Buzzgrinder whipped up a little post today about a new Sunny Day Real Estate album.
I say “whipped up,” because they certainly embellished something.
Here’s the “scoop”:
Regular Buzzgrinderer Travis Lee dropped us a tasty tidbit. He just saw Sunny Day Real Estate in Minneapolis, and during the new song they’ve been playing on their reunion tour, they said something along the lines of “it’s going to be a fun one to record.†Trav also said the new jam was “a beast.â€
So the word “it” can be substituted for just about anything now, huh?
Yes, the band wrote a new song. And if you were playing with 4 other people and created the first full song in well over a decade with that same cast, wouldn’t you want to record it before you lost the chance to do so?
It would make sense that SDRE would want to record the song. But an entire record? In numerous interviews they’ve mentioned that they don’t know if they have it in them at the moment to record an album, and that’s simply from scheduling conflicts (a fact I found out during the research and interview phase of writing the Sunny Day article for The Boston Phoenix)
It’s fantastic that they managed to squeak out a song (and a pretty solid one) in the short amount of time between their rehearsals and their other projects. But an entire album? That’s quite a leap of faith, and a rumor that could really take hold of SDRE’s fairly rabid fan base. They could do it, who knows, but to publish something that says:
So yeah, new Sunny Day record. You heard it here first. Maybe.
Is really taking advantage of fans and folks who go to Buzzgrinder as a trusted source.
It’s true that this is premature and that there’s a lot to suggest it won’t happen. Then again, there’s a new song, and by all accounts things are clicking, and Dan at least is on record as saying he’d really like to do it, and Jeremy says that when Sunny Day happens, it just happens, so… it just might.
Yes, all these are important variables to keep in mind, but they are just variables nonetheless. Aside from the appearance of a new song in the band’s set, there is nothing factual to actually suggest a new album is in the works. The band members have numerous other commitments (Dan’s got a family; Jeremy’s got solo stuff; William is in a bunch of other bands; Nate just recorded with the Jealous Sound and once Foo Fighters starts doing stuff again he’s covered) and in a number of interviews have said, while they’d like to record an album, it might not be in the cards.
Now, most of the interviews were most likely conducted around August (I know that because that’s when I was trying to figure out interview stuff with Sub Pop). And most of the interviews deny any song coming out. So, you have to figure that between August and September they either 1) wrote the entire song in full or 2) figured out the missing links from earlier practices in order to make it a full song. Still, that’s a solid month at the very least it took for them to write that song, if those calculations are indeed correct (and they are by no means correct). You have to figure it will take a while to 1) write an entire album’s worth of material and 2) record it. And the band has been open about the scheduling difficulties (wanting to reunite in 2007 but the timing didn’t work, etc), that it wouldn’t surprise me if an album didn’t come out.
And it wouldn’t surprise me if their new song doesn’t end up getting recorded either: after all, it took this long for “Bucket of Chicken,” “9,” and “Spade and Parade” to be released on more than just a short-pressed 7″. Who knows, they could end up just recording a single (especially in the days of digital downloads where bands are more privy to do just that.)
Whatever the case may be, it’s totally ok to say “this is possible,” but for a music news site like Buzzgrinder to say “this will happen” before giving any sort of disclaimer (like “maybe”) without any actual evidence except for a new song is a bit reckless.