On their sixth album, New Jersey based indie rockers Real Estate are here to maintain their stake on AAA indie rock. I first became familiar with them last year via Stereogum and a video for the album\u2019s first single \u201cWater Underground.\u201d An homage to the classic \u201990s Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete<\/i> and I was sold. <\/p>\n
Listening to the album, the opening salvo of \u201cSomebody New\u201d and \u201cHaunted World\u201d\u2026 didn\u2019t do much to impress me. The latter is definitely the better track with a stronger melody and better lyrics. \u201cWater Underground\u201d is a damn good song and reminds me of some Guadalcanal Diary from the late \u201980s, down to Martin Courtney\u2019s vocals.<\/p>\n
But one of the faults with the record is the band\u2019s sound. A lot of the songs sound very similar and slow as molasses. Even a band like Death Cab or The Feelies pick up the tempo and put some swing in the melodies. On a song like \u201cInterior\u201d is where it really becomes noticeable and it\u2019s not great. There are tracks like \u201cSay No More\u201d that are a bit of change of pace and they end up sounding like an \u201980s indie band, but for the most part this is a band that feels like they\u2019re coasting on autopilot. <\/p>\n
The vocals on \u201cVictoria\u201d are noticeably different than the rest on the album and while that doesn\u2019t help the track become more than average, it does help to set it apart from the middling rest. \u201cMarket Street,\u201d the second to last track, is one of the better songs here, no thanks to its brevity. The album closer on the other hand, \u201cYou Are Here,\u201d drags and drags and doesn\u2019t do enough to make it notable. All in all, this is a band that could stand to change things up a bit more than they have and while there is a bit here to recommend, it\u2019s only songs, not the whole disc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":34973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9427],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46845","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-real-estate","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46845"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}