Earlier this year, Washington rocker Jeremy Enigk, best known for fronting seminal ’90s emo band Sunny Day Real Estate, announced a solo acoustic tour. His first solo trek in several years, the run will bring him to our very own Mercy Lounge TONIGHT, April 15 for what, we believe, will be his first solo Nashville show ever. And, if that wasn’t exciting enough on its own, Enigk announced last week that he’s finally working on new music as well, for the first time in six years. Tickets to the show are available now right here, and you can find out more about Enigk and openers El May and Sound & Shape below!
JEREMY ENIGK
Hailing from Seattle, Washington, singer-songwriter Jeremy Enigk first rose to fame in the early ’90s, when he and his band Sunny Day Real Estate helped shape and popularize the second wave of the emo movement, beginning with their incredible ’94 debut, Dairy. Though, today, their influence might be a bit under-apprecated at the mainstream level, they managed to set the tone for an entire musical chapter which proudly continues on, and near single-handledly bridged the gap between emo and post-hardcore. During the band’s first breakup, from ’95-’97 (they would subsequently return to release two more albums), Jeremy first began experimenting with writing solo, adopting a slower and more orchestrated sound with his debut, Return of the Frog Queen. It would be a decade before Enigk began to pursue solo songwriting once more (his other band, The Fire Theft, lasted from ’01-’04), but, throughout the mid to late ’00s, he produced a string of releases, with his latest, 2009’s OK Bear, returning to a more SDRE-esque heavy and dynamic sound. Though he had built some momentum touring alone, a 2009 Sunny Day Real Estate reunion would once again sidetrack Enigk’s solo career, and, while it seemed a new record could emerge from that run, we ultimately just got one new Sunny Day single before the group retreated to inactivity. As explained in the Pledge Music campaign set up to fund and track the progress of his upcoming album, Jeremy has been writing throughout the past several years, and is finally gearing up to give us the new record we’ve been long waiting for. Though it likely won’t arrive until late this year, if not 2016, expect to hear a few new tracks (plus solo and SDRE favorites) tonight at Mercy Lounge.
EL MAY
Los Angeles based El May, the live alias of Australian-born multi-instumentalist Lara Meyerratken, is fantastically poppy, blissfully indie project, whose eponymous debut album arrived in 2010. El May followed that up with fantastic (and fantastically underrated) sophomore release The Other Person Is You last year, and is known for her collaborations with the likes of Ben Lee, Nada Surf, Crooked Fingers, and more.
SOUND & SHAPE
Proggy local alt-rock group Sound & Shape have been tapped to get this show started, and, while they might be the oddballs on tonight’s bill, they’re definitely bred from the same school of influence as Jeremy Enigk’s prior projects. The trio’s fourth album, Bad Actors, dropped last fall and their road-worn live show is a seriously good reason to show up early.
Jeremy Enigk, El May, and Sound & Shape will perform tonight, April 15 at Mercy Lounge. The show is 18+, begins at 8 p.m. (doors at 7 p.m.), and tickets are available for $13-15.
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