Another Perspective: Dan Jordan’s track-by-track audio review of Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary
After the positive response from Dan Jordan’s last audio review, and a handful of recommendations for him to do, I put him to the test again with Sunny Day Real Estate‘s pioneering album Diary. Many of our readers, if not most, have heard stories of how Diary was a jumping point into the era of emo music. Most of the music I was into when I started getting into music stemmed from Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary influence, or so they say. Most classically, Dan Hoerner played with Chris Carrabba on So Impossible EP, which was one of those albums I played to death. From there, I wanted to play lead guitar like Hoerner. As I listened further into late 90s and early 00s music, flares of SDRE’s song structuring throughout the music I listened to sort of gave that silent nod back to Diary. At least, that’s what I assumed.
Of course, not many share my viewpoint. And further past that, Dan Jordan shares little to none of my viewpoints. For those who don’t know about Dan Jordan, he is a person who would be on the more extreme side of not listening to music. He sits in his room in England and plays video games all day. When he’s not playing video games, he’s either listening to sports radio or riding his bike around town. The first and last time he listened to an album in full was when I had him listen to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea last month. His musical knowledge is fairly minute, spanning only from video games, UK reality TV shows, and tid-bits from movies and radio. The last time he had a “favorite band” was when some idiot on a webcam chat room was playing Depeche Mode and Dan Jordan thought it (and he) was hilarious. Needless to say, he does not seek out music… music finds him.
Being a man of little music knowledge, Dan Jordan reflects a population outside of the indie music bubble readers of 402 most likely don’t belong to: the musically uneducated. That’s not to say they are musically uneducated as in they don’t know how to play a guitar or a flute, but they aren’t familiar with the rich history indie music today has built itself upon. With that, there are many albums we may consider “classic,” “legendary,” or “pioneering” and yet Dan Jordan and the majority of the world have no idea about such albums. Furthermore, if they are so legendary and influential, what would the layman or laywoman say about such an album? What of the person with no experience with music at all?
For those who cannot listen to the entire thing below (it’s kind of long) key excerpts have been transcribed below. Hope you enjoy!
Listen to (or download) the entire interview/review below!
Dan Jordan Reviews – Diary by 402productions
Quotes from the interview
On “Seven”
Dan Jordan: I think the vocals are too quiet. You can hear the instruments more than the vocals.
Nick Wan: Does it sound good though?
DJ: Yeah, but at times it feels like the instruments are flooding the vocals, you know what I mean? If this album sounds like how this song sounds, then this will be better [than In the Aeroplane Over the Sea]
NW: Why did they name it “Seven”?
DJ: Because this song is four minutes and forty-SEVEN seconds long.
On “In Circles”
DJ: This song sounds like bedtime music. Well, not anymore. Maybe that part was just a build up to the main bit.
On “Song About an Angel”
DJ: Probably about some girl he likes.
NW: What if it’s about an actual angel?
DJ: What? They don’t exist.
NW: You don’t know that.
DJ: I think he wants the angel to save the egg people from the fire [in regards to the album art].
DJ: This song was shit.
On “Round”
DJ: All these songs are sounding the same, can we stop listening to this now please? This song is alright, it’s almost chase music caliber.
On “47″
DJ: The guy on guitar sounds pretty good.
On “The Blankets Were The Stairs”
DJ: What does the song title mean? A blanket staircase, which doesn’t support anyone or anything. A trollcase.
NW: Metaphorically, what could it mean?
DJ: Maybe they can see the stairs but they can’t climb up the stairs to get to where they want, because they are blankets. I can’t really hear what they are saying because the instruments are too loud.
On “Pherton Skeurton”
NW: Is this your favorite song?
DJ: Yeah. Because it’s simple, just piano and vocals.
NW: But the last album we did was just guitar and vocals.
DJ: But piano gives out more pleasant sounds. It’s more professional.
On “48″
DJ: Not my favorite. Is this the second part of “47″? What’s he saying, “We’re inside”? I don’t like the scream that much.
On “Grendel”
DJ: It’s good. It’s relaxing. Apart from now. It just follows the pattern of all the other songs. It has a quiet build up and halfway through it sort of unleashes.
On “Sometimes”
DJ: This song is going to drag on.
On Diary in general
DJ: This album is better than the last album [Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea].
DJ: This could be his form of a diary. And these songs are just stories about his life.
DJ: This music is depressing. Because it sounds the same.
NW: You think every song has sounded the same?
DJ: Yeah. God damn it. This is shit.
NW: What’s the worst part about this album?
DJ: The album art. Because it tricked me into listening to this shit.
NW: If you were going to do an activity to this music, what would it be?
DJ: Maybe read a book.
NW: If you were going to eat something to this music, what would it be?
DJ: Maybe grapes. Or coffee cake. Something that’s soft so you can actually hear the music.
NW: Would you consider this soft rock?
DJ: Yeah.
NW: What would Simon Cowell say about this album?
DJ: “You have star quality.” I don’t think he would like it but he would know it’s good. He would know it would sell.
DJ: Where’s the song called “Diary”? I thought that there was always a song named after the album.
DJ: Emos would like this. Because it’s emo music.
NW: What if you were a rock band, like this band, and someone started calling you something other than rock music?
DJ: I would say that’s their interpretation.
NW: You wouldn’t feel angry?
DJ: No, because you’re making money and they aren’t.
DJ: Only one song on this album was better than Jazz Hands by Jordan Bolton.
DJ: 6/10. I know 402 Productions is a big fan of rating systems. I liked the more subtle parts. The quiet parts. But that’s often ruined by the louder parts. I liked the use of piano but not the lack of the piano. I recommend this to people who want to start a band and lack inspiration. This is just the basic shit a band needs to be playing in order to sound good to the mainstream. The mainstream emo. If you want to impress an emo you need to sound like this. This was worthy of background music. Something I would just listen to without noticing. It’s good because it’s worthy of being exposed to my ears.
On Sunny Day Real Estate in general
DJ: This is rock music.
NW: Is this what you would consider emo music?
DJ: Eh, scene music.
NW: What is scene music?
DJ: I don’t know what scene music is. It just sounded appropriate.
NW: What do you think emo music is, then?
DJ: Like, My Chemical Romance.
NW: What does Sunny Day Real Estate mean?
DJ: Um, it could be real estate agents who try to sell houses in Florida. There is tons of real estate in Florida.
DJ: This band sounds like a stepping stone band. Like a band before they moved on to a bigger band.
Closing thoughts
Sadly, I’m not too sure how much of my praising the album midway through played in Dan Jordan’s thoughts. He did mention that this album was “the basic shit a band needs to be playing to sound good to the mainstream emo”. However, Dan Jordan’s idea of emo music is My Chemical Romance. He continues on to mention that this album’s song structuring, of intricate verses met with heavily distorted choruses, was something that ruined many of the songs for him. Dan Jordan did nail the fact that this band was initially just rock music to him and that it was from the 90s. Something that may have been most interesting is idea that he didn’t believe this was emo music initially, nor did it sound like emo music (or at least, what he thought was emo music). This isn’t really a plus or minus against labeling subsequent SDRE-type music as emo, but rather an interesting point on labeling in general. Who the fuck cares what kind of music it’s listed under?
In a sort of interesting twist, Dan Jordan believes this to be a decent album to listen to as muzak. His interest in the slower, cleaner sounding parts of the album shines a bit of light on the type of music Dan Jordan would be interested in. However, his dislike of Neutral Milk Hotel’s ItAOtS is sort of baffling, as that was not only slower and cleaner (in fact, almost entirely acoustic) but also the vocals were more clearly audible, which was also a knock on Diary he had. If you listened to the review, you may have noticed some of the albums may bring a certain slower, quieter, cleaner sound to the table that Dan Jordan may actually like but we have yet to get to that point.
Finally, Dan Jordan’s little to no experience with music in contrast with the heavy dose of music analysis he is participating in may start to reflect in later reviews. We may have to get creative with what albums he’ll be listening to. Maybe a mixtape is in order?
