Jeremy Enigk’s solo debut, Return of the Frog Queen, is more than a decade old now, but it still sounds as groundbreaking as the day it came out. Enigk gave a visceral new dimension to orchestral pop by bucking accepted wisdom: Where most took the opportunity to turn rock into chamber music, Enigk converted chamber music into breathtaking anthems full of sound, soul, and fury. Shortly after, Sunny Day Real Estate released How It Feels to be Something On, one of the best rock albums of the ‘90s, if not ever. Enigk’s cryptically searching vocals seemed to sing duets with sprawling guitar wails, making it sound much larger than anyone had come to expect from an indie rock outfit. The “rumor†(in college, anything with religious undertones automatically became uncorroborated and vaguely suspect) was that Enigk was in crisis but had been born again, and this was his grand purge. Whatever the motivation, How It Feels… sounded like the album I’d always wanted to hear and I still listen to it at least once a month. Which brings us to the aptly titled World Waits, Enigk’s second solo album and two bands removed from his debut. The cheesy thing to say would be that it’s been worth the wait, but the truth is that it has. “Been Here Before†is a perfect sample of where Enigk has found himself. His two lives – the orch-pop wunderkind with the most distinct cracked tenor in music meets the indie-rock frontman of intense introspection – intersect beautifully. Enigk’s secret is that he is capable of grasping for something beyond himself. Yet, like the more emotionally dramatic moments of Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here) and the universally reflective side of U2, Enigk doesn’t need to know what it is he’s grasping for. He’s happy just knowing that there’s something out there to grasp.
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