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The 90`s ushered in a brave new world of music and for a tragically brief period of time your radio was worth turning on. Few bands shined brighter, or burned out more spectacularly, than Sunny Day Real Estate. From the liner notes of "Diary" which credited the members in the past tense to the disrespectfully sparse packaging and sound of "LP2", Sunny Day seemed to have spent the better part of a decade either broken up- or on the precipice of it. No matter, as Sunny Day is responsible for four records of such singularity and influence that they simultaneously defy classification and are credited for starting a genre. Of those four albums, it is their last, 2000's The Rising Tide, which properly and dramatically closed the book on a revolutionary career and a decade worth remembering.
As with every Sunny Day release, there is little on "Tide" that serves to tie this album to its predecessors. Gone are the jagged chords and muddled screams of Diary; the disenchantment and palpable discord of LP2; or the stark, elegant gloom of "How It Feels". The Rising Tide was a declaration of independence for a band who never needed it: An Absolution Day in which Sunny Day at last embraces tones and melodies that bind instead of divide, that add instead of detract. To be a bit more succinct: The Rising Tide is a pleasure to listen to.
In place of the discord created by distorted twin-rhythm guitars are simple, clear arpeggios that form the basis for uncharacteristically expansive songs. "Killed By An Angel", perhaps the song which closest resembles the Sunny Day of old, serves as a fuse which ignites "One," an unabashed anthem for the reclamation of the precious time which we so often give away: "But if we try to lift up our eyes/ Replacing the lies/ We own this moment". When this yields to "Rain Song's" subdued acoustic guitar and hushed strings it's abundantly clear that Sunny Day have finally mastered the loud-soft dynamic and applied it to the cadence of a record, not just a single track. No small feat given the fact that listening to the tracks individually is as rewarding an experience as enjoying the record from beginning to end.
The Rising Tide also found Jeremy Enigk embracing his Falsetto in a way he never had before. No more would Enigk invent words and sing them unintelligibly. Here his voice is clear and confident, rising above the instruments and carrying the listener along. Though the heights to which his voice reaches on "Tearing In My Heart" drew ire from other Sunny Day fans, the range and clarity of his vocal delivery on this record is unsurpassed by any of his other performances. The ease with which Enigk's voice floats between various octaves, often within a single measure of music (Tearing In My Heart, Television), adds a new dimension of complexity to the music. From the almost mechanical quality of his voice in the chorus of "Disappear" to the half-whispered intro of "The Ocean" or the disarmingly powerful chorus on "Television" there was nowhere Enigk would not explore and conquer vocally.
All good things though, right? Where so many bands fall apart after releasing flops of records, Sunny Day broke up on a consistent basis after releasing truly great music. Fitting then that their coda is a phenomenal piece of Alternative rock that is certain to age as well, if not better, than their other releases. Though Enigk, Goldsmith and Mendel would reunite in 2001, Sunny Day Real Estate by any other name is just The Fire Theft. For my money, Sunny Day's final recording is their most compelling and rewarding, and a great send off for a band that deserved nothing less.
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2012
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- Scotty PReviewed in Canada on January 7, 2019
Very thin and typically warped vinyl
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