The ethos surrounding the New Jersey band Real Estate is reminiscent of the jangly-roots, DIY weirdness of the recently retired R.E.M.’s early career. R.E.M. shrouded themselves in a murky, mumbled, not-quite-lo-fi sound with a mysterious air of having come from another time, perhaps that realm of fictional nostalgia that exists nowhere but in the fantasies of world-blind young people. The idea that just outside of our little bubble, in a cranny overgrown with kudzu, humidity and weed smoke, there is a place where everyone has a moppy haircut and time moves half as fast.
Real Estate seemed to have just emerged from this imagined haven on its first album, the eponymous Real Estate LP from ’09, when the Woodsist label was just a buzz in the hippie bin, among many others rediscovering the magic of cassette releases and vinyl only imprints. The ease of its self-made psychedelic pop had just enough reverb, finger picking and nods toward mid-90s indie melody to satiate a pocket of meaning-hungry bloggers, and give them this larger-than-life mystery that R.E.M. once had.
The follow-up EP Reality, along with a string of 7”s and singles, continued to show audiences the band’s versatility of evoking mood in its songwriting. Ironically, the closest Real Estate has come to super buzz was in a side project from guitarist Matthew Mondanile called Ducktails, which features droney instrumental jams as well as a high profile collaboration with AnCo’s Panda Bear, the reigning king of drone pop. In many ways, Panda Bear’s ’07 LP Person Pitch indirectly pioneered the path for Real Estate to reach their current status by making chill, reverb-heavy music interesting again.
It’s no surprise, now, that NPR is featuring Real Estate’s new album Days on their First Listen program online, before the album is released on October 18. There isn’t a tremendous amount of difference in the band’s sound now, two years after its debut, yet the song structures have certainly benefitted from the members’ time spent as professional musicians since then. The choruses are just a little bit bigger and more pronounced, which isn’t saying much, since the majority of the album barely moves the Richter needle. Rather, it unfurls like an ambling afternoon in the shade: slowly, steadily, it rolls onward until, before you know, it the forty-one minutes are over.
The album doesn’t claim to be something that it is not, though if anything, it almost sells itself short. It feels like a simple collection of songs, as if the band had just enough new songs it was proud of, and decided to combine them and release them as an album. However, a deeper listen reveals that there is magic in the sequencing of the tracks, and a greater rhythmic structure to the album as a whole. It’ll be easy for bloggers to pick out “Green Aisles,” “It’s Real” and probably “Out of Tune” as the most single-y tracks on the album. Indeed, they embody the Real Estate sound at its richest and most complete. However, to single these tracks out is to cheat the album of its more secretive moments.
“Kinder Blumen” sits a little less than halfway through the album, and meanders at an easy pace through a symmetrical guitar line very reminiscent of some of the band’s earlier songs. The reason it’s so daring? It’s an instrumental. It crescendos towards the latter half of the song, and Real Estate’s newfound sure-footedness on the drum kit comes to a head. But after about four minutes, the song wistfully wanders off into the mist again, like a passing buck on an early, autumn morning.
Another hidden gem is the final track on the album, “All The Same,” which clocks in at seven and a half minutes. Easy to zone out to, this final statement stretches the band’s typical conventions in terms of vocals and really twists out a novel melody. The song really starts to break into a jam in the latter half, conjuring images of a light show.
Not unlike R.E.M., Real Estate has started to grow into the shoes of a more proper rock band, while still maintaining the charming jangle of its early efforts. The sing-along chorus of “It’s Real” is sure to make it into a car commercial relatively soon, and the band will probably be headlining major venues before long. Days is a tasty retreat from the present state of pop, like catching a whiff of marijuana in the middle of a four-hour lecture on Global Politics. Thank God for those mystical havens of New Jersey that have somehow begot beauty.
