this is how it appeared in the georgia strait, if you
find it as ridiculous as i do then write me back and
i'll get the address of the georgia strait and you can
let em have it!
THE SEATTLE OUTFIT MAKES NONSENSE SOUND GOOD ON ITS
MOST RECENT ALBUM THE EXPANSIVE "HOW IT FEELS TO BE
SOMETHING ON" by alexander varty.
If sunny day real estate singer jeremy enigk sounds
slightly less than fully coherent, it's with good
reason. "I haven't slept for thirty hours" he
confesses on the phone from his seattle home.
Normally, he adds, he would have been up for an hour
or two; perhaps he would have made some breakfast, put
on a pot of coffee, had a smoke, and scanned the
newspapers, just like anyone else would do upon rising
- except that when i call the singer it's 7 pm. , and
the sun has already begun its descent toward the
western horizon.
"I usually go to bed at, like, 9 in the morning," he
explains. "I just love staying up all night. But I'm
trying to get onto a regular schedule because the band
is going to be getting back together and practicing
for our upcoming shows. So I didn't sleep at all
today."
Lest you think that enigk is living some kind of anne
rice fantasy, let me explain that the singer keeps the
hours he does for artistic rather than vampiric
reasons. The very early hours of the morning , he says
are the best for writing songs. "Definitely," he
asserts "because there's nothing else going on.
Everybody is sleeping; it's completely peaceful. I've
got a house and a piano, and there's no sleeping
roommates, so it's nice to be able to do the music i
want, as loud as i want."
If i had only heard enigk's solo album, I wouldn't
have thought that being loud was necessarily a
problem. Frog Queen, issued in 1996, is a small
masterpeice of strange and compelling songs, but it
depends for its effect on enigk and mark nichols's
vaguely baroque arrangements for a 21 piece orchestra
of strings, woodwinds and percussion. It's a work in
the spirit of such English visionaries as nick drake
and syd barrett, chamber pop for a troubled mind in
troubled times. And some of it is very, very quiet.
But sunny day real estate is a rock band, part of the
same seattle scene that produced nirvana and pearl
jam. Like those two groups, it depends for its effects
on the unearthly howling of its lead singer, and on
"How It Feels", the groups third CD, enigk howls like
never before. (??????? huh?)
"How It Feels" is as dark as "Return", but its
atmospheres are created by the time-honoured rock and
roll line up of two guitars, bass and drums, rather
than by a multitude of strings. The band, which also
includes guitarist dan hoerner, bassist jeff palmer,
and drummer will goldsmith, does take a symphonic
approach to its music, however; all of its
arrangements are carefully constructed to suggest a
sense of musical expansiveness, over which enigk is
free to sing with considerable abandon.
"Vocally i really pushed the envelope on the last
album, because i was ultimately inspired a lot by
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan," he says. "I mean, there's no
way i could touch what he really does; it is insane.
It's unbelievable, and there's no way i could do that
and get away with it. So, on how it feels, the songs
that have that sort of quality were me trying to do it
as much as i could without sounding like a moron."
Hints of the late Sufi singer's keening melodies
surface on "Roses in Water," with its chanted
introduction(?????) and soaring vocal arabesques. But
the song enigk sites as having been most heavily
influenced by Khan's qawwali style is "the prophet",
which sets an ecstatic, wordless melody atop chiming
acoustic guitars before moving into an almost Who-like
chorus. (????????????? who-like?)
"That song started out with just dan and i on acoustic
guitars, and it totally had that spiritual setting,
where the vocals just came out and i wasn't tied down
by lyrics or syllables or anything," enigk says. "The
way you hear it on te album was the way we played it
practically the first time we played it."
Such spontaneity is becoming the norm for sunny day
real estate, enigk says, but it isn't the way the band
used to work. The group's first album, diary, was
essentially an audio-verite(?) documentation of songs
the band had been playing onstage well before it set
foot in a studio. "It felt like we just hashed out the
same old stuff, and i was pretty disappointed in it,
the singer comments. "I love the album now, but at the
time i felt like it was just old news."
He doesn't have much to say about the band's second,
self-titled album except that it was cut during a time
of extreme internal friction. suny day real estate had
either broken up or was on the verge of breaking up.
"Nobody really wanted to be there," he allows, and
that shows in the music.
(????whatthefuckisthisreportertalkingabout?????) But
he claims "How It Feels" is the work of a group with a
new lease on life, in part because much of the record
was improvised in the studio - and judging by the
finished product, sunny day real estate rose to the
challenge.
Enigk says that although he will sometimes bring
complete songs to the band ("and then we make them
heavier"), he often prefers to have the group work up
and record its music well before he has any lyrical
concept in mind. "Then I'll go in and do a vocal track
without any idea of what i want to say, so I'll just
sing a bunch of nonsense," he explains,"But the
nonsense that i'm singing - the way i sing the
syllables and stuff - sounds good. And then dan and i
listen to what it sounds like i am saying, and shape
the lyrics that way. Sometimes it just creates its own
story. In fact most of the time it creates its own
story."
This improvisational freshness is something the singer
hopes to explore further on sunny day real estate's
next album, although the chance to do that may be
sometime in coming. The group was recently cut adrift
from its long-time label, Sub Pop, as part of the
restructuring of the seattle indie's roster that
followed its acquisition by warner, and its recording
plans are on hold until it finds a new home.
"First we have to deal with that, but as soon as we
find a label we will try to record as soon as
possible," enigk says. And he adds that on album
number four he hopes to play around with his band's
sonic format, perhaps balancing hoerner's punkier
inclinations with the kind of polished arrangements
that played such a big part in "Return's" success.
Sleepy though he is, he sounds excited about this -
and he believes his bandmates are too.
"I feel like we all believe in this band. And i
personally, have always felt like i have a destiny to
do music. Idon't know at what kind of level that will
take place, but i do know that this thing is
important, and that we are good."
that's all folks
-have a sunny day
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