Across three LPs, Real Estate has cemented its status as a hallmark indie act, not through some buzzworthy new style or dramatic musical innovation—not, indeed, through any drama at all—but rather through the steady, diligent maintenance of a sound whose most (perhaps only) notable distinction is being eminently pleasant. (Sessionable, you could say.) So it is with its effortless fourth album, which is every bit as blissfully pretty and/or unremittingly milquetoast as what came before.
More winsome melodies and chiming, Christmassy guitar leads; more of Martin Courtney’s hushed reflections on birds, music, shifting light, ambiguous contentment and other mild feelings. It’s not that these songs form an entirely undifferentiated blur—it’s just that even the nuances tend to bolster the overall sense of continuity. “Darling” is the one with the tricky rhythmic shifting and vaguely Strokes-y interlocking lines; “Two Arrows” is the sweet shimmer that meanders toward a gently psychedelic “She’s So Heavy” coda. The candied Beatle-pop harmonies of “Stained Glass” and “White Light” mark—perhaps surprisingly—the first time Real Estate has been reminiscent of that other great suburban New Jersey institution, Fountains Of Wayne.
Meanwhile, the “Simple Gifts”-cribbing “Diamond Eyes” flirts with political topicality, asserting, “It’s a time to raise our voices loud and not go quietly” before devolving back into nonsense-y nature-babble. How else would these guys possibly go?
—K. Ross Hoffman
