1 CENT CD: Sunny Day Real Estate 'Diary' REMASTER 2009

Condition of CD:  Mint Condition!  REMASTERED REISSUE with two bonus tracks!

One review reads  'I don't recall why it was that this album caught my interest--maybe it was the cover, maybe it was the discount price at the store I bought it from, maybe it was the recommendations of other Amazon listeners. I picked it up and put it down at least four times at various places.

This is an album that takes time to grow on you. At first listen I found little to like--the music doesn't seem to have much melody (at first), the lyrics are unintelligible most of the time, the singer goes off into mad screeching, and the band seems to be just making noise. Then I sat and payed attention, looked at the lyrics (thank GOD the band supplied a lyric book) and had a few more listens. The music is deep, layered, interesting, and challenging.

The singer doesn't really sing too often "on pitch", and seems to be making up the rhythm of the words on many occasions. Sometimes, even with the lyric sheet, I would lose the words he was singing. A couple of times I played a game with myself and wrote down the words I thought he was singing and then compared them to the lyric sheet, often with humorous results. In many of the songs it sounds like someone is stretching out his vocal cords and running over them with a serrated edge. The lyrics are complex to the point that they must be memorized because they don't necessarily make traditional sense, and they're not sung clearly. Like this nugget from Pheurton Skeurto:
"down on their knees holding hairpiece see how they flock ten for some grapes trip over words with gifts and garage." Well, if you know what the h*ll he's talking about I'm impressed. There is a LOT of this kind of thing on the album, but the fact is he sings (or screams) it with such soul that you can empathize and scream along (although on some days if my throat is any kind of tired I can't even listen because it makes my throat wince just hearing him scrape his vocal cords raw).

For two months at least I was happy with just exploring the first three songs. Seven, In Circles, and Song About An Angel are all incredible compositions. If you are willing to spend some time delving into the music (nothing shallow about this stuff) then this is album will definitely reward your efforts. '.

Songs:

1. Seven
2. In Circles
3. Song About an Angel
4. Round
5. 47
6. The Blankets Were the Stairs
7. Pheurton Skeurto
8. Shadows
9. 48
10. Grendel
11. Sometimes
12. 8
13. 9