting. Enigk’s yearning, high-register voice was a direct contrast to Hoerner’s primal delivery, imbuing the music with a previously unrealized level of emotion, and when Mendel returned from tour, it was decided Sunny Day would henceforth be a quartet, with Enigk on lead vocals.
Watch the official music video for “In Circles” by Sunny Day Real Estate on YouTube:
Sub Pop Records enlisted producer Brad Wood (Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins) to produce Sunny Day’s Sub Pop debut, which the band recorded at his Idful Studios in Chicago at the end of its maiden North American tour. Diary was released on May 10, 1994 and, despite substantial rock radio airplay for “Seven” and “In Circles,” failed to appear on any Billboard chart.
By spring 1995, LP2 was finished, and so was Sunny Day Real Estate due to internal tensions in the band.
In 1997, Sub Pop approached Sunny Day’s members for help in compiling a rarities album. Because there were so few usable tracks, Enigk and Hoerner agreed to get together and write some new material to augment the archival songs, but they wound up crafting an entire new album in a matter of days.
Without Mendel, who joined the Foo Fighters, Sunny Day reunited to record How It Feels to Be Something On, which Sub Pop released in 1998. A final studio album, 2000’s The Rising Tide, was the last anyone heard from the band.
But then Sunny Day Real Estate reunited for a tour in 2009, and now they have done so again. The band launch their current tour tonight in Maine and stay on the road through November. Be sure to catch them near you.
Sunny Day Real Estate
W/ The Sleeping
Baltimore Soundstage
Saturday, August 26
Doors @ 7pm
$36
All ages