DLIVE PAINT THE TOWN RED PLUS

Amelia Meath of the electro-folk group Sylvan Esso features as a guest vocalist. “Paper Cup” is the second track and lead single from The Main Thing. Courtney’s vocals are a far cry from exuberant, but they’re certainly not depressive. “Friday” is an excellent first track, because it sets the album’s mood of plaintive comfort nothing is too hurried or too slow for the song’s various components to become washed out or drag on. “Friday,” the album’s opener, makes liberal use of bright piano chords, textured synthesizers, and riff-focused guitars to pair with vocalist Martin Courtney’s contemplations on the existence of other people. True to their typical form, however, much of the album is somewhat indistinct though this makes for more of an easy listening experience than a bore. The latter seems most appropriate The Main Thing is definitely still Real Estate, but with a sliver more maturity and a dash of experimentation. The Main Thing follows a period of uncertainty about the band’s future, with canceled tour dates, vaporous allegations of sexual misconduct, and a detour into wine-making painting a blurry picture about whether Real Estate was going to stop recording, sell out, or do something different.

DLIVE PAINT THE TOWN RED PLUS

They’re the Beach Boys, plus seventy layers of reverb and some substance-enhanced prose. Based in Brooklyn, but originally from New Jersey, Real Estate’s discography consists solely of the melancholy or imaginative stuff suited to suburban teens and dudes who just got broken up with. They came into their own commercially with 2014’s Atlas, a slightly more turbulent album, which they followed up with 2017’s In Mind. They released their eponymous debut in 2009, a record marked by wistful attitudes and thoughtful guitar work, a formula they’d have no trouble repeating and tweaking as they released more albums. Like Spoon, Hot Chip, or the Mountain Goats, Real Estate has held a dear place in the hearts of millions of white pseudo-hipsters that had a rough time in college for 11 years.

The Main Thing would make for a superb summer picnic soundtrack. It instead exists as a healthy, normcore, intensely white pastiche of solemn guitar-based tracks meant to be enjoyed as part of the album as a whole or in playlists of similar music. Like much of Real Estate’s work, none of The Main Thing particularly stands out as an individually memorable track. It contains some of their most mature work yet, coupled with a healthy attitude towards introducing more complex synthesizer work and poetic lyricism for an album that can be beautiful in its feather-lightness. The Main Thing, the fifth studio album from the corduroy indie band Real Estate, was released today, February 28, 2020.

Dlive paint the town red