Diaries and Rising Tides: Sunny Day Real Estate at Danforth Music Hall

Sunny Day Real Estate performing at The Danforth Music Hall 05/29

There comes a time in every sad music listener’s life where they must reckon with the fact that the music from their youth might not have been very good. Personally, my music journey includes forays in free MonsterCat Dubstep and DnB uploads on YouTube while I played ranked CS:GO and Osu!. A few years later, I developed a taste for the saddest, wimpiest Emo music imaginable: a bit of Hardcore, like The Used and Hawthorne Heights, a bit of Midwest Emo, like Braid and legends American Football, and my job at Zumiez no less, which introduced me to the whiniest vocal tones of Modern Baseball, The Front Bottoms, and Empire! Empire!. 

Despite my snark, I actually look back on those years very fondly, and when I saw absolute legends from my youth musical discovery journey, Sunny Day Real Estate, were touring, I knew I had an inner emo-child still in me, and I had to go see them live. I relistened to Diary, LP2, all of their output and realized I might have been wrong to disregard my young ears so quickly.

Sunny Day Real Estate is a legendary Emo band from Seattle, Washington, a gorgeous city with something so depressing in its water that it has birthed countless emotionally damaged creatives who have gone on to make their mark on alternative-pop culture. Sunny Day Real Estate is no different, often topping charts reminiscing on the 90s and early 2000s emo output, the real heyday of the genre (Rolling Stone named Diary the greatest Emo album of all time, a title I might not agree with on a strict recording basis, but certainly on its monumental influence on the genre at large). Their poetic lyricism and emotional introspection stands in stark contrast to the grittiness, social ostracization and nihilism of the Seattle Grunge scene that was cascading musicians into stardom left and right.

The concert took place at the Danforth Music Hall, where I always end up meeting other music fanatics with battle jackets and a seemingly endless series of recommendations to make.

“Nice Rites of Spring patch!”: a quote I heard from the crowd that made my little Emo heart melt

Cloud Nothings are on the bill to open the show. I’d never made a deep dive into their discography, but I know them generally for popping up adjacent to a bunch of other Shoegaze bands I listen to. Their largely indecipherable vocals are never the main focus of the absolutely skin-melting reverb you are treated to when you throw on any of their short and sweet albums. In fact, I just checked, and they don’t have an album longer than 35 minutes. The confidence that instills in a listener is unmatched, knowing you’re about to listen to the very best output the band has come up with, fillerless, tight knit and focused. It wasn’t a big investment for me to check out their output thanks to the low stakes album length the band is known for. Big props.

What Cloud Nothings might lack in dynamic stage presence, they make up for with their rib-rattling volume, spotless replications of their studio recordings, and Dylan Baldi’s haunting vocals that instantly filled the void of the yet-to-be-filled Danforth Music Hall. Jayson Gerycz's frantic drumming is an absolute treat, watch as he treats the drum kit like it owes him lunch money:

Sunny Day Real Estate were up to bat (I’m watching the Jays as I write this, and Addison Barger just hit a double to drive in Bichette. Onto the review). They started by thanking the crowd and mentioned they were still fresh, something that’s of note when you’ve been touring for over 30 years on and off (This was an extended OFF). It was impossible not to notice the beaming smiles that immediately manifested on guitarist Dan Hoerner’s and vocalist Jeremy Enigk’s faces when they started the lead single off LP2, Friday. Was this a “settling in” sort of smile and glance? Or a “it feels good to be back” sort of smile and glance?

Bassist Chris Jordan, a new face on the Sunny Day Real Estate lineup, from the small indie band Spirit Award, huddled with the rest of the band after the first song, and disbanded quickly, chuckling about some mistake or adjustment to be made. Toronto was only the second stop on the tour, but the visible shakiness and adjustments seemed to halt entirely after the band got its footing and the crowd on its side for hit Seven, a certifiable classic from Diary and Emo music at large. The crowd itself was comprised of a comfortable mixture of Gen Xers, Millennials and Zoomers, who all had their own way of discovering SDRE, from Spin Magazine and MTV, 4chan/RYM Emo Music Charts, and TikTok video essays proselytizing the Good Word of Emo classics. 

Sunny Day Real Estate

The band’s previous tour consisted of playing through all of Diary, as it was the 30th anniversary of the album's release. I was pleased to see the variety of Sunny’s discography on display, including Disappear played live for the first time since the year I was born, 2000, and their first solo release, Novum Vetus, in over 24 years. Jeremy Enigk’s voice has changed and aged wonderfully, his soft spoken nature turned over and roughed up by the waves of time, bringing the vocals down a half octave and in turn sound even moodier, more retrospective, dare I say, MORE EMO.

The encore ended predictably, with their biggest hit, In Circles, nearly closing off the night. Not before an extended play of Days Were Golden, however, a call perhaps to the years of influence and memories and touring this wonderful band has generated over the years. It was hard not to get emotional over the perfect framing of this song as the closer.

“The days were golden

We were known to be

We won't escape this memory

Forward on, to the place we sail”