Emerging from Seattle's heady, aggressive grunge scene in the early 1990s, Sunny Day Real Estate did the unthinkable. It made punk pretty.
It didn't hurt that singer Jeremy Enigk looked like an angel, with wide, innocent eyes and a wounded stare. His voice -- high, lilting and perfectly pitched -- was unexpectedly powerful, and his lyrics were dusted with a deep and pervasive sorrow. So was the rest of the music, with its churning, melodic guitars and heavy, pointed rhythm section.
But the magic didn't last long. Internal tensions and Enigk's desire to pursue a solo career split up the band after just a few years and two full-length albums, 1994's "Diary" and its follow-up, "LP2." Still, the group managed to amass a sizable cult following as progenitors of the emo sound.
They were a keen influence on many of today's chart-topping acts, including Fall Out Boy and Paramore; in fact, "Diary" has gone on to sell more than 230,000 copies, making it among the top 10 most successful releases in Seattle label Sub Pop's history.
Now, the original Sunny Day Real Estate lineup (Enigk, guitarist Dan Hoerner, bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith) is hitting the road on a 21-city tour that kicked off last month and includes sold-out shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim today and the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday.
"When Nate called me, I had to sit down -- I was gonna pass out," said Hoerner of the day in February that Mendel, who is also the bassist for the Grammy Award winning rock act Foo Fighters, contacted him with the idea of a reunion tour. "I was blown away, floored and very excited."
In the intervening years, Mendel, of course, had remained busy with the Foo Fighters (Goldsmith also played with that band, but later left); Enigk released a prog-tinged solo album called "Return of the Frog Queen" in 1996 and another solo effort, "World Waits" more recently; and Hoerner moved to a farm in Washington state and helped write tracks for Dashboard Confessional.
The musicians did periodically reunite: first, as Sunny Day Real Estate, in 1997, though not with Mendel; then in 2001, Mendel, but not Hoerner, joined Goldsmith and Enigk to release an album under the name Fire Theft.
Hoerner said it was only now that the prospect of a full-blown Sunny Day Real Estate reunion seemed natural.
"It just sort of fell in place exactly as you hoped it would," he said.
