Sunny Day Real Estate reunites for tour, wants to make you cry again

Emerging from Seattle's heady, aggressive grunge scene in the early 1990s, Sunny Day Real Estate did the unthinkable. It made punk pretty.

It didn't hurt that singer Jeremy Enigk looked like an angel, with wide, innocent eyes and a wounded stare. His voice -- high, lilting and perfectly pitched -- was unexpectedly powerful, and his lyrics were dusted with a deep and pervasive sorrow. So was the rest of the music, with its churning, melodic guitars and heavy, pointed rhythm section.

But the magic didn't last long. Internal tensions and Enigk's desire to pursue a solo career split up the band after just a few years and two full-length albums, 1994's "Diary" and its follow-up, "LP2." Still, the group managed to amass a sizable cult following as progenitors of the emo sound.

They were a keen influence on many of today's chart-topping acts, including Fall Out Boy and Paramore; in fact, "Diary" has gone on to sell more than 230,000 copies, making it among the top 10 most successful releases in Seattle label Sub Pop's history.

Now, the original Sunny Day Real Estate lineup (Enigk, guitarist Dan Hoerner, bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith) is hitting the road on a 21-city tour that kicked off last month and includes sold-out shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim today and the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday.

"When Nate called me, I had to sit down -- I was gonna pass out," said Hoerner of the day in February that Mendel, who is also the bassist for the Grammy Award winning rock act Foo Fighters, contacted him with the idea of a reunion tour. "I was blown away, floored and very excited."

Stagecoach 2009: The Knitters -- X marks the spot

To understand the great debt that first-wave punk rock owes to the early “hillbilly” country music of the Appalachian Mountains, one need look no further than the Knitters. Led by ‘70s punk legends Exene Cervenka and John Doe of X, the Knitters played a host of unassuming country classics, including “Poor Old Heartsick Me,” by the Carter Family, with admirable purity of purpose on Sunday night in the Palomino tent.

Mellowed by age in the edgy way that only former punkers can be, the two seasoned performers bantered back and forth with each other and the crowd like a bizarro Martin and Lewis.

“You guys rock!” yelled a guy in baggy shorts from atop one of the many hay bales in the tent. “Thank you, so do you,” said Doe, before asking Cervenka, “What should we play next?”

“I thought we’d play some Carter Family,” Cervenka said sweetly, in her odd maid’s uniform with polka dot apron, red-and-white-striped tights, loose-fitting boots, red bangles with lipstick to match and stringy hair just a shade more fierce than her lips -- the only indication that she has not spent her entire life baking cookies in the high plains.

“Carter Family, who’s that?” deadpanned Doe. “They’re not related to Mötley Crüe are they?”

Stagecoach 2009: Lady Antebellum reconstructs country-pop

Occupying Stagecoach’s coveted aspiring country-pop, pre-sundown main stage slot, Nashville’s Lady Antebellum showered its willing audience with candy-coated hooks and anthem-driven rock licks on Sunday afternoon. Lead singers Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley emanated comfort on the huge stage, tossing memorable lyrical riffs back and forth like softballs.

The pair possesses remarkable vocal clarity. Scott’s voice conjures a bit of the powerful, lilting wistfulness of Alison Krauss (who earned accolades when she appeared onstage with Brad Paisley last night), but there is much more to her than sweetness. She belts out tunes from deep within her diaphragm, with a bit of a low-end growl. I’d like to imagine Taylor Swift will be like this when she’s all grown up and a Jonas Brother is no longer capable of breaking her heart.

“Since I’m the only lady in Lady Antebellum, I feel like singing a song for all you ladies,” Scott said late in the set. “If you’ve been through heartbreak and you want to tell your ex-boyfriend where to go, this song’s for you.”

What followed was a soaring, empowered rendition of “Long Gone,” about a woman who no longer takes any guff or accepts any heartache from a thoughtless man. “That girl is long gone. Boy you missed the boat, it just sailed away…. Betcha thought I’d never be that strong,” sang Scott, reminding her audience of the delicious tang and bitter bite of a feisty, female-driven, country power ballad.

Kelley graciously took over where Scott left off, his voice deep, rich and smooth as toffee, with just the right amount of cactus scratch. Also his hair, along with the locks of every other band member, was a perfectly coifed vision of fluffed, intentionally mussed loveliness. (Somewhere in WeHo a hairdresser is shivering but doesn’t know why.)

The only problem with the band’s nearly hourlong set was that they played too many covers. Spirited but otherwise unremarkable versions of “Hurts So Good” by John Mellencamp, the Doobie Brothers classic “Long Train Runnin’” and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” only took away from the time the band had to hammer home its own easy-feeling brand of lite-country rock.

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: Getty Images

Stagecoach 2009: The Reverend Horton Heat's tent revival

Hallelujah and praise be to the gods of psychobilly. After nearly a quarter of a century of relentlessly heavy, big-sky balladeering, the very Reverend Horton Heat of Dallas is alive and well. The 50-year-old king of populist rockabilly destroyed Stagecoach in the Palomino tent on Saturday night, putting the snakeskin in boots, the drunk in whiskey and the chain in wallets.

Inspiring what may have been the festival's very first cowboy-hat-laden mosh pit, Heat pushed his hour-long set into overdrive in a brick-orange jacket and a slicked-back 'do that put the evening's less devoted old-school, country-loving denizens to shame. With a voice like a rusty lawnmower, he growled out favorite after favorite, including the cult classic "Bales of Cocaine," about a sweat-stained man of the land who trades his farm in Texas for a farm in Peru (after a mother lode of Colombian gold rains down on him in the high plains). Hearing the song, it's impossible not to cast a mental stone back to one's love of that other country-cocaine favorite, "Cocaine Blues," by the late-great Johnny Cash.

Levity abounded in the verbally loose, musically air-tight set, especially when Heat tested out a song from the band's upcoming album called, "Ain't No Saguaros in Texas." Explaining that Texans are obsessed with saguaro cacti, even though said succulents don't exist in the Lone Star State, Heat went on to set the record straight about the fact that saguaros can be found only in Arizona and northern Mexico.

The fact that saguaros are a prominent part of Texan iconography "always perplexes us in Texas, and I know the people in Arizona are fed up with the whole deal too," he said as the crowd chuckled and what could only be Arizonans squealed with insider delight.

By the time Heat's stand-up bass player, Jimbo Wallace, slid his bass on its side, plucking away at its finger-thick strings like a devil dancer at the gates of hell, and Heat stepped up onto its shining, round side, the crowd had lost its mind, spinning around and around in a thoughtless pit of pushing and shoving, as if country still signified an inner anger more dangerous than sin itself.

Post and photos by Jessica Gelt

 

Stagecoach 2009: Darius Rucker throws a Hootienanny

Who knew that country music lovers had such a soft spot for Hootie and the Blowfish? When former Hootie front man, Darius Rucker, took to the main stage at Stagecoach on Saturday, he didn't just play the pop-coated countrified favorites of his post-Hootie solo career, he unleashed the hits of Hootie past.

The crowd responded with equal enthusiasm to both, proving that Stagecoach is not simply a celebration of country music, it's an ode to red-white-and-blue Americana. As country takes its place as the new kingmaker of re-striving rockers, the definition of what constitutes a country song has stretched to include anything that contains a wistful twang of guitar and vocals, and most important, patriotic amber-waves-of-grain-style lyrics.

"If you love your space and you love your freedom," crooned Rucker at one point during his sun-soaked set, while big-chested women in tiny bikinis spun like tops in the yellow-green grass of the polo field. Within moments of ending a slow number flecked with worry, regret and whiskey, Rucker launched into the Hootie mega hit "Only Wanne Be With You," which owes much more to white-hat darlings Blues Traveler and the Dave Matthews Band than Garth Brooks. (Meanwhile, in Montgomery, Ala., Hank Williams is rolling over in his grave.)

At the end of his set, Rucker gained much street cred when Brad Paisley, the master of paisley and fine ladies and funny-sad songs, joined him on stage to sing one chorus of his closing song, a Hank Williams Jr. cover, "Why Do You Drink"?

"Is that Brad Paisley?" a man in the crowd yelled.

"Yeah, Brad Paisley," another answered, and in a moment all on the field were on their feet, proving that country music is about loving an icon of contemporary Americana, golf rock-adjacent or otherwise.

--Jessica Gelt

Photo credit: Getty Images

Coachella 2009: The Cure, still sad after all these years

You have to admire a man who has spent the entirety of his adult life, so far, in eyeliner and lipstick. Looking every bit the Ghost of Angsty-Teen Christmas Past, Robert Smith has changed very little since he stole countless confused and youthful hearts during the Cure's 1980s uber-Goth heyday. He's still got the same face and stubborn pout, but his cherubic roundness has hardened into the angular resolve of a middle-aged man who has loved and lost one too many times.

Watching Smith perform from my post in the cool, damp polo field grass, it struck me that just as Friday's headliner, Paul McCartney, represented my parents' defining musical moment, Robert Smith and the Cure represented mine. I wasn't 5 when I listened to the Cure's songs; I was a hormonal, aching, irritated, inspired, vivacious and cruel 13-year-old girl who needed a band like the Cure to help me make sense of the backward young-adult reality I was so suddenly encountering.

When the band played the ominous but classic co-dependent love-song-in-denial "Lullaby," with its most aching line, "The spiderman is having me for dinner tonight," I remembered how the passively creepy little ditty used to sound so feral and ahead of its time. Especially for a girl still going to Milli Vanilli and Sweet Sensation concerts. Sunday night,  the song, along with many others the band played, sounded slightly wan and uninspired. The Cure's churning wash of guitars, lamentful and plodding bass lines and Smith's signature voice of wavering sorrow never quite came together to punch you in the guts with its debilitating one-two of deep need and thunderous want.

Coachella 2009: Perry Farrell changes paradigm, mum as to nature of new paradigm

After playing a prancing, preening and charmingly goofy love-fest of a set with Etty, his wife of seven years, and guitarist Nick Maybury, Perry Farrell wiped himself down with a white towel and graciously received  questions from the press.

His first Q & A was with celebstoner.com. Eric Bobo of Cypress Hill, who played percussion during his Satellite Party set, joined him to tag-team answer what were surely some of the evening's most awesome questions. When my turn was up, Farrell led me to a shaded alcove and his handlers pulled out two white plastic chairs.

"I used to write for Lollapalooza magazine," I gushed. "So I've interviewed you a ton. I had lunch with you and Norman Lear that one time." He blinked and smiled without recognition. "Your set was great, really fun," I said, recovering my notorious cool. Then he came alive, his eyes flashed warmth and he smiled beneficently. "Thank you so much."

"So you're recording a new Trent Reznor-produced album?" I asked. His eyes flashed and he leaned in close to my ear. I liked that. "That's a rumor I need to dispel," he said sharply. "Albums are, to me, a thing of the past. Except if you're a young group and you have eight songs that you want to go out and perform.

"I don't even believe in selling music," he continued, on a roll now. "I believe in giving it away in creative ways, and beautiful parties and festivals."

So, as it turns out, Farrell informed me, Reznor simply produced a few songs. Two "oldies" and two "newies," one called "Embrace the Darkness." The reason Jane's Addiction doesn't need albums, he said, is because "Jane's is like a classic car. You can chrome it and put gorgeous paint on it. But some things you can't put on it."

Another news flash soon emerged: Farrell is planning a new festival outside of the 18-year-old Lollapalooza. "It's for scene makers and it's called 'Scene Maker,' " he explained. Where and what and how, I asked, excited. "I'm not gonna tell you. I can only tell you it will be a brand new format, a whole new paradigm," he replied. Darn it! Stay cool, Jess, casually pry it out of him.

Coachella 2009 Day 3: Brian Jonestown Massacre makes peace

So intense is Brian Jonestown Massacre's epic coolness and greasy, '60s-streaked grittiness that on Sunday afternoon in the Mojave tent, the band of eight appeared almost as studiously typecast as the Village People -- if the Village People were influenced by crunchy, post-psychedelic guitar rock instead of groovy disco beats.

Or maybe it was just Joel Gion with his super-beefy lamb-chop sideburns, shaking his tambourine and maracas while wearing a fisherman's cap, a stonewashed jean jacket and aviator glasses, that conjured the connection.

Either way, the crowd had plenty of time to entertain useless notions such as those during the band's set. Singer Anton Newcombe, known for explosive bursts of anger and bizarre, often erratic behavior (he is a bit of a cult figure in the L.A. rock scene), played most of the show with his back to much of the audience, showing and giving practically nothing of himself to his rabid fans, many of whom, no doubt, hoped to catch his fever and feel the sting of his oddball spite.

Watching the limp, fragile singer onstage, seemingly defanged, I couldn't help but wonder, is this the same man who randomly cornered me at a party years ago, asked me if I would kill myself for him, and then faced with a definitive "no," proceeded to chastise me for lacking imagination?

As the set began picking up speed, two muscled jocks, one in a wife beater and the other in a Kobe Bryant jersey, began heckling Newcombe from the front of the stage, dropping merciless F-bomb clusters on him between songs, hoping to get a rise. They didn't even receive a swell. The band continued to play its rolling brand of rail-hopping blues/dirt rock, part Kinks, part Question Mark and the Mysterians, part Animals.

Five or six F-bomb blasts later, Newcombe leaned slowly into the mic and said, "Thanks everybody for hanging out and  watching us. I hope you enjoyed other bands," before slipping offstage 10 minutes early.

I felt a vague sense of disquiet and melancholy, like a moment of import had passed without my recognizing it and would never come again. I wasn't sure who to blame more: Myself, Newcombe or the losers in the front row.

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo of Anton Newcombe, left, by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Coachella 2009 Day 2: Gang Gang Dance and the anatomy of trance

Dressed in shiny black leather stiletto ankle boots, black skinny jeans and a loose black 2004 Missy Elliott/Beyoncé tour T-shirt, Lizzi Bougatsos howled with abandon, banged on roto toms and flipped her long, dusky hair through the heat-baked late night air during Gang Gang Dance's headlining set in the Gobi tent Saturday night.

At once feral and coquettishly giggly, Bougatsos seems like the kind of girl you might dance with to Electric Light Orchestra in your living room after a long night of bar hopping with friends. The rest of the band, clad in what resembled early OP-inspired surfer gear, kept the beats, buzzing guitar riffs and synth overloads coming strong and steady, but it was Bougatsos who stole the show.

Her trippy persona, high voice, spaced out vibe and oblique onstage banter throw her in the mix with a number of other female performers at this year's festival, most notably M.I.A. and Ida No of Glass Candy, whose moody, dry humor and loopy verve have rained like an erratic but refreshing storm over Coachella's willing audiences for much of the weekend.

Gang Gang's music is driven by a repetitive electronica that both numbs you and primes you for more of the same. A sonic weirdness pervades, creating an almost airy confusion. Call it "atmospherica." The beats beg a question, but an answer never arrives. Perhaps the query itself is too vague.

Toward the end of the set, Bougatsos announced: "On another note, together we're going to go to the Caribbean." Almost immediately, a twisted brand of adult contemporary-esque steel drum beat began clinking with not quite demonic undertones. This is not your rich uncle's Caribbean. Rather, it's evocative of the angsty beach scene in "Cocktail," when an exotic Siren entices Tom Cruise to cheat on Elisabeth Shue, and the night is full of foreboding. Don't do it, Tom!

And then Gang Gang does.

Post and photo by Jessica Gelt

Coachella 2009: Henry Rollins and the killing fields

Square-jawed, muscled and sporting a surprisingly gray close-cropped coif, Henry Rollins took to the  Mojave Stage on Saturday to deliver a sometimes funny, often obvious, endearingly earnest spoken-word set that reminded many present why he is still one of rock's most hotly contested personalities.

People love him or they hate him, but they are very rarely undecided. Since the '80s, when Rollins fronted the L.A. hardcore band Black Flag, he has morphed from a rigidly self-righteous voice of anger at the agonies of living within a corrupt and broken America into a somewhat paternal, massively ethical funny man. Rollins, the middle-aged man, doesn't smoke or drink, exercises religiously and, as I learned during his set, expends much thought and effort in the pursuit of "learning something" about the world's greatest injustices.

During his nearly 50 minutes on stage, he touched on subjects including the perils of airline security in a newly paranoid world; the line he saw in front of the Palladium for New Kids on the Block; his trips to Iran, Beirut and Syria; and his emotions upon picking up a human jawbone from the earth in the "killing fields" of Cambodia.

At one point, he joked about how the blue gloves that a TSA agent donned to frisk him reminded him of the gloves his doctor wore when administering a prostate exam (conjuring up images I never thought my mind was capable of). "It's amazing to have a uniformed man on his knees in blue gloves fondling your testicles," he said, and the crowd howled.

At another point, he talked about seeing Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) being pulled into a back room at the airport to be searched and wanting to reach out and grab his shoulder to tell him how much he enjoyed his music growing up but holding back for fear that the authorities would think the balladeers were a "terrorist cell." If only! Most folk-rockin' terrorists, ever.

However, it was his touching, dark recollection of scavenging for human bones and teeth (which are unearthed each year when it rains, endlessly, always) in the killing fields that touched his listeners to their very core.  And for a brief moment, it was if we were all trying to learn something about the past in order to protect ourselves against similar future horrors.

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo by Michael Buckner / Getty Images