Are you ready to admit the Peter Gabriel factor? Or, even more frightening, the Yes and Rush factor? Not only does The Rising Tide dip its toes into sucking whirlpools of late '70s arena prog, but it stands as one of those albums that forces listeners to ponder the inevitable third act of even their most fond bands, wherein Our Hero finds his fate in a bloody climax of vocal effects, drums solos, eco-conscience, last-flash valiance, and fatal flubs. And while this specific Hamlet hasn't yet expired from the poison tip, his muse Orphelia is long gone, and the audience knows all about the venomed chalice. So what course brought Sunny Day Real Estate to this misfortune? The largest finger-pointing targets are producer Lou Giordano and the paring of the band into a trio.

Giordano, most widely known for his work with Live, dunks Sunny Day in a vat of liquid and covers them in chrome. The reflective surfaces serve only to magnify and spotlight the occasional songwriting errors. On past efforts, frontman Jeremy Enigk's passionate bleating benefited from indecipherability. The mystic and emotional force stemmed from his foreign throat. With greater control and pronunciation, Enigk now recalls a piping Jon Anderson, specifically "We Have Heaven" from Fragile. Giordano floats crystalline vocal layers above a flat silver landscape of swooning, fervent arena rock. With this highlighted clarity, Enigk can derail a track with one jutting word.

On "Rain Song" (there's that pesky, generic, Rainforest Café-brand environmentalism), Enigk drops his voice to repeat, "And it's candy," which isn't completely terrible until juxtaposed to the surrounding, fluttering castrato sighs. The real rub is how Enigk enunciates the bulging word like "khaan-DEE." It sticks out like a bellybutton on a supermodel. Similarly, "Snibe" becomes the fist-pumping "Mah-KET-place!" and "Gov-UN-ment!" song (or "that vocoder song") and "Television" is remembered at best as the "Tell-eh-vhiz-sheun-eoooo-ooo-yeoooo-ooooo-uooo" song (or "that digital didgeridoo song"), if at all. To further frustrate, Giordano laminates the uncountable layers of strings, pianos, plucked acoustics, and synths with tacky corn syrup. The obvious signifiers scream, "Hey! Lookee! I’m pretty," as much as slow-motion, auburn lighting, and slow dissolves do in a John Woo film.

Occasionally, the drama and props pay off. "The Ocean" slowly drops rippling pearls into molten quartz with sweeping effect. It's the loveliest the band have ever sounded. The closing title track shimmers like vintage Cure sloshing around inside a glass goblet. And Sunny Day must have been lucky band number 1,000,000 to name a song "One," as it tugs, dances, and punches with seductive pomp. Otherwise, The Rising Tide sits awash in new age imagery-- the ocean, rain, angels, the ocean again. How It Feels to Be Something On mesmerized intimacy, introspection, and Eastern textures. Here, that's all been discarded for Big Themes and Big Guitars-- alright for a Saturn drive through suburbia, but not the silk blanket you want to snuggle under.

After their temporary break-up, Sunny Day Real Estate regrouped with fresh spirit. The resulting album sounded like a band rediscovering itself over a batch of superb Enigk solo tracks. Yet Enigk has gone from exhaling, "If I break down/ All that I am," to preaching: "Snibe is a monster. He is willing to hurt others to retire rich and ugly. He kills the innocent to protect his control. Snibe is the greed of money and power. Snibe is in all of us." Somebody's been subscribing to The Nation. The best justification for the extended metaphor of "television" as "women" is that "she's in my head/ like television" and "she's cool and she's free/ like television." Well, at least she's not cable, then.

The songwriting here feels wrung from "jams." Splashes and driving rhythms replace intricacy and mood. Drummer William Goldsmith devotes the album to his high-hat. "Pish pish pish pish pish" go the little cymbals, as our British readers giggle. As Enigk wobbles his fingers over newly acquired bass strings and belts lines like "disappear into the sun!" it's hard to avoid Rush comparisons. The power trio with socially conscious singer/bassist equation also recalls the Police. But time transplants Mercury Rising-era Sting into Zenyatta Mondatta. Meanwhile, "Faces in Disguise" mimics the soft, slow ooze of Peter Gabriel's rainstick ballads. So, essentially, this is the pop record '70s prog bands would make in the '80s-- Big Generator and Power Windows for a new generation. Aside from two major blunders nothing is overtly offensive, but simply lachrymose and lactose. Sunny Day habitat needs candlelight and rugs, not spotlight riggings and astroturf.

Is this a certain progression for rock bands of this ilk? Chalk some of the scars up to Enigk's vocals being thrown into focus. But what makes maturing singers spit political slogans and earth-friendly spiritualism? Cash and high-hats are easy culprits. For the benefit of audiences, songwriters in emotional bands are best left in states of emotional turmoil. Sadly, Enigk seems to be generally comfortable with himself. That's no fun.

-Brent DiCrescenzo