Jeremy Enigk: World Waits

How apt a title. Well chosen. While there is usually a minimum of irony or humor in the music of Jeremy Enigk, he seems to have thought some was due on the cover of his second solo effort, World Waits...well, maybe not the world, but legions of die-hard Jeremy fans have been waiting ten years for the follow up to his first album, Return of the Frog Queen.

World Waits was released in the autumn of 2006, but I thought I'd let it sink in for a while before making a snap-judgment or snap-review, if you will. After all, ROTFQ was, by most accounts, ahead of its time. Being a person who attended one of the Frog Queen shows, I would have to concur. I had never heard of Sunny Day Real Estate or Jeremy Enigk when some friends dragged me to a small club in Madison, WI, where I witnessed one of the most blow-your-hair-back, WHO IS THIS GUY concerts I have ever seen, before or since.

What I fear is that those young music listeners out there who don't have a frame of reference on SDRE or the early-nineties Seattle scene (where Jeremy and his Sunny Day compadres got their break) will not have a full view of the arc of Enigk's music. I also fear that World Waits is not the stepping stone into this view.

So let me just lay this out right now: World Waits is not ROTFQ or Diary. The album is, however, great.

Enigk starts with "A New Beginning", which at one minute twenty-seven seconds, is simply the primer, the bridge, linking the two albums. An orchestral firework, complete with chimes, announces the album like an overture. Whatever doubts you may have had about Enigk's intent to satisfy the longing he sings so knowingly about, the doubts fade away as hope soars like a violin.

Jeremy then proceeds with "Been Here Before" and "River to Sea", two very well-constructed, if not unassuming, tracks. "River" is a quiet, zen-like strum, those fans of SDRE will be most lovingly familiar with. "I can't erase any mistake/but I can outgrow/rivers of love will flow". Its seems as if Enigk has matured, growing out of his love-ridden angst, telling his listeners that yes, it is okay to be okay.