how it feels to be something on

Sunny Day Real Estate weathered splintering apart over a year before coming back together with the shifting spiritual shine of this progressive emo resurrection.  The Seattle band had made waves in the indie scene with their enigmatic debut 'Diary', breaking up before they could finish their second album 'LP2'.   During the next year front man Jeremy Enigk released 'Return of the Frog Queen' with a twenty-one piece orchestra; rhythm section of bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith joined Foo Fighters; while Dan Hoerner pursued his own real estate ventures in Washington.  Hoerner says:   "That’s my underground lair in the mountain regions where I do my experiments. No—a long time ago, I got interested in some counterculture ideas and outdoor-lifestyle things, and I just got fascinated with the country and with farming and the rural lifestyle. So that was kind of a focus early on—as soon as I got two pennies that I could put together, I stashed them away to see if I could eventually get something going in the country...  I think it was a problem of four young men still trying to figure out how to be in the world and how to relate. You know, it’s four young men being married to each other, and breaking up. Bands break up because it’s hard for dudes to live together and to spend every waking moment together and go through the grind of touring and recording and all that stuff. It’s the really rare band that’s U2, Aerosmith, The Who, bands that manage to make it through and persist over a long period of time. Most bands break up because dudes are unstable, especially young, not-even-fully-formed personalities. It was just four dudes and internal tensions and yadda-yadda-yadda starts to happen, and you break up. I mean, that’s just the story of rock...Our process was almost fully formed from like the first time we ever jammed together, in that either Jeremy or I will have some kind of seed of a musical idea, and then we’ll just start messing around with that, and it will develop and unfold and open up into new parts and evolve over time. And then lyrically, Jeremy will have the seed of a vocal idea, and then oftentimes we’ll flesh that out and take that concept and turn it into a whole song. And whether that means me sitting down and trying to write full lyrics, like I did a lot for The Rising Tide, or just keep it simple and have the lyrics be really sparse and minimalistic—that happens on a song-by-song basis—whatever the right thing needs to be is what happens...I think despite the fact that we broke up, there was a deep love that is sort of transcendent and kind of permanent. Jeremy made that wonderful 'Return Of The Frog Queen', which, in my opinion, was one of the better records of the decade, and I think he needed to make that and get a little perspective. I finally was able to pick up my first piece of land and start experimenting with some of that. And so a couple of years of that was fantastic, and then it was time to make some more Sunny Day music."

Enigk's outspoken conversion to Christianity was a driving force of the hiatus:   "It wasn’t the reason the band broke up, but it did influence my final decision in leaving the band. We were having some internal tensions and were on the verge of falling apart. Sadly, all the joy was sucked out due to numerous reasons that made playing an arduous task. Having a spiritual awakening gave me the courage and strength to move on and create a new path in my life."

'How It Feels to Be Something On' was produced by Greg Williamson with Jeremy Enigk on guitar, keyboards, and vocals; William Goldsmith on percussion and drums; Dan Hoerner on guitar, vocals, and cover design; and Jeff Palmer replacing Nate Mendel (who decided Foo Fighters was a safer bet) on bass.  

Enigk considers the creative process:   "The collaboration has always happened in many different ways. Most of the time, I would sing a melody so many times that I began to form words in key parts of a song, but would leave gaps of unfinished lyrics to which Dan would come in and complete the thoughts with me on paper. It was also quite common for us to take a song with no concept at all and sit down with pen and paper and discuss the song’s meaning and write them out together. William was also with us on this method in the writing of many songs on 'How It Feels To Be Something On', which was a great source of comedy. Another method was that I would sing absolute gibberish with no real words at all, and Dan would accidentally hear these profound phrases that matched phonetically to my gibberish. This was occasionally pretty funny, as he would hear something totally offbeat and hilarious...Basically, we wrote lyrics together whatever way got the job done...I guess enough time had gone by to allow us to forget the old arguments and embrace the fact that when we get together, there is just some crazy musical connection that can’t be duplicated."

'How It Feels to Be Something On' reached one hundred and thirty-two on the billboard 200 and number three on the billboard heatseekers chart.  





https://myspace.com/onedayistoppedbreathing




http://www.last.fm/music/Sunny+Day+Real+Estate/How+It+Feels+to+Be+Something+On




"Pillars" 



"Every Shining Time You Arrive" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Ump139h_A



"Two Promises" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXFhTtlBLo






"Days Were Golden" – 5:08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHkk53WlZ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I1nfTDrGx0








'How It Feels to Be Something On' 
full album:



Pillars - 00:00
Roses in Water - 04:57
Every Shining Time - 08:40
Two Promises - 12:53
100 Million - 17:32
How it Feels to be Something On - 23:11
The Prophet - 27:08
Guitar and Video Games - 32:21
The Sharks on Private Fuck - 36:30

Days Were Golden - 40:34