Sunny Day Real Estate Rises With the Tide

by Jaysen Buterin

In todays age of corporate-formula pop rock and textbook rap-metal fusion acts, few bands can create a musically rich and colourfully dynamic sound, let alone replicate the intensity and fecundity of that sound live. Sunny Day Real Estate is one of those few, and when they took the stage at the Firehouse last Monday, everyone in the audience knew how it felt to be something on. If you haven't heard of Sunny Day, then you are truly missing out on a musically prolific and poetic experience. If you haven't had the chance to see them live you're missing out on an awe-inspiring show from one of the nicest bands in music today (except for their tour manager and his recalcitrant machinations).

Performing an amazing set comprised of songs from all four of their studio albums, Sunny Day began the evening with the powerful track "Fool", effortlessly ascending into the hypnotically sonic "Pillars". Graciously acknowledging and thanking the audience after each song, one easily gathered the impression that the three founding members of the band had finally grown comfortable with each other and their music. Gliding sweetly from tracks like "One", "Ocean", the musically textured "Guitar and Video Games", and the ominously fervid crescendoes of "Snibe", the band took the audience on a journey outside of themselves seeming at once a million miles away, yet embraced in every way in the music that was filling the club.

Following the inevitable closing of the first set, Sunny Day Real Estate returned to the stage to a thunderous wave of applause and cheers that was silenced only by the immediate delivery of the technically proficients yet explosively ebullient "8". After performing the title track from their new album, "The Rising Tide", the band skyrocketed into the powerful track, "Circles". This last song from their first album was a perfect encapsulation of a show that embodied musical complexity, sonically textured lyrics, and an overall spectacular show.

Sunny Day is a musical entity whose live shows are melodic and hypnotic, transcendental and sweetly gentle. All at once their sound is anestisingly enticing then instantaneously harmoniously cacophonic. Each member of the band is such an enigmatic figure, you honestly don't know who to focus on at any one time. Even as audience members were rocking back and forth with eyes closed, swayed by the passion of the music, they weren't missing a thing. Thus the appeal of Sunny Day Real Estate as the culmination and deliverance of a beautifully dynamic band was fully received by the audience who endearingly holds them above the rising tide.