Don't have an account yet? Get the most out of your experience with a personalized all-access pass to everything local on events, music, restaurants, news and more. Photo by James Mitchell Evans. By bad news I'm referring to here, of course, is the simple songs of heartbreak and woe that Damien Jurado and Jeremy Enigk played this past Saturday that held the late-twenties through middle-aged crowd in an almost silent, reverent daze.
I swear I saw almost no head-bobbing, let alone dancing save one resilient swaying woman in the front row. Their reverence makes more sense in context: For much of this audience, these two artists had presumably soundtracked the angst of their early teenage years.
Jurado, meanwhile, came along a few years later and ended up signing with Sunny Day's label, Sub Pop, thanks to Enigk, a booster early on who made the label aware of him. The pair delivered inspired and endearingly imperfect sets on acoustic guitar Enigk also played keyboard , which could be expected of the first date in a tour that comes between recording and releasing albums for both artists.
Enigk was perpetually smiling, rocking back and forth on his heels, thrusting his face into the mike to hit those silvery, distinctive notes, and stepping back to play the beautifully simplistic melodies that made the original electric versions so catchy and exciting.
His slightly receding hairline and more rotund figure were the only separation from his emotive but quiet Sunny Day Real Estate famously refused interviews self of fifteen years ago. The first couple of songs he played on keys, from his solo albums, blurred together, but the last track before the encore had its moment of furious glory when Enigk slammed the bottom keys in a cacophony fitting his angst.
