Sunny Day Real Estate Fleshes Out Sound On Fourth Album

For the recording of its recently released fourth album, "The Rising Tide," Sunny Day Real Estate hightailed it out of their home state of Washington and worked at Dreamland Studios in upstate New York. Guitarist Dan Hoerner said taking full advantage of the winter wonderland outside the studio nearly cost the band its producer Lou Giordano.

"It was a beautiful place to record in the winter when we did," said Hoerner. "We almost killed our producer. We built a huge luge run with the snow for inner tubes. He got in and went barreling out of it and smacked his head on a tree. We literally thought he was dead."

When not risking life and limb on luge runs, Giordano and Sunny Day Real Estate committed the 11 tracks of "The Rising Tide" to tape. The final result is equal parts lulling guitars in songs such as "The Ocean" and "Tearing In My Heart" and the heavier riff-rock of "Killed by An Angel" and "One."

Featuring the added instrumentation of strings and keyboards, Sunny Day's latest effort (the band's first for new label Time Bomb) represents the actualization of ideas that the band has had for a while. "It's something we've wanted to do for a long time," Hoerner said. "It's a vision we've had for years, really, and it just fell out this time. We had good label support and a good-enough situation to spend the time necessary to get it done. 'Rising Tide' is the most cohesive and well-thought-out record we've made. It comes closest to where we want to be."

A recurring lyrical topic on Sunny Day Real Estate's new album--addressed most directly on the song "Television"--is increasing media saturation. "A lot of the lyrics are in response to what we see and feel and there's an element of that there," Hoerner said. "Whether it's a feeling of outside influences creeping into your consciousness of the fact of physical infection, that's definitely something we're responding to."

Over the last couple of years, Hoerner has been working on a collection of short stories called "The Little Monkey Chronicles" that will feature illustrations by artist Chris Thompson, who did the album art for Sunny Day Real Estate's debut "Diary." Inspired and influenced by authors Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, Hoerner said the songwriting and storywriting process share some common ground, but added writing music yields more immediate results.

"It's totally the same thing for me. When I write music, it's a stream of consciousness, jamming on ideas and trying to get riffs to bring to the band--or meditative acoustic things I do on the farm for pleasure to take my mind away--it's similar. When I'm writing, I let the story unfold in my head and scratch down the narrative as I go. There's way more revision and going back to make it flow. Music's more direct--either a riff sounds good or it doesn't."

Currently on the road in support of "The Rising Tide," Sunny Day Real Estate has picked up bassist Nick Macri and keyboardist-guitarist Greg Suran for the tour. Hoerner said fan response at the first few whistlestops has been phenomenal. "It's hugely important. It's part of the reason why we do it. We like to get that feedback and energy. The shows have been crazy, sold out, we have this amazing feeling of unity. I like that a lot. It's our fans and us and we all feel like we're doing it together."