Diary

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Sunny Day Real Estate couldn’t have known how quickly things would happen for them. “We were just going into a basement to jam,” lead vocalist Jeremy Enigk tells Apple Music, 30 years after the release of the Seattle rock outfit’s landmark debut, <i>Diary</i>. “And the next thing I know, we’re a band. And we’ve signed with Sub Pop after just our second show. I didn’t have time to process it, or even desire it.” Originally a trio—drummer William Goldsmith, guitarist Dan Hoerner, bassist Nate Mendel—who’d played under various name, they invited a then 18-year-old Enigk to jam with them while Mendel was away on tour with another band, just for fun. They began playing every day, often for long, six-hour stretche, pausing only to eat. They were making music that sounded vast and vulnerable, delicate yet heavy—unlike anything else in hardcore, let alone a Seattle that had upended the music and fashion industry with grunge. When Mendel returned home, their lineup was complete. “We came from hardcore, so it was interesting to sort of experiment with melody and storytelling as opposed to screaming and protest,” Goldsmith says of those early jam session, which yielded much of said debut. “Jeremy added a whole new dimension.” Enigk originally sang in a falsetto before injuring his voice while wailing onstage as the band toured their way to Chicago to record <i>Diary</i> in 1993. As a result, his vocals are literally wounded here, giving each song heightened emotional stakes that feel immediate and real, despite his voice sounding so otherworldly at time. You can hear it in the opening lines of “Seven,” like he’s levitating somewhere above a storm of guitar and drum. You can feel the anguish of “In Circles” and “The Blankets Were the Stairs” without ever laying eyes on a lyric sheet. “I needed to sing the way that I sing,” he say. “I had a broken heart. I needed to get it out emotionally. I needed to pour that experience into the songs and bring all of that chaos and pain into order so that I could sort of compartmentalize it and set it aside.” When the album was released in May of 1994—just a month after Kurt Cobain’s death—it was met with widespread praise. But in Cobain’s absence, some portion of the music industry looked to Enigk as a potential successor, an artist whose raw delivery and natural intensity might resonate with mainstream audiences in a similarly powerful way. The heightened expectations weren’t helpful. “I was told multiple times that we were going to carry the torch after he passed away,” Enigk say. “And I didn’t want that, didn’t want the pressure, didn’t want fame. And at a certain point, for various reason, I set it down. I walked away.” .

via Apple Music

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