After a full week of the excessive chaos that descends on Austin, Tx., each March, locals and guests alike welcomed a feel-good journey down rock’n’roll reminiscence lane yesterday (March 16) as a part of a particular afternoon SPIN live performance with Sunny Day Real Property, the Get Up Kids and Die Spitz at Stubb’s BBQ.
For Sunny Day Real Estate, the present was their third on a just-launched North American tour celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their post-hardcore basic Diary, which went on to inadvertently obtain legendary standing amid the nascent style generally known as “emo.” That wave had already crested and risen once more when the Get Up Kids launched their beloved 1999 sophomore LP, One thing To Write House About, which helped set up Vagrant Data as the haven for emo up-and-comers similar to Dashboard Confessional and Saves the Day.
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These disparate milestones got here collectively on a day when Get Up Kids frontman Matt Prior was celebrating his forty sixth birthday, making all of it the extra celebratory for the band to be performing One thing To Write House About in its entirety for simply the second time ever. The presence on the invoice of younger Austin rock quarter Die Spitz bolstered the multi-generational vibes, as grizzled punks may very well be seen banging heads and pumping their fists proper alongside headphone-wearing toddlers hoisted excessive on their mother and father’ shoulders.
Regardless of a number of members battling the kinds of diseases one can barely hope to keep away from after taking part in eight native exhibits in 5 days, Die Spitz nonetheless introduced the thunder with a sound steeped in delightfully grungy sludge. Acknowledging the honor of taking part in with “two kings of emo,” main vocalist Ava Schrobilgen appeared notably worse for the put on health-wise, however that didn’t cease her from climbing an on-stage speaker rig to sing the set-closing “Evangeline” from Die Spitz’s 2023 debut, Tooth. The group additionally performed some as-yet-unreleased new materials, which ought to serve them nicely on an upcoming spring tour with Teen Mortgage. Be there earlier than all of your cool associates speak your ear off about Die Spitz six months from now.
From the opening drum fusillade and fretboard slides of “Vacation,” the Get Up Kids supplied instantaneous emo euphoria throughout a whole run-through of One thing To Write House About. “It has been some time since we performed a few of these songs,” Prior admitted, however that actually didn’t deter the viewers from singing together with each phrase. The Kansas Metropolis-reared combo threw in a winking nod to Austin with a snippet of “Deep in the Coronary heart of Texas” earlier than “I’m a Loner Dottie, A Insurgent” and, after a loud squeal of amplifier suggestions, deemed mentioned sound to be “the greatest wave of emo.”
Albums similar to Write House marked an vital shift in emo from the extra brooding fare of the style’s forerunners to a mode knowledgeable by shiny melodies and pressing tempos — a mix that felt good yesterday as the solar often peered by dense grey clouds. Whether or not Get Up Kids will proceed to revisit this landmark venture on stage stays to be seen, however as a part of this Austin one-off, the expertise undoubtedly put large smiles on a complete lot of faces.
“It’s wonderful to assume this all began 30 years in the past in Seattle and now we’re right here,” Sunny Day Real Property frontman Jeremy Enigk advised the crowd early in the band’s headlining set, which comprised a whole efficiency of the genre-defining Diary. SDRE’s trials and tribulations have been nicely documented, however the band has stabilized since returning to the highway in 2022 after a 12-year break and was visibly moved by the response. “It’s so superior to look out at all of your smiling faces on the market,” Enigk mentioned. “Thanks for sharing your pleasure with us.”
Three a long time on, anthems similar to “Seven,” “In Circles” and “Tune About an Angel” nonetheless induce the chills, their energy solely magnified with the passage of time. Unique members Enigk, guitarist Dan Hoerner and drummer William Goldsmith, augmented by multi-instrumentalist Greg Suran and bassist Chris Jordan, imbued the typically inscrutable materials with new ranges of emotional resonance and depth of feeling — qualities which made Diary so distinctive in the first place.
What’s extra, followers have been handled to dwell performances of a number of Diary tracks not often performed in the ’90s or subsequent reunion excursions. Everybody however Enigk and Jordan left the stage for “Pheurton Skeurto,” a beguiling piano quantity with an nearly nursery rhyme cadence, whereas the earworm guitar riff on the hard-charging “Spherical” belied its near-total absence from the band’s setlists for 30 years. In one other neat twist, the set opened with Hoerner and Suran alone and strumming the chiming opening portion of the tune “8.” Written throughout the Diary period however not launched till 1995’s LP2 (after which SDRE broke up for the first of a number of occasions), it was a reminder of how music can typically be an amazing unifier, whether or not rooted in its unique circumstance or recast in a completely totally different context.
That’s why the seven-minute present nearer “Novum Vetus” hit additional laborious. Solely SDRE’s second new tune since the early 2000s, it’s based mostly round a beforehand unfinished piece of music from a quick interval in 1997 when unique bassist Nate Mendel was contemplating rejoining the band. “Each open door is a world turned on its aspect / all this stuff we’ve mentioned earlier than linger on,” Enigk sang, his phrases straddling the chasm between uncertainty and hope at a time when such a distinction is extra significant than ever.
The Diary tour resumes Might 1 in Raleigh, N.C., and two days later, the group will launch a brand new song-by-song model of the album recorded dwell final 12 months at Seattle’s London Bridge studio.
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