09.17.2009 Sunny Day Real Estate / The Jealous Sound

photo credits: Tommy Au
more photos here

So sometime in 1999, I was in Sam the Record Man on Granville looking for CDs to buy, when I came across the section on the first floor with the heading "EMO". Perplexed, I asked the sales associate what it meant. She threw around the word 'emotional' but had trouble further explaining it beyond that. She then went on to name a few bands in the genre. The only 2 of the ones she listed that I was familiar with were Sunny Day Real Estate and Dashboard Confessional. I'd heard of DC, but never heard of SDRE. At the time I was pretty heavy into Nu-metal, and bands like DC was far from what I wanted to hear at the time, so SDRE would have to stay in the "haven't heard anything by them" band pile in my head. Many, many years later, I began to regret this decision, as they're band that I know I would have enjoyed at that time. Actually they sound almost like the nu-metal I was listening to at the time. The only difference is that their sound is unique enough that it's stood the test of time after all these years.



First up was the Jealous sound. I guess Jealous means emo, because they sound like a stereotypical emo band. So much so that it was almost ironic. They played a new song, if you're a fan of them I guess you'd want to know. The lead singer looked like a the villian from the 4 season (the awful one) of Heroes. This guy.

Although billed as their first show since breaking up or hiatus, in reality it's actually just their official first show. They actually played a secret show in Tacoma the night before. I kind of felt ripped off after hearing about it afterwards. They started their set with Friday, which got the crowd warmed up for their awesome hit "Seven" which they played next. The rest of the set was a mix of their earlier albums, and a new song. The new song they just called it "New Song" and was apparently a week old. It was an upbeat number with not as much distortion. More of a rocker I guess. The singer revealed a few songs in that he was suffering from a cold or something which affected his voice. He didn't sound 100% but managed to pull off a decent job all things considered. This however seemed to the reason for a shorter set compared to the night before. The band actually left the stage before the encore after about 50 min and came back for a 3 song encore. The first song after coming back was 'In Circles' which left me pretty content. Oh yeah you would think that this show being so close to their home state of WA would be pretty packed especially for their "Reunion" show. Nope, well undersold. In fact, they even closed off the balcony, which you don't see very often. They should have put it at Richards... oh whoops.

Setlist:

Friday
Seven
Red Elephant
Song About An Angel
Grendel
Shadows
Iscarabaid
"New Song"
J'Nuh
Sometimes
Encore:
In Circles
48
Spade And Parade

$25/$38