American emo band Sunny Day Real Estate recently performed in New York City for the first time in 13 years at Brooklyn Steel on September 29, 2022, the first night of two consecutive performances at this venue. According to Andrew Sacher from the Brooklyn Vegan, reclusive vocalist Jeremy Enigk and the band’s general aversiveness to meeting crowd expectations and preferences as to what songs they’ll perform during each set, the band’s opening performance of their song “Pillars” let everyone in the audience known that Sunny Day Real Estate’s New York City debut 13 years in the making promised “the show of a lifetime.”

On the first of two consecutive nights of performing at this venue, Enigk and the rest of Sunny Day Real Estate, including original members guitarist Dan Hoerner and drummer William Goldsmith, displayed pure and genuine joy not only being able to perform songs from all four of their distinctly-different albums such as Diary, LP2, How It Feels To Be Something On, and The Rising Tide, but also that they had the opportunity to see bouts of cavernous fans all coming out to see Sunny Day Real Estate’s East Coast New York City revival. Flanked by live bassist Chris Jordan and Superchunk’s Jason Narducy on guitar and backing vocals, Sunny Day Real Estate, after a thirteen-year hiatus, reclaimed their title as “progenitors of the Midwest Emo Sound,” as the band refines the rawness that defines the emo genre and recycles the sound into the smooth emo rock that the band can call its own.

Despite the varying approaches and tones of each album, since the band’s 1994 album Diary preaches a softer, ground zero version of edginess paired with perpetual piano is so different from the band’s latest, artsier album, The Rising Tide, released in the year 2000, the band was able to create a setlist for the September 29-30 performances that sounded entirely cohesive while keeping the audience entirely engaged. With an opening performance by The Appleseed Cast, a band whose members long-held Sunny Day Real Estate as their prime inspiration when making their music, there was no dull moment during the two bands’ joint performance.

Sunny Day Real Estate is currently traveling through the United States for their Fall 2022 North American Tour from 9/13 to 12/18. Check out the dates and locations for their remaining performances here.