The Rising Tide

by

Sunny Day Real Estate

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i wouldn't believe a negative word you hear about this album. i'm a sdre fan and i enjoy their albums as well, but this is the first one i heard and it's captivated me from the first listens. i've listened to it a million times and it never fails to leave me uplifted - it's like a breath of fresh air.. but it rocks! the band is just really amazing here.. i would go so far as to say it's sdre at their VERY BEST. this is their PEAK. some people claim it's too prog-ish, and yes, it does bear a resemblance to rush due to the high vocals and prominent bass, but who cares? the songs are amazing. it's also interesting to see how their sound evolved through their different albums to end up here.

_The Rising Tide_, the fifth release and fourth studio album from Sunny Day Real Estate, is a hard album to pin down at first. It opens with the rockin' "Killed by an Angel," a track on which Jeremy Enigk's vocals are mixed expertly, sounding raw and evil. This is a fast, loud song, and one of my favorites on the album.

The next song, "One," sounds like a mix of three songs from SDRE's last album, _How it Feels to be Something On_. With the prog-rock instrumentation (and shaky lyrics) of "Roses in Water," the granduer and bombast of "Guitars and Video Games," and the immediacy of "The Prophet," it really is a great song, as long as you don't pay too much attention to the somewhat cliched lyrics of the chorus.

"Rain Song" is a pretty little number (and catchy) that almost sounds like it could fit in with some of Jeremy's solo material. It has a really cool, strange little acoustic guitar intro that the listener is suddenly dropped back into after the first verse. Very nice. The next couple of songs are the first ones that scream, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm prog-rock! " This isn't to say they're not good, though. "Snibe" is one of the best songs on the album, and "Disappear" is one of many songs on the album that, although you would never expect to actually hear it on modern rock radio, at least have portions that sound radio-ready. Other songs with "radio-ready portions" include "One," "Fool in the Photograph," and "Television."

"Fool in the Photograph," is the first song on the album that really doesn't do much for me. It's dark and moody, with those now-expected minor chords, but when it's over the only thing you're left feeling is: "What happened?" The song kind of just ends about 4 minutes after it starts, with not a whole lot worth remembering going on in the meantime.

"Tearing in my Heart" begins with a bizarre and unexpected female voice telling us to listen to some children talking. Although I can't figure out for the life of me what this has to do with the song that follows, it scares the hell out of me every time I hear it. The song itself is nice and pretty, if fairly uneventful.

"Television" is the song that the band is either daring us to hate or daring us to love, and I can't figure out which. Most of the lyrics are boderline God-awful, with Jeremy proclaiming, "She's cruel and free, like television." Not only is this simile that the whole song is based upon cheap, corny, and grossly impersonal (the word "television" should never be in any SDRE song, ever), but it also just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. At the same time, though, the song moves along on a groovy, bouncy bassline, and the song as a whole sounds like a cross between the Apples in Stereo and some crappy 80s new wave. It is nothing like the SDRE we know, and in fact very cheesy. But the song embraces this cheesiness, it loves it. Jeremy's voice soars and bites at all the right times, and you can't help but bop your head to the beat. I really can't figure this one out.

Moving backward a bit, the sixth track, "The Ocean," is probably the best on the album and maybe one of Sunny Day's best songs on any album. It reminds me a lot of the title track from _How it Feels..._ and it works marvelously in its place right after "Snibe." The album also closes on a strong note, with "Faces in Disguise" and "The Rising Tide." The former is a surreal, Radiohead-like trip through dreamland. Dan Hoerner has no part in it, according to the liner notes, except maybe in the composition of lyrics. "The Rising Tide" is a good song, too, kind of like "Days Were Golden," except not as emotionally affecting.

This is a pretty good album. It really doesn't stack up that well against _How it Feels to be Something On_, but how could it? It's also not as powerful as SDRE's first two releases, but much more accessible and I will probably reach for it more often than either of those. The direction the band is moving in seems interesting, but I think they should probably drop Lou Giordano, who produced it, and who I think is responsible for the somewhat radio-friendly sound. I have a gut feeling that the next album from these guys is going to be truly amazing, and I really can't wait.