Sunny Day Real Estate Cuts Through the Gloom

If Sunny Day Real Estate had fulfilled its next-big-thing buzz of 1995 rather than break up, in part due to frontman Jeremy Enigk’s Christian conversion, could the Seattle group’s uplifting songs have stemmed the downward spiral of rock’s nihilistic gloom and boorish megalomania?

OK, that’s a lot to put on one band. And anyway, Thursday at the Palace the band, reconstituted two years ago with drummer William Goldsmith back from a Foo Fighters stint, seemed better suited for an underdog role.

Focusing on material from its new “The Rising Tide” album, the trio, supplemented by a bassist and guitarist/keyboardist, proved to be flourishing as a light in the darkness.

Frankly, Enigk and guitarist Dan Hoerner’s oblique lyrics and elliptical melodies--closer to Peter Gabriel-era Genesis than to Pearl Jam, with alternating muscular flights and delicate flutters--are probably too oblique and elliptical for mass success.

Instead, the band has become the object of a rabid cult following, gaining icon status in a movement called emo-core (“emo” as in “emotion”) and inspiring such acts as No Knife, which opened the show with an enticing, twin-guitar attack recalling ‘70s band Television.

Hoerner complained to the audience that critics, radio and TV “don’t get us,” but said it doesn’t matter since “we have you.”

Considering what is embraced by radio and TV these days, that seems a good exchange.