REAL ESTATE – Days (Part 1)

Real Estate’s sophomore album Days comes out today and AudioVole is taking the album and doing what we do best: listening, making fish tacos (if you are Chris Mollica), digesting (both the album and the tacos), and conversing. Read on to see what Chris writes to Sarah about the New Jersey quartet’s second full-length effort in Part 1.

Real Estate – “Green Aisles”

Full album stream available at NPR.

From: Chris Mollica
To: Sarah Braunstein 

Sarah,

I’ve found it’s real easy to write a review when I love or hate something immediately. The words shoot up from my gut, perspective firmly in place. On those occasions, I sit down to have one of these little “conversations” and can barely reach the keyboard from my high horse. Ask Brandon. With some albums, the moment I put them on they say, “hey, let’s have a good time!” or “don’t I know you really intimately and am about to rip your heart out?” These cases are fun and easy to write. However, there are albums that exist where the first time I listen to them, they hardly even register as music.

I paid no attention to Real Estate’s Days the first time I put it on. I didn’t notice when it ended. Somewhere in there, I ate a fish taco. The taco was homemade and delicious. Then you told me we had to review this album and I was like “crap.” I went back and listened to Real Estate’s self titled debut to see if maybe I could use it to propel me into understanding this new venture. I’d liked the album a lot when it was released back in 2009 and, very happily, I Immediately fell into the whole Estate-vibe again:

It’s the sixties. I’m driving to the beach. Oh, and I’m having a good time. Just so everyone knows, though, we might be talking about some intimate stuff.

Then there’s Days. There’s no doubt in my mind that both albums are made by the same people. It’s still the sixties and the trippy, shoegaze employed on the first album is well in place. This is no longer a trip to the beach, though. We’re headed home and, honestly, who wants to go home after a day at the beach? I’ve been listening to this album for days and only now is it slowly unravelling for me. So far, it’s best on long car rides and late Sundays. I bet it’s great for driving back from the beach, but am I pushing too hard? Sophomore albums are notoriously strange animals. The artist either feels the impulse to take their music in entirely new directions (Bon Iver) or further expand and deepen their established sound (Girls). Or sometimes, they just suck (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah). Does this more melancholy album appeal to you, Sarah, or is it a boring slog which, as one person put it, “…is fun to listen to, but I can fall asleep to it right now too?”

“I’m not okay, but I guess I’m doing fine,”
Chris

Get the new Real Estate album Days here:
Domino |  Insound Vinyl | Amazon