Put aside their status as the genre’s definitive act and perhaps the only one who didn’t find it necessary to apologize for the term: Sunny Day Real Estate don’t make a very convincing case to be considered an emo band at all. If they had any kind of punk ideals, they were agents of mythmaking rather than social change—avoiding interviews and restricting their promo to a single, out-of-focus photo at a time when that made coverage a major pain in the ass for press; refusing to play shows in the entire state of California; presumably posing for a Nordstrom ad as a form of trolling before the word “trolling” existed. Their extracurriculars had more in common with Death Grips than Rites of Spring. Jeremy Enigk’s vocals were passionate and earnest, but he only occasionally screamed and the lyrics were often inscrutable, intentional nonsense or plainly about Jesus Christ. And while Diary drew on the earliest ideas of true “post-hardcore,” it was filled with grand and expansive anthems that weren’t all too far removed from what was on the radio at the time; the video for “In Circles” was filmed in the same sound studio as “Sex Type Thing,” and they sold over 200,000 copies on Sub Pop, a label that really hasn’t come anywhere near this stuff ever since.
Maybe their greatest demerit: even the most revered bands of emo’s first two waves were accessible and dorky, whereas Sunny Day Real Estate were the only ones that had an aura of actual magic about them: The incomparable triad that began Diary are supposedly the first three songs they ever wrote together, while some even consider LP2 to be the band's highest peak despite it having to be forced into existence with placeholder lyrics and cover art. Sunny Day Real Estate admired Fugazi’s ethics, but dreamed of being Led Zeppelin and U2, bands that aspired for total transcendence—something they finally achieved on How It Feels to Be Something On.
Even with their past accomplishments, this kind of a growth was unexpected specifically from Sunny Day Real Estate. Most engage in their quest for spiritual enlightenment alone, and SDRE were no exception: Jeremy Enigk’s devotion to born-again Christianity was announced in one of the first indie-rock open letters to the internet and was assumed to be a serious wedge issue for a band that had reservations about him joining in the first place. Guitarist and co-lyricist Dan Hoerner would often retreat to a Waldenesque parcel of land in rural Washington to engage in sustainable farming. And it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Sunny Day Real Estate broke up after each one of their four albums. “All our problems had been personality based...musically, we never had a problem,” drummer William Goldsmith claimed in a 1998 interview. Rumor has it that their 2009 reunion was on the verge of producing an entire record rather than the one-off “Lipton Witch” before said problems reemerged.
How It Feels came after their most eventful breakup; in 1996, Enigk released his stirring, under-appreciated solo album Return of the Frog Queen, which indulged in psych-pop leanings, prog, and obtuse spirituality that had little place in Sunny Day Real Estate at the time. Meanwhile, bassist Nate Mendel and Goldsmith had chanced upon the opportunity to join Foo Fighters as Dave Grohl’s solo project started to take off and both contributed to The Colour and the Shape, which should probably be grandfathered into emo the same way Pinkerton has been— its gleaming production, razored dual guitars and the gooey, awkward romanticism of lyrics were a more accurate predictor of the genre’s alt-rock takeover than anything Sunny Day Real Estate ever did.
But if you ever want to counter the idea of Grohl as the Nicest Guy in Rock, ask Goldsmith about the Colour and the Shape sessions—the passive-aggressive bullying and ensuing disillusion led to him rejoining Sunny Day Real Estate, while Mendel, who perhaps knew the band dynamic all too well, wasn’t willing to give up one of rock music's cushiest gigs: He’s still the Foo Fighters bassist to this day.
How It Feels To Be Something On still sounds like a reinvigorated band entering a tentative détente. Enigk’s voice had developed into a much more confident and voluminous instrument, one that didn’t need to rely on basic grunge dynamics: when hitting the high notes of “Two Promises” or “100 Million,” the throaty heft of the title track or the weightless, joyous chanting of “Every Shining Time You Arrive,” Enigk communes with Jeff Buckley and Robert Plant. The band predicted their future entries into straight-up prog rock with the 9/8 verses of “Roses in Water” and ditching Brad Wood’s deadening thud on Diary for a production best described by closer “Days Were Golden,” It’s a honeyed, ambered record with a timeless, autumnal glow.
There are still clear remnants of each member’s idiosyncratic sensibilities; Hoerner’s social conscience had always been intrinsic to Sunny Day Real Estate, as the band name itself—wisely revised from Chewbacca Kaboom—stemmed from his concern that eventually, anything could be sold, even a sunny day. The Hoerner-penned “100 Million” is definitive SDRE in its own way, a mantra of “pay for everything” unifying every part of the life cycle in a consumerist society, from the hospital to the hole you’re buried in.
As with so many earnest frontmen conflicted about commercializing art and the messianic role thrust upon them in the ’90s, Enigk looked east for spiritual sonic inspiration: His melodies are almost microtonal during “Roses in Water” and “Two Promises,” and the supposedly improvised, one-take “The Prophet” is a straight-up channeling of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Originally intended for Enigk’s solo album, “Every Shining Time You Arrive” easily translates to an acoustic, ecclesiastical strummer, a devotional to that certain someone who’s always there when you need them.
This all could’ve very easily resulted in a try-hard, pedantic exercise, i.e., emo’s answer to No Code—and perhaps you could argue that’s what Sunny Day Real Estate unintentionally achieved on their alternately bracing and bombastic swan song The Rising Tide. But as with Diary’s “Song About an Angel”—which the band has stressed should be taken literally—How It Feels rarely scans as evangelical, even when it clearly is. Sunny Day Real Estate’s willingness to actually engage with the press during the lead-up to How It Feels helped to tease out a sense of humor to their work that would’ve almost certainly gone unnoticed given their reputation. That euphonious, evocative phrase of “mondrary fields” during …“Guitar and Video Games?” Completely made up. “The Shark’s Own Private Fuck” underwent the same song-titling process as B-side “Bucket of Chicken,” the band’s ill-fated submission for the soundtrack of The Crow 2: City of Angels.
Hell, they might even have gotten kinda meta about where emo had gone since Diary. Enigk could be referring to his older, more dramatically chest-clutching self from “In Circles” on the opening “Pillars”: “I walk in circles, I’ve seen a million things that tell me so.” And is it possible that Enigk is mocking performative sadness on “Two Promises?” (“He thinks, ‘I gave her my heart, she tasted my soul, now she’s gone again’”).
This could all be speculation, of course—Sunny Day Real Estate certainly loved to keep things open to interpretation (just witness the futile LP2 lyric analysis on Songmeanings.net). But Enigk quickly abandoned that quality after How It Feels to Be Something On: 2000’s The Rising Tide is thrilling in points, but closer to the Jesus Christ pose of Creed than most would care to ever admit. Meanwhile, the Fire Theft was essentially The Rising Tide minus Hoerner, plus dry ice and black lights.
So as Sunny Day Real Estate started sounding like mystical rock beings, their actual legend receded. Diary still tops nearly every “best albums” list, yet the contemporary influence of Sunny Day Real Estate has become secondary to that of American Football, the sprawling, exploratory ambience of the Appleseed Cast or even the rawer Mineral, who were often tagged as a SDRE ripoff in their time. And the newer bands that have a religious component are more likely to tap into the distinct dichotomy of the sacred and profane, of heaven and hell, that was clearly expressed on Brand New’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me.
Despite it being a quantifiable improvement in many ways over Diary, the importance of How It Feels is far more difficult to ascertain than its predecessor. Diary, from its title on down, is basically a textbook, something tangible: bands who want to target a host of RIYLs can easily draw on Enigk’s grainy howl and/or limpid mewl, tune their guitars down to D, write endless variants on diaristic confessionals like “I dream to heal your wounds, but I bleed myself."
But how does a band conjure warmth, empathy, scope, worldliness, the essence of How It Feels to Be Something On? The only indie rock record that’s come anywhere near the pastoral, passionate splendor is the Hotelier’s Goodness, which should explain any question regarding the oft-remarked fanaticism of their audience. “When this began, this was a thing that we could both share/A bit of shade, the goodness fades, and we begin there,” Christian Holden brays, echoing Enigk’s like-minded assessment of the edenic promise of the romantic and religious: “All this time looking for love and you want to find peace, but you find me.”
It’s kind of a funny lyric, especially given Sunny Day Real Estate’s reputation, but not as funny as their most beautiful, essential ballad being called “Guitar and Video Games.” “What if we refused to follow the rules of fashion,” Enigk asks. As counterculture mission statements go, “Guitar and Video Games” isn’t exactly “Out of Step”—in fact, drinking, dancing, making out and video games were the exact opposite of what Minor Threat stood for. But isn’t that how “emotional hardcore” got started to begin with? In that sense, How It Feels to Be Something On is proof that Sunny Day Real Estate is emo after all—total transcendence is a never-ending quest, but as in guitars and video games and your relationship to that certain someone, you can fence in your own plot of heaven on earth.
