Here is a review that is on pitchforkmedia.com (the rating is out of 10):
Sunny Day Real Estate
The Rising Tide
[Time Bomb]
Rating: 5.9
Are you ready to admit the
Peter Gabriel
factor? Or, even more
frightening, the Yes
and Rush factor? Not only
does The Rising
Tide dip its toes into
sucking whirlpools of
late '70s arena prog, but it
stands as one of
those albums that forces listeners to ponder the
inevitable third act of
even their most fond bands, wherein Our Hero
finds his fate in a bloody
climax of vocal effects, drums solos,
eco-conscience, last-flash
valiance, and fatal flubs. And while this
specific Hamlet hasn't yet
expired from the poison tip, his muse Orphelia is
long gone, and the
audience knows all about the venomed chalice. So
what course
brought Sunny Day Real Estate to this misfortune?
The largest
finger-pointing targets are producer Lou Giordano
and the paring of the
band into a trio.
Giordano, most widely known for his work with
Live, dunks Sunny Day
in a vat of liquid and covers them in chrome. The
reflective surfaces
serve only to magnify and spotlight the
occasional songwriting errors.
On past efforts, frontman Jeremy Enigk's
passionate bleating benefited
from indecipherability. The mystic and emotional
force stemmed from
his foreign throat. With greater control and
pronunciation, Enigk now
recalls a piping Jon Anderson, specifically "We
Have Heaven" from
Fragile. Giordano floats crystalline vocal layers
above a flat silver
landscape of swooning, fervent arena rock. With
this highlighted
clarity, Enigk can derail a track with one
jutting word.
On "Rain Song" (there's that pesky, generic,
Rainforest Caf�-brand
environmentalism), Enigk drops his voice to
repeat, "And it's candy,"
which isn't completely terrible until juxtaposed
to the surrounding,
fluttering castrato sighs. The real rub is how
Enigk enunciates the
bulging word like "khaan-DEE." It sticks out like
a bellybutton on a
supermodel. Similarly, "Snibe" becomes the
fist-pumping
"Mah-KET-place!" and "Gov-UN-ment!" song (or
"that vocoder song")
and "Television" is remembered at best as the
"Tell-eh-vhiz-sheun-eoooo-ooo-yeoooo-ooooo-uooo"
song (or "that
digital didgeridoo song"), if at all. To further
frustrate, Giordano
laminates the uncountable layers of strings,
pianos, plucked
acoustics, and synths with tacky corn syrup. The
obvious signifiers
scream, "Hey! Lookee! I�m pretty," as much as
slow-motion, auburn
lighting, and slow dissolves do in a John Woo
film.
Occasionally, the drama and props pay off. "The
Ocean" slowly drops
rippling pearls into molten quartz with sweeping
effect. It's the loveliest
the band have ever sounded. The closing title
track shimmers like
vintage Cure sloshing around inside a glass
goblet. And Sunny Day
must have been lucky band number 1,000,000 to
name a song "One,"
as it tugs, dances, and punches with seductive
pomp. Otherwise, The
Rising Tide sits awash in new age imagery-- the
ocean, rain, angels,
the ocean again. How It Feels to Be Something On
mesmerized
intimacy, introspection, and Eastern textures.
Here, that's all been
discarded for Big Themes and Big Guitars--
alright for a Saturn drive
through suburbia, but not the silk blanket you
want to snuggle under.
After their temporary break-up, Sunny Day Real
Estate regrouped with
fresh spirit. The resulting album sounded like a
band rediscovering
itself over a batch of superb Enigk solo tracks.
Yet Enigk has gone
from exhaling, "If I break down/ All that I am,"
to preaching: "Snibe is a
monster. He is willing to hurt others to retire
rich and ugly. He kills the
innocent to protect his control. Snibe is the
greed of money and
power. Snibe is in all of us." Somebody's been
subscribing to The
Nation. The best justification for the extended
metaphor of "television"
as "women" is that "she's in my head/ like
television" and "she's cool
and she's free/ like television." Well, at least
she's not cable, then.
The songwriting here feels wrung from "jams."
Splashes and driving
rhythms replace intricacy and mood. Drummer
William Goldsmith
devotes the album to his high-hat. "Pish pish
pish pish pish" go the
little cymbals, as our British readers giggle. As
Enigk wobbles his
fingers over newly acquired bass strings and
belts lines like "disappear
into the sun!" it's hard to avoid Rush
comparisons. The power trio with
socially conscious singer/bassist equation also
recalls the Police. But
time transplants Mercury Rising-era Sting into
Zenyatta Mondatta.
Meanwhile, "Faces in Disguise" mimics the soft,
slow ooze of Peter
Gabriel's rainstick ballads. So, essentially,
this is the pop record '70s
prog bands would make in the '80s-- Big Generator
and Power
Windows for a new generation. Aside from two
major blunders nothing
is overtly offensive, but simply lachrymose and
lactose. Sunny Day
habitat needs candlelight and rugs, not spotlight
riggings and astroturf.
Is this a certain progression for rock bands of
this ilk? Chalk some of
the scars up to Enigk's vocals being thrown into
focus. But what
makes maturing singers spit political slogans and
earth-friendly
spiritualism? Cash and high-hats are easy
culprits. For the benefit of
audiences, songwriters in emotional bands are
best left in states of
emotional turmoil. Sadly, Enigk seems to be
generally comfortable
with himself. That's no fun.
-Brent DiCrescenzo
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