Suny Day Real Estate reuniting, touring

I'm not sure exactly when I first got into Sunny Day Real Estate. I remember hearing and liking Diary....and even LP2. I remember liking Rising Tide quite a bit too, but they were always just one of those fringe bands for me.....a band that I liked, but didn't love. When they reunited in 1997 they were a band I'd have liked to have seen, but were certainly nowhere near the top of my list....I was only 16 at the time, and truth be told I think I was just too young to get their music. I'd just started growing out of my metal phase (Pantera/Sepultura) and growing into the drunken indie rock phase (Mudhoney) where I've apparently stalled out all these years later (though I did develop quite a love for rockabilly/psychobilly music as well).

It wasn't until my early to mid 20s that I really started to get into them (somewhere between 2001 and 2005) on account of one night sitting at my computer and Diary began to play....and I listened to it in order in it's entirety. And I realized that there was something new to me about it, something I hadn't heard when I was younger. Most people get into "emo" music when they're teenage hormones are raging and they think the world is out to get them-but I was never one of those people. It wasn't until my 20s that I had the depth of life experiences to appreciate just how powerful and moving the music was. And not just that, but also how musically brilliant it was....how tight it was, how the melodies flow perfectly and how they balance the falsetto and the driving guitar. For me, it was akin to discovering Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff-something so great that I couldn't stop listening to it. Then I started listening to Rising Tide, and appreciating how similar the music was, and yet how it had grown with age.....Rising Tide was the older, more mature version of Diary. Still just as moving, still just as powerful, but the music had become so much more complex.

Somewhere around 2004 or 05, I started having relationship problems....problems that if you know me you're quite familiar with, and if you don't you really probably don't have any interest in-and I started to fall into a period of self-loathing and guilt-and it wasn't until then that LP2 really hit home, that I really got it. LP2 to, to me, is probably the most beautiful and moving rock record I have ever heard-and between a couple failed relationships and the dying of my Aunt, in many ways Sunny Day Real Estate helped me get through all that. They were able to say for me what I couldn't say myself, they brought out emotions and feelings I didn't know I had and in many ways I believe helped me grow a lot as a person. So as you can imagine, this is a band that means a lot to me.

So a couple days ago when rumors started popping up that they'd be not only reuniting, but touring....and with the original lineup, well let's just say I was ecstatic. Outside of Nirvana (obviously never going to happen) this is the band I most regret having never seen. A few dates started to trickle out....Seattle, San Francisco, Atlanta.....if they weren't coming to Dallas, then I was going to fly somewhere else and see them and that was that. Period, nothing was going to stop me from getting a chance to see SDRE live. So then, you can imagine my delight this afternoon when i read at Pitchfork that they were not only reuniting and touring, but that the tour was set and Dallas was going to be a stop. You can see the full schedule at the above link, but October 5 they're playing Dallas (Granada Theater) and the next two nights Houston and Austin. Anyway, tickets go on sale this friday at 11am for Dallas-and if I can swing it, I'm going to try to do Houston and Austin as well.

In short, I'm beyond ecstatic right now.