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SOUNDTRACKING: Crunching Autumnal With “Real Estate” Frontman Martin Courtney

by Daniel Colussi | The band Real Estate have come a long with since their days as a high school Weezer cover band in New Jersey. From those humble beginnings they’ve developed their own particular form of lackadaisical pop. Theirs is a vibe of stoned-melancholia that consists of frontman Martin Courtney’s laconic vocals delivered atop mid-paced grooves. It’s a deceptively simple formula: the band’s circulating guitar figures create melodies that burrow deep into you brain long after having finished. They just released their second longplayer, Days, and it’s truly an Autumn album, great for listening whilst plodding through puddles. Courtney talked to me about the new album, the band’s soft rock roots, and everything in between.

So you guys are signed to Domino now and the new album is well received. It seems like Real Estate is a lot more high profile now than before. How does it feel? 

We’re incredibly excited to be working with Domino, they’re all such nice people and they seem psyched on the record, so that really makes us feel good. It’s pretty surreal seeing all the press and attention this record has gotten so far – kind of hard to wrap your head around it – we’re both stoked and humbled.

You’ve got a lot of touring coming up. Are you guys a band of hardcore tour dogs? Are you psyched for the shows all over the place or would you be happier just chilling at home with the cat?

As far as touring is concerned, I love playing shows and I love traveling to new places and meeting people who like our music, but I hate being away from home for so long. I look at it as a necessary evil that can also be pretty fun if you go about it the right way. We try to keep the touring to three weeks or less as a general rule, but we had to make an exception for the first tour after the album came out.

Days has a noticeable lushness that wasn’t present on the first album – it feels like a natural progression, sonically. I hear a bit of Felt/80s UK indie guitar rock, some R.E.M., and also as a touch of your NJ brethren The Feelies in the recording. Were there any particular albums or musicians that served as reference points for Days?

We were definitely thinking about The Feelies when we made this record, just in terms of trying to use a lot of acoustic guitar to fill out the tracks and make them sound a little wider. Also in our sparing use of distortion, which we never used on the first record…I guess that just helps make the leads a little fatter. The Felt thing was I think a little more subconscious. We listened to them a lot on our tours last year, and I think it definitely made it’s way into the tunes. Particularly with Matt’s lines, and especially on “Green Aisles”.

So much music journalism today focuses on older albums as precedents for current music. And so much written about Real Estate describes you as “retro” or “throwback” without going any deeper than that. I wonder, does this trend bother you? Do you think it’s possible for something new to happen with guitar rock or is it truly a corpse? 

I think it’s definitely possible to do new things in the sort of classic band format, but I’m not sure that’s something we’re really interested in. At the same time though, I don’t really see us as retro or whatever, more just as a part of this tradition of guitar based pop music. We have definitely taken cues from our favorite music that we’ve grown up on, I don’t really see what’s wrong with that. There will always be a place for bands like that. That’s the beauty of music; there’s a ton of different styles and you don’t just have to listen to one. I don’t know if that makes sense…

Can you tell me a bit about recording the new album with Kevin McMahon? From what I understand there was a leisurely 5-month pace to the recordings, so was there much writing in the studio or did you come in with songs fully formed? What did Kevin McMahon bring to the proceedings?

We’ve known Kevin for years, since I was a senior in high school and I was in a band with Patrick from Titus Andronicus and Andrew Cedermark and we recorded an album with him. That’s why Titus did both of their records with him, too. It made sense for us to work with him because we felt super comfortable with him. We came to him with mostly fully formed songs, except for some of the lyrics, which I wrote in the studio. Aside from making everything sound basically just as we wanted and had described to him, only better, he also helped push us to perform as well as we possibly could. We did way more takes of certain things like solos or vocals than we normally would have because he knew that we would end up with something we really loved if we pushed ourselves harder. He was pretty much our coach in the studio, I think that’s what his main role was on this record. As for the 5 month thing, that was mostly because we just didn’t have the time to be up there every day, so the sessions got split up where we’d go up there maybe once a week for a few days at a time. All told, we probably spend about 30 days up there.

I want to mention that I particularly love the use of phaser-guitar on certain tracks on the new album, which brings to mind the classic Byrds album “Notorious Byrd Brothers,” which is submerged in phase. And there’s a Byrds reference in the title of the Days song “Younger Than Yesterday.” The Byrds are a definitive West Coast band and you guys are true-blue New Jersey. So is this a case of you guys reaching out to the West Coast? Are you guys trying to make the East and West shake hands? Indulge me…

I mean, I love that sound, the sort of arpegiated rhythm guitar with melodic leads and a good amount of electric 12 string thrown in there, and a ton of acoustic guitar as well. The Byrds did it so well, and I can see the comparison, and yes, the title of “Younger Than Yesterday” is a reference to the Byrds album. But I don’t really think we’re really making a conscious attempt to sound West Coast in any way. It’s just a style of music that made an impression on us. The phased guitar thing I think for us actually comes from our love of Ariel Pink’s music (who’s another West Coast associated dude). I don’t think we have it in us to ever be as weird or as talented as him, but we definitely admire his songwriting and production very much, both the old stuff and the new. I guess we’re just not really afraid to wear our influences on our collective sleeve a little bit, because hopefully the tunes can speak for themselves.

There seems to be a subtle thematic emphasis on winter coming, cruising around during autumn, a chill in the air. Are you guys intentionally ditching the summertime-vibiness of first album?

All of that is fair to say, especially based on some of the lyrical content of the first album. And the new album definitely has some songs – or maybe a lot of songs – that are about the past and growing up, which could be described as nostalgia. Honestly though, we didn’t really make any conscious decisions about the theme of this record, those were just the lyrics I ended up writing for these songs. I think it did definitely end up sounding much more “autumnal” than the first album, so I’m glad it came out when it did…makes sense.

Were there any particular albums that you bonded over when you formed Real Estate?

We’ve been bonding over music, Alex, Matt and I, since we were like 15. It started with a mutual love for bands like Weezer, then stuff like Built to Spill, Pavement, then the Microphones was a big one one for us. Elliott Smith, Yo La Tengo…I don’t know, the Strokes…we’ve always shared music with each other ever since we became good friends. When Real Estate started I remember we were really into bands like Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Player (“Baby Come Back”), soft rock bands. We originally wanted Real Estate to be a soft rock-style band but I think we just didn’t really have the chops. We were also really into Ariel Pink at the time, and we had just discovered Kurt Vile’s album Constant Hitmaker, which kind of gave us the confidence to pursue a DIY type recording style. There’s definitely more but it’s hard to remember and pinpoint exactly what was influencing what we were doing three years ago.

Days to me feels like a real start-to-finish listen, a grower album.  There’s a consistency to the vibe all the songs, without any obvious drop off or left turns. There’s a laid back, melancholic, slightly stoned vibe throughout the whole of it. I assume that the album is meant to be heard all together? Was there a conscious decision to make an “album” rather than just a collection of songs? (in contrast to the first album that was 4 tracked over a long time…) 

The main difference between Days and the first album is that it was done all at once in a studio (with the exception of Out of Tune). So that definitely contributes to the album having a more unified sound than the first one. When we were making the first album, we knew the ten songs we wanted to have on it and we would have loved to do the whole thing in a studio, but we just didn’t have the resources to do that (and do it right), so we did it ourselves with the help of some friends and just embraced the inherent flaws that come with home recording. We figured it was better for the album to have some character than for it to just sound like it was thrown together in pro-tools. That would have been a disaster I think.

How will you be touring for the new album – as a four piece? Will you be making any special changes in order to recreate the slightly grander sound of the new album? Is there going to be a dude playing synth?

We’re on the road right now as a five piece, with our friend Jonah Maurer playing organ and synth parts, as well as guitar on some tunes. Jonah has toured with us before as our merch guy/ like pseudo TM, but we knew he could play keyboard and guitar, so it made sense for us to just ask him to play the parts that are on the new record that we couldn’t do ourselves. There’s also a good amount of keyboard on the first album and EP, so there were pre-existing parts for him to play on almost every song we have. It’s been working out really well, it’s just that now we don’t have someone to sell our merch, we’re just hijacking the opening band’s merch guy.

Real Estate play The Biltmore on Tuesday, November 8th.

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Zulu Records veteran and tunage aficionado Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine.