I have always liked the singles from this band but was never interested enough to actually get an album from the group. Apparently, this is typical for US listeners as they have never charted very high here. I have only just listened to this album recently (2010). My sister-in-law owned this and a couple of others that she loaned to me. I still have yet to listen to the others as of yet. She was one of the cutting edge music fans back in the day. I was and still am today but my tastes in music are different but run parallel at the same time to her tastes in music.
I loved the first single from this album, Virtual Insanity. This song was my first exposure of the band. Like most people my age, I saw the video first on Mtv (back when the station actually played music videos). The video is so brilliant that it won a Grammy and 4 Mtv music awards (at the time they actually meant something sort of). The video featured the lead singer in a white walled black floored room with various pieces of furniture. As he sang the song the floor moved and the furniture moved with the floor. All I can say is that you need to see this video if you haven’t already. Here is the link for it.
The rest of the album is just as fantastic. It is done in a funk/rock style that is really very entertaining. The standout songs are basically the singles but you can’t really go wrong with the album as a whole. The other singles are Cosmic Girl, Alright and High Times. This is really a great album and the only one that charted well in the US. This album was a 1996 release just incase you were wondering.
Tapes 'n Tapes - Walk It Off
This is the second album from the group. They are from Minneapolis MN. I was very excited to get this album after hearing the single on the radio. It has a really good beat that you can dance to (lol). The artwork on the cover is similar to the previous album in that the colors are the same. The background on this cover is white where as the background on the first one is black. The album was put together while touring in 2007. It was finalized and released in the spring of 2008.
I bought the album when it was originally released on CD. My wife likes the group more than I do and we both appreciate vinyl releases so I got her a copy of both albums for her birthday a year ago. I have listened to both albums and like them both a lot. I ended up giving my father-in-law the CD version of the album. This way it stays in the family if you understand my meaning. I am sure that he will never listen to them but if for some reason I want it back it would not be an issue.
The single, Hang Them All, is very catchy. It uses a classic organ sound that is reminiscent of something from the animals to me. It is probably something more robust or a sample of something that is so much more grand in scale but it reminds me of a cheap Vox keyboard from the 60s or 70s. I can’t really tell if the organ sound is a sample or an actual organ. My ear is not trained to organ sounds yet so I am not sure about it yet. I have not found any information relating to this organ sound on the internet yet either but I will keep searching.
Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary
Although emo music has been around since the 80s the genre was given a new face in the 90s primarily with this band and the band Jaw Breaker. I was not really into either of them at first. I did like the singles off this album though. I did not have the money to be buying albums at that time though. I was still in high school and only had a part time job at the time. I did make a note of it in my head and now, years later, the record companies have repressed their 2 albums on vinyl. I picked up this one as soon as it was re-released. I want to get the second album that they put out but have not gotten to it just yet. To me this is the heart of emo music, emotional and hard rocking. Many bands have come since these 2 groups showed the world what it meant to be emo in the 90s but, IMO, this one still stands the test. I own many albums from emo artists since this one but most of them seem to come off as whiney little brats. What I mean is that there are more emotions than just “My life sucks and there is nothing I can do about it.” Sunny Day Real Estate is proof of this.
The original pressing of this album on vinyl was missing 3 tracks. I am not sure at the moment if this is true with the repressing. I have it put away at the moment but the album also came with a download and all of the tracks came with the download of the album.
The group was so revolutionary on this album that it laid the groundwork for future artists and their albums. For example, one of the sleeper albums of the 90s was Weezer – Pinkerton. The reviews of this album were very bad indeed. But that is for another review. It was because of Sunny Day Real Estate that Pinkerton was even made.
Sub.Bionic - You I Lov///
I found out about this band from a promotional release that I got from the now defunct Extasy Records. This promo disc was basically videos for the computer. They called the disc Blue.Monster. They filmed a bunch of videos for a few of their songs, not every song on the official release. There was one particular song on this disc that fans of the group wanted on the You I Lov/// release. That song was called If Gunshy. The video is still up on YouTube here. I loved everything on this promo disc. I was very excited when I finally heard that there was going to be an official release. When it was finally released it was very difficult to find. I was scared that I would not find a copy of this album. I had to have it. I realized what it meant when people said that and album was so indie that it hurt. I was freaking out because I couldn’t find this album. I think that I found a copy on Amazon a week or two after it was released. The music has been thought of by others as a little bit of Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Jeff Buckley mixed together. I love all three of these bands so this music is right up my alley. This album is still hard to find but if you do find it the album will be super cheap. Nobody has heard of it so nobody cares about it and this is the reason it is cheap. I think I saw that Amazon had a copy of it from a 3rd party seller for a Penney.
The album is dark and depressing in nature but that is what I was after at the time. It was released in 2001. This was a dark time for me and this album fit right in with everything that I was listening to and how I was feeling. It defiantly was not what I needed. It held me down more than it helped me up and out of the depression that I was in at the time.
Falling Up – Crashings
This group is a Christian themed grace driven rock/punk group. This album was released in 2004. They were one of the first groups that I was introduced to when I started going back to church. I had always been interested in listening to Christian music but to my knowledge there was no Christian group out there that was playing in the style that I wanted to hear. My whole world opened up when I found that there were Christian groups in the world now that was playing real hard rock and punk music. I found out about this group and a few others from a concert that I went to in the city. They and a few others opened up for, oh, I can’t remember who at the moment. Maybe it was Pillar or Skillet. Any way, I was so impressed with their sound that as soon as I possibly could I picked up this album. I also picked up a few others from that concert that was either playing or I got a flier about. I bought them based on what I heard and after listening to the CDs I fell in love even more. This album is so over produced it almost sounds fake. The problem is that it is done so well that you can’t help but listen to the whole thing in one sitting. To me there is just something about this album that screams don’t stop once you have started. The songs are unique to each other but they flow into each other so nicely. This is why it is so difficult to shut it off after it has started.
That is all I have for now.
Signing off.
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