Jeremy Enigk - World Waits

Genre rock Publisher Lewis Hollow External Links Official Jeremy Enigk Website Official Lewis Hollow Website

There was a period of time, roughly four months during my sophomore year in college, that Sunny Day Real Estate's first two albums, Diary and LP2, provided the soundtrack to much of my life. There was something about the shifting dynamics and lead singer Jeremy Enigk's soaring voice that stirred some pretty deep feelings for me and the two albums were constant companions. But for some reason I've never really been able to pinpoint, I fell out with the band and never followed up with them much beyond those two albums. I knew Enigk left the band for awhile to pursue his faith and to record a solo album then reunited the band minus Foo Fighter Nate Mendel for another pair of albums before they disbanded a second time, but I never heard more than bits and pieces of those releases. As is common with music that I love intensely for any amount of time, I found myself resurrecting those first two albums for heavy rotation in 2003 and grew excited for the Enigk, Mendel, and William Goldsmith project by the name of The Fire Theft. While that album was enjoyable for some time, I never fully fell for it the way I did with those initial SDRE releases.

And that brings us to 2006 and Jeremy Enigk's second solo album, a full decade after the first one. The first thing that struck me about World Waits was how captivating Enigk's voice remains, a voice that emits so much pure emotion as it constantly wavers between angelic and mortally pained. But as I listened more closely to the lyrics, I didn't feel the connection I once did to what he was singing. He still deals in the universal themes of love, faith, and the shaky ground between the two - but things seem to be a bit perfunctory this time around. While the arrangements strive for the same grandiosity as the best of the SDRE material, they aren't nearly as stirring and often times fall into mid-1980's MOR molasses. There was more than one moment I found myself waiting for Phil Collins to burst in with a verse (especially during the subdued "City Tonight") and I never before made the connection as to how much Enigk could sound like Peter Gabriel before hearing the "Red Rain" sound-alike "Burn".

The propulsive "Been Here Before" and the slow building burn of "Damien Dreams" provide a few worthy moments, but for the most part World Waits fails to live up to the high standards set by Enigk throughout his career. For someone who has taken his other music to heart as closely as I have this may well be a comfortingly familiar album, although it's unlikely to come close to being anyone's constant companion.