Send "Sunny Day Real Estate " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Real Estate were born in the depths of one New Jersey summer. Frontman Martin Courtney had just returned home to his native Ridgewood from college in Washington State, a few fresh songs in his pockets. He'd been playing music with bassist Alex Bleeker and guitarist Matthew Mondanile since high school in various forms, even covering Weezer and the Strokes records from tip to tail. But during the summer of 2008, Real Estate didn't get nostalgic for just their specific suburban nights, crushes, or favorite bands as teens-- they fashioned a tin can-and-string to memories more universal. Their self-titled debut LP is a collection of those first underwater pop songs and onward, 7" cuts and mpfrees that have been backstroking their way across the Web and into lo-fi nerdpiles. Over the past year, many of these songs have soundtracked a time when it feels like every kid in or just out of college seems to be handcrafting/clamoring for music that shuttles us back to a time before career choices, adult responsibility, and this recession.And while the Jersey Shore has clearly become the beating heart of their current aesthetic, Real Estate captures a rock band several lengths ahead of the fuzzy beach bums with which they pine. Real Estate share tones with North Jersey indie rock titans Yo La Tengo and the Feelies, pouring those influences through warm impressions of oldies radio. Riffs are cyclical and massaged, harmonies familiar. Each song is dunked in reverb and delay, though always with serious restraint. Most importantly, all boast architecture that still allows for swaths of jamming, the feeling that every measure's unfolding as easy as life ought to....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| Somewhere in the night you know someone who is, right now, probably getting stoned and making music. Lately, a lot of people have been getting stoned and…making music. Of course this has always happened, and here’s a wager that it always will, and why the hell not? A lot of great music has come out of that shell-shocked fog, and, in common with a lot of great music, so have a lot of great listening experiences and a lot of classy, otherwise rich, people behaving in sexy and murderous ways. Drug use has always been rock’s big hairy pantomime. What’s so transparent and disheartening now, though, in our big indie commercial clusterbang, is the amount of music made by stoned people that is simply about the process, the instruments, the importunity of getting very plangently schlimazzelled—and the fact that not a lot of it is exactly musical. And of course a lot of it is lo-fi. This isn’t a marvellous excursion anymore. Why do all these records (minus Girls’ Album; I don’t understand why 90% of CMG-ers want to cock-punch that record, it’s great!), why must all these records be the musical equivalent of rubbing your ear against someone’s armpit? Why does Times New Viking have to frickin’ boast that their record sports 25% higher-fidelity, as if we’d all been anticipating something more, or something less. All I anticipate is that the Times New Viking record will rock hard, which it does. All I want from my lo-fi, if it’s got to be recorded lo-fi, is for the whole thing not to end up like some ironic gotcha! joke where the winter silences of static answer to dinner bells of noise and the whole thing basically stinks of shit; because that’s what it is, that’s, erm, what it’s meant to be. Right?...full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| So they call this a reunion? Don’t get me wrong, it’s great when your old favourites manage to get back together to bolster their savings. The Sex Pistols, Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh (III-era line up), Blur… even Pavement are up there now. So, the enigmatic forerunners of what has become a blight on the alt. scene’s already pock-marked face, have scrambled a reunion together, complete with accompanying re-issues, but are they worth it? For the legacy? Maybe. For the sound? Perhaps not. Legacies perpetuate misgivings about a band’s importance to the development of pop culture. And whilst Sunny Day Real Estate’s contribution is questionable, their legacy is not. Originally issued in ‘94, it’s hard to imagine Diary being at the forefront of any movement now. What once sounded fresh has become well-worn in a modern context, but to judge the record by what followed it isn’t really fair. At the time this was fresh, innovative. Emerging from the arse end of grunge, Sunny Day Real Estate were a shot in the arm for Sub Pop, even more so for a hardcore scene that had all but vanished. For all its undoubtedly chipper qualities, Diary is a record that bred tension. From the lethargy of ‘Pheurton Skuerto’, to the half baked lullabies of ‘Shadows’, this is a record that somehow bites its tongue, to staggering effect. One minute it’s all murmurs and melodies before a visceral, edgier riff kicks in and the emo-archetype is, if not born, then certainly honed. (8)...full text |
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