Sunny Day Real Estate
Diary/LP2 [reissues] - Sub Pop
FILTER Grade: 87%

For Sunny Day Real Estate, it was an untimely foreclosure. In 1995, the feuding band released LP2, the stellar follow-up to its emo debut, Diary, but didn’t stick around for the applause. Frontman Jeremy Enigk found religion and began a solo career as America’s answer to Neil Finn; bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith joined Foo Fighters. And then things got messy. Indeed, the history of this seminal Seattle band is a soap opera of shifting allegiances. Founding singer and guitarist Dan Hoerner stuck around for the amended lineup of Sunny Day Real Estate that cut two albums in the late 1990s. But Hoerner was excluded from The Fire Theft, an outfit formed by Enigk, Mendel and Goldsmith in 2003. Fortunately, this saga has a happy ending. Mendel is taking advantage of a Foo Fighters hiatus to reconvene the original lineup for a fall tour to coincide with these reissues. Diary is a reminder of what the fuss was about in the first place. Though Sunny Day Real Estate’s tuneful pop punk relies on whisper-to-scream dynamics, the band shifts up and down musical gears with the reflexive flair of a Formula One racecar driver. By the end of the calorie-burning bonus track “9,” you’ll want a towel and a bottle of Gatorade.
 

LP2 is the better record. The topography of the arrangements is more varied and there’s more space for Enigk’s pained voice to shine on tracks such as “Theo B” and “J’Nuh.” Even so, the frontman’s murky murmuring and strangulated screeches are so poorly enunciated that, for all we know, he may well be singing in Klingon. One exception is the “The Crow,” a glorious bonus cut in which Enigk worries about a fall from grace. But he needn’t have worried: Sunny Day Real Estate has only appreciated in value.