Sunny Day Real Estate

Diary

BY Nicole VilleneuvePublished Nov 17, 2009

If an album could play an influential teacher who inspires their wayward students to overcome negative patterns and become leaders (surely portrayed by Ben Gibbard and/or Jim Adkins), Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary would be strongly considered for the role. Fifteen years after its initial release, Sub Pop has remastered and re-released the emo/post-punk watershed moment to coincide with the band's first reunion tour with the original line-up. Featuring an unobtrusive but noticeable clean-up (mostly in the guitars and snares) by original producer Brad Wood, storybook liners that give context and still convey the uber-earnestness that's always been key to both SDRE and the genre as a whole, and two additional songs (the excellent, fast and hard "8" and "9," originally from the 1993 Thief Steal Me A Peach seven-inch), Diary remains an important reference point for the brainy, mathematically melodic softening of hardcore. Despite the retreat, re-emergence and eventual splintering and gentrification of the now much-maligned emo genre, Diary, while not entirely timeless, has aged remarkably well. Art worth preserving has to go through restoration sometimes, and a good litmus test is that, even after it's all been done, listening to this makes you feel like it's new again.
(Sub Pop)

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