The Jealous Sound and Sunny Day Real Estate concert review

I am a huge fan of the Jealous Sound and Knapsack. This was the first time in a while where I was more excited for the opening band than the headliner at First Ave. The headliner was Sunny Day Real Estate, so that is saying something about The Jealous Sound. I have been waiting years to see these guys live, let alone hear new material from them. Well, last night I got both!
It was so surreal to see The Jealous Sound. A band that I somehow found out about on a fluke that blew me a way. A band that not many have heard about and keep quiet about what they are doing on their myspace page. There has always been a big mystery about them, but last night it was fun to see them up close and personal.
Everyone by the stage was into them, which made me happy. I, However, was the only one singing along with them. They played all of my favorites. Abandon! Abandon! was amazing. It was great to see Pedro play guitar, and especially for this song.
Their new song was titled “Big Loves” and sounds quite different than their previous material. Maybe not as catchy as their other stuff, but it sounded great. One thing I was curious about was they didn’t perform with Nate Mendel. I read on their myspace blog that they were working with him on their new songs. I suppose his time with both bands is limited, so they need a full time bass player. The new bass player was cool and actually gave me their setlist. I also met Pedro and Blair outside after the show. Very cool gents. They are all nice and appreciative guys and it was an honor to meet these people and hear their amazing music.

Sunny Day Real Estate were on next. They only played one song more than The Jealous Sound (not counting the encore). It was a trip seeing these guys back on the stage together. Besides the great songs they played, it was fun just seeing these guys up on stage looking genuinely happy to be back together. They all had big smiles on their faces. It surprised me to hear so many songs from the pink album. Both Diary and Pink are amazing, but assuming there was tension during the recording of the Pink album, you would think there were be tension on stage during these songs. This wasn’t the case.
I have never seen so many smiles during a concert as I did this show. Everyone was happy to see these guys back at it again, and everyone was taking a trip down memory lane. Best concert of the year!