Real Estate - Atlas (2014) [FLAC]

  Genre: Pop/Rock
  Styles: Indie, Lo-Fi, Alternative
  Source: CD (log)
  Codec: FLAC
  Bitrate: ~ 1,000 kbps
  Bit Depth: 16
  Sample Rate: 44.1 KHz

  01 Had to Hear
  02 Past Lives
  03 Talking Backwards
  04 April's Song
  05 The Bend
  06 Crime
  07 Primitive
  08 How Might I Live
  09 Horizon
  10 Navigator

  Jersey-bred indie rock golden boys Real Estate arrived in the late 2000s with a subdued approach to guitar rock that stripped away all unnecessary clutter and presented their tuneful songs in a manner as attractive and steadfast as primary colors, spring days, comfort food, or any of life's basic staples. Free of gimmicks, pretense, and artifice, their tunes tapped into the insular, college-aged melancholia of the Clean or Yo La Tengo's soft summer-night pulsations, later moving into a markedly Go-Betweens-steeped phase on their more sophisticated 2011 album, Days. With third full-length Atlas, Real Estate grow even further into the sound they've been spinning for themselves, mellowing more while they become more nuanced in both playing and production. Beginning with "Had to Hear," the band's sound is decidedly signature, based on chiming chords and lilting vocals from songwriter Martin Courtney, lead guitar from Matt Mondanile that wanders between psychedelic curiosity and airy punctuation, and the surefooted rhythm section of drummer Jackson Pollis and bassist Alex Bleeker. All these elements feel increasingly familiar and confident. Their songs have always resided somewhere between head-in-the-clouds lightheartedness and day-dreamy nostalgia, but the ten songs that make up Atlas seem more mature, more deliberate, and lacking some of the carefree naiveté of earlier work.