| Diary | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Sunny Day Real Estate |
| Cover: | Sunny_Day_Real_Estate_-_Diary.jpg |
| Recorded: | November 1993 |
| Studio: | Idful, Chicago, Illinois |
| Length: | 52:47 |
| Label: | Sub Pop |
| Producer: | Brad Wood |
| Next Title: | Sunny Day Real Estate |
| Next Year: | 1995 |
Diary is the debut studio album by American rock band Sunny Day Real Estate, released on May 10, 1994. The album is considered by many to be a defining emo album of the second wave, and key in the development of its subgenre, Midwest emo. It has also been called the missing link between post-hardcore and the nascent emo genre.[1]
Diary was remastered and reissued in 2009, with bonus tracks "8" and "9" from their 1993 7-inch Thief, Steal Me a Peach and newly written liner notes.[2]
The songlist started with six tracks written by Thief, Steal Me a Peach, a project started when bassist Nate Mendel went on tour with his other project Christ on a Crutch, and drummer William Goldsmith invited his friend Jeremy Enigk to jam with him and guitarist and then singer Dan Hoerner. The first songs afterwards had titles regarding their order in composing - "Seven", "8" and "9", though only the first appeared on Diary. The band had a tradition of numbering songs for title long before Jeremy's arrival. The songs "47" and "48" were actually the two first songs written since his arrival before resetting the song's numbers. The album was notably released on the exact same day that Weezer's self-titled album (blue album) was released; May 10, 1994.
The album was released on CD, vinyl and cassette. The vinyl has been released in three limited edition pressings, all of which are out of print. The first was a multi-colored splatter vinyl, released on Glitterhouse Records in Germany. The second was a black vinyl pressing on Sub Pop. A repress followed on green vinyl (and possibly a second black pressing), but the label for this second pressing states "Edition II" under the Sub Pop logo. All three vinyl pressings are missing 3 songs that are present on the CD, possibly due to the time constraints of vinyl, as the album clocks in at 53 minutes. The missing songs are "Round", "48" and "Grendel". The 2009 double LP re-issue contains all 11 songs from the original album, and two bonus tracks.
The artwork of the album was almost entirely done by Chris Thompson. However, the "butterfly" drawing on the album's booklet was created by Nate Mendel's father. The album cover features figures similar to those of popular children's toy Little People.
The album was different from those released by popular Seattle grunge bands at the time. Its melodic but urgent sound has had a clear mark on future emo groups.[3] Despite being the only album by the band to never chart, it has since become the seventh best-selling album released on Sub Pop, having sold more than 231,000 copies.[4] In a retrospective article about the 40 greatest emo albums of all time, Rolling Stone wrote that Diary "captures the vague inner-turmoil of Enigk's lyrics and propels those turbulent emotions to the heavens."[5]
Diary has also appeared on best-of emo album lists by Junkee,[6] Kerrang!,[7] LA Weekly,[8] and NME,[9] as well as by journalists Leslie Simon and Trevor Kelley, in their book Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture (2007).[10] The album was ranked at number 155 on Spins "The 300 Best Albums of the Past 30 Years (1985–2014)" list.[11] Ian Cohen from Pitchfork wrote that "it's the terse yet tender delivery of the lyrics from Jeremy Enigk that ultimately drew people in." "In Circles" and "Seven" appeared on a best-of emo songs list by Vulture.[12]
"Seven" was featured in Guitar Hero 5, and it was also released on the Rock Band Network on July 5, 2010.[13]
In 2020, Vulture ranked "Seven" and "In Circles" as the 5th and 11th greatest emo songs of all time, respectively.[14]
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