Sunny Day Real Estate

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.