Sunny Day Real Estate
In a “South Park” episode from 2013, “Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers,” one of the show’s unruly tots is sent off to a camp for troubled kids and returns as an “emo” kid with black nails and dyed roots, moping in her bedroom to a song called “Seven.”
“I’m not emo, okay?” she protests to a friend. “Then why are you listening to Sunny Day Real Estate?” he replies.
While Nirvana and fellow Pacific Northwesterners catalyzed a band wave and an entire subculture, not everything arising from that angst-fueled inflection point was grunge — and certainly not goth except maybe in general dourness and black t-shirts. It just happened that the regional record label, Sub Pop, that signed Nirvana later signed Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate as another strain of post-punk music — emo, short for emotional hardcore — was taking shape elsewhere. The label somehow found the band.
Sunny Day Real Estate have wrestled with their godfathers-of-emo designation, but as singer-guitarist Jeremy Enigk told the A.V. Club in 2016, “The jury — they voted, man. And we can’t get away from it.” From grungy origins — screams, distortion, melancholy — Sunny Day Real Estate would evolve into (or be adopted as) one of emo’s flagship bands. Their plaintive thrashing, more rooted in ’80s hardcore than ’70s sludge, opened a pathway to the more accessible, radio-friendly emo keening of Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and The Ataris.
Sunny Day Real Estate’s four albums are bristling with shrieks of nonconformity, distant longing, lost love, moral quandaries and subversive societal commentary. Whatever you call the music, it bears hallmarks of its rainy hometown’s pioneering scene.
Being emo, Sunny Day Real Estate struggled through fractures and breakups. Founding bassist Nate Mendel left after the first two albums to join Foo Fighters. Original members Enigk, Dan Hoerner and William Goldsmith play alongside newer recruits on a reunion tour that wraps up here in the true home of sunny day real estate, all lower case.
Sunny Day Real Estate perform 7:30pm Wednesday, November 1 at Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale. sunnyday.realestate ~ Amanda Moore
