BY COREY DUBROWA

It's Friday night at Portland, OR's Musicfest NW.  Beard factor: high (literally everything from ZZ Top-style facial gear to neatly-coifed geometric shapes to all manner of hirsute accessories in between can be spotted out and about this evening, as if Williamsburg had been transplanted whole cloth within the Pacific time zone).  Indie t-wearing quotient: major (if I see another obscure band reference - tonight the most below-ground being Miracle Legion and some dude in a ratty Poison Idea hat - I will scream, which should successfully frighten all the crossed-arm peaceniks around me).  Drool IQ over Sunny Day Real Estate's long-awaited reunion: "bucketful + bib." 

After releasing two beloved but quirky full-lengths as a quartet back in the early ‘90s, the Seattle-based Sunny Day Real Estate dissolved into a puddle of timeworn rock music clichés: its singer found god (and in an early, prescient move, told the world about it through a post on the internet), its rhythm section found Dave Grohl (who subsequently, found his post-Nirvana special purpose via the Foo Fighters), and eventually, the group found its way back to one another and to stages across North America as it reunited in original form for the first time atomizing back in 1995.

To say that this reunion was highly-anticipated is to engage in a fair bit of disingenuousness: outside of Jimmy Page finally coaxing the old lion in winter (Robert Plant) back onstage in full Zep regalia in 2007 for a glorious one night stand, one can hardly imagine a less likely scenario, but one more important to a generation of indie-rockers who related almost entirely to SDRE's proto-emo musical platform and vaguely-articulated, eyes-wide-with-wonder lyrical worldview.  Portland's Crystal Ballroom teemed with punters of a certain age champing at the bit to see their anti-heroes take the stage together once more and party like it was 1995 all over again.

To put it crisply: Sunny Day didn't disappoint.  "You guys are amazing," marveled frontman Jeremy Enigk as he scanned the noisy, seemingly enraptured crowd before him on the night, as if a pastor looking out to see his faithful flock waiting just where he'd left them.  "It's been almost 15 years since we played together.  It feels so great to finally be back."

And back, they were: the core of the band had always been wrapped tightly around drummer William Goldsmith's amazingly complicated polyrhythms and off-kilter time signatures, and as the group made its way through the evening's setlist - confined almost entirely to its first two Sub Pop albums on which all four original members played, 1994's Diary and 1995's LP2 (or "The Pink Album," as fans have come to know it over the years due to its monochromatic cover art) - they often turned their backs to the audience and hovered around him, with Enigk, bassist Nate Mendel and guitar-whiz Dan Hoerner whipping their heads and hands in ecstatic frenzy as the headset-wearing Goldsmith whacked everything around him in service of propelling the set ever onward.  From the very first note of the very first song - the prismatic guitar figure that opens "Friday," then explodes into huge, colorful chords that serve as the backdrop for Enigk's jaw-dropping gift of a voice - SDRE were as tightly coiled and rippling as they had been back in the band's heyday, with Enigk's keening voice piercing the surrounding din with its shredded upper-register timbre (at one point urging the fans to "sing the lyrics if you know them, this vocal part's a little high for me!") as Sunny Day's signature loud/soft/loud dynamics kicked into full gear on the set's second song, "Seven," which kicked off Diary all those years ago in a flurry of speed, distortion and yearning.   

The hardcore fans around me seemed captivated by what unfolded before us: "Song About An Angel" and its message of the inherent tension between sacred and seeking, "Grendel" and "47" with their early pivots between downtempo and joyous, skyward distortion, and LP2 mainstays such as "Iscarabaid" and "Red Elephant," using the group's early churning underpinnings as a starting point but ladling spiderwebbed, effects-enhanced guitars over the affair to create a denser, more nuanced effect.  In what could be a sign of good things to come, the group also busted out a composition they called "New Song," which they were quick to label a "work in progress" and "public rehearsal" but which sounded as good as anything in their catalog.  By the time the quartet encored with its signature song, "In Circles," it was clear that the reunion had not only been a success in the traditional sense - e.g., had avoided the descent into money-grubbing, familiarity and nostalgia that characterize most of these affairs - but had transcended even its most wild-eyed fans' wildest dreams, laying the groundwork for what we can all hope to be a very productive road ahead. 

Welcome back, SDRE.  The emo-loving generation you helped create in the first place can't wait to hear what else you've got in store.  As Enigk once wrote about his born-again status, "Who knows what is going to happen in the future?  Every time I make a plan it gets changed.  The future is the future.  I hope that we come to a decision about the band that everyone is happy with."  To judge from the sweaty, smiling throng that departed the Crystal late Friday night, I'd say the happiness quotient is pretty universal right about now. 

[Photo Credit: Brian Tamborello]