Bands need to be much more than a collection of individual voices – there has to be some form of unity. Real Estate have long since embraced that, locating room for individual voices while working in a communal way. 15 years into their time together, the New Jersey-bred band have granted themselves space to evolve, with new album ‘Daniel’ pin-pointing a wonderful, light-dappled, breezily uplifting form of maturation.
Recorded at RCA’s fabled Studio A in Nashville, there’s a lot more to ‘Daniel’ than the simple indie-pop-goes-country equation. The band have long been adherents of vintage songwriting, and it’s not great stretch to evoke a country twang within their songwriting. A piece like ‘Haunted World’ – with its gossamer pedal steel floating like clouds across a blue sky – is much more than the sum of its parts, a work both lonesome and poetic.
‘Freeze Brain’ has slight psych aspects in the guitar effects, the stuttering beat complex yet insistent. The piano-aided ‘Victoria’ has a martial strut to it, the chords perpetually returning, a simple but profoundly moving motif.
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‘Interior’ has a kind of Beatles-esque quality, those McCartney style chords proving to retain their luminescence. The pulsating ‘Airdrop’ has subtle Baroque pop aspects, but the perpetual, never-ending beat is haunted by Neu! – perhaps built for the Tennessee highways that took the band to the historic studio in the first place.
Citing R.E.M. classic ‘Automatic For The People’ as a key influence, Real Estate’s new album certainly shares some of their forebear’s hallmarks – lyrically, the songs are framed by ageing, loss, and coming to terms with their lives. Where it comes into its own, though, is a type of chord change that is both simple and bewilderingly distinct – just look at ‘Water Underground’, as potent an ear-worm as Real Estate have ever provided.
Shaking off the self-doubt that seemed to creep in on 2020’s ‘The Main Thing’, Real Estate emerged as a band renewed, the palpable unity in these performances amplifying their sense of purpose. A Springtime joy.
8/10
Words: Robin Murray
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