Rockin' Out: Sunny Day Real Estate @ Terminal 5 09/27/09

Two crappy Blackberry camera pictures this time! You know you are psyched.

Joining the seemingly never ending parade of reunions by 90's band is Sunny Day Real Estate. I missed this band on their initial go round, so I was quite happy to hear that they would be doing a tour with the original line-up. Often cited as being godfathers to the "emo" scene, SDRE are mercifully 1000 times better than any band they have influenced (I personally can't stand the vast majority of emo music and it's sister genre "screamo"). And they feature Nate Mendel from the mighty, can do no wrong Foo Fighters on bass, so that is additional bonus points right there.

Touring behind the re-release of their first two efforts Diary and LP2 (more commonly referred to as The Pink Album), I was hoping that they would stick mostly to songs from those albums as I am not as familiar with their other two albums, How It Feels To Be Something On and The Rising Tide. Those are not bad albums, but the first two are so strong that they are my go to records when I am in the mood to listen to SDRE. Much to my delight, my hopes were fulfilled as 13 of the 15 songs they played came from those albums. The other two songs were "Guitars & Video Games" from HIFTBSO and a new (I believe untitled) track that the band wrote before they went on tour. The new song sounded pretty cool, but let's face it, me and the rest of the crowd were focused on hearing the classics. "In Circles", "Shadows", "Seven" and "Friday" all sounded great. My favorite part about the set was that they played for one hour and 15 minutes...they came out, played the songs and left the crowed wanting a little more, but not disappointed at all. Kind of like when you eat just the right amount of food at dinner and feel perfectly satisfied.

Last night was the first night of an eight night stretch in which I will be seeing live music every night save for one, so this was an ideal way to start it....something quick, fun and rockin' (I'm looking at probably 3 hours of Bruce Springsteen on Wednesday night and then a full 3 days of festival going in Austin this weekend with more bands playing that I want to see then I can even bother to list right now). This is one reunion tour you don't want to pass on.

"Seven"



"In Circles"