Reviews of two new releases   Sunny Day Real Estate The Rising Tide Time Bomb Get high and listen to it in lieu of: Queen, YES, Zeppelin   Sunny Day Real Estate (Version 1.0) delivered a bracing blast of vinegar to a bog-mired "alt-rock" scene. By '94, the grunge pod-spawn that followed Nirvana had become about as exciting as East German architecture; Diary's bright loud-soft-loud fusillade and Jeremy Enigk's airy voice supernova'ed across the consciousness of black-shoed indie kids around the nation. Then Sunny Day's trademark lilt-lilt-CRASH dynamics became just another instant-band-just-add-amps indie template. The band broke up for awhile; Enigk went Christian, some of the quartet ended up in Foo Fighters, and guitarist Dan Hoerner ended up on a 40-acre farm in Eastern Washington. Cue SDRE Mark II. It's hard to imagine too many formative scenester bands copping the baroque, confectionary '70s pomp-pop of The Rising Tide. Will every hipster ghetto from Olympia to Chapel Hill soon have bands that sound exactly like Queen? The tide may or may not be rising, but Enigk's Mercury factor is definitely cranked. His voice, always high, sounds here like the wail of the victim of a particularly unfortunate bicycling accident. Keyboards, Odyssean song structures, cheese-drenched synths and over-lush production build a distinctly '70s setting around Enigk's skyscraping. Like a towering tray of intricate pastries, The Rising Tide can either delight or nauseate. Throw in a few references to goblins, orcs and faire maidens and you'd have the ultimate soundtrack for airbrushing a unicorn on the side of your van. Now, if this is what you're after.... Zach Dundas       Steve Von Till As the Crow Flies Neurot Recordings Check it out: Neurosis/Tribes of Neurot, the World Serpent Distribution axis, Swans/Skin, Amber Asylum If you know the guys in Neurosis, those post-tribal plunderers of arty, plate-tectonic apocalypse rock, you know Steve Von Till. Yet even though a medieval-blacksmith beard still juts defiantly from the guitarist's stony jaw, you probably wouldn't recognize him from this stunningly subdued CD, which contains none of the hot-burn hysteria of those famed Bay Area brigands. Instead, As the Crow Flies is the sound of the empty wasteland, campfire songs for those lost in the desolate wake of Neurosis' emotional holocaust. Like Neurosis, it is deceptively simple, achieving maximum impact through repetition. But on Crow, Von Till strips away his other band's noisy flesh, quietly baring a skeleton nearly as disturbing in its intimate revelation as Neurosis is in its cacophonous onslaught. His voice is an ash-stained whisper, naked and direct. An acoustic guitar skirts the embers in hypnotic circles. Sad piano, violin and cello occasionally wing their way into the background to spin like condors, waiting for the light to expire. It never does--but the darkling atmosphere is palpably choked with smoke and the haze of memory and loss. Yes, it's bleak, but harshly beautiful as well. Like the sky before a titanic lightning storm--heavy with dread, but ignited by a spark of electricity. If you've ever faced the clouds and stood them down as hot rain needled your skin, you already know the restrained power of this album. If not, it's time to find out. John Graham