ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2011: #9 REAL ESTATE DAYS

Albums of the Year 2011: #9

Real Estate - Days

I have no grand, theoretical justifications for why I like Real Estate (well, that's not entirely true, but none that I'm going to waste space on here, anyway). Listening to them makes me happy, and if you can come up with a better reason to listen to music, then I'm all ears. Whenever I listened to Real Estate's self-titled debut (an act that was the subject of the very first post on this blog in its pre-blogspot days), it was for me a very real question whether or not they could top "Beach Comber." The first song on that album, it was so perfect, so fully realized, so clear in its aesthetic and components that it didn't seem possible the band could ever improve on it. There were other great songs on the album ("Suburban Dogs," "Suburban Beverage," and "Snow Days" being the best of the rest), but nothing quite succeeded in capturing both the breezy and melancholy sides of the band so well. Amazingly, they better it once on Days, and at least two other songs give "Beach Comber" a run for its money.

My point of reference for Real Estate is always early R.E.M., right around Reckoning, and Days does nothing to change that: "It's Real," a stunning two minutes of guitar pop that actually makes "whoa-oh" vocals feel light and fresh rather than tired and cliched, would slot nicely in between "Harborcoat" and "Little America." What's so wonderful about Days, though, is its intimacy and easy charm (especially on the ostensibly "epic" album closer "All the Same"). This isn't music that goes out of its way to impress you; the band has a light touch, confident enough to let the songs do what they will without fuss (it's no coincidence that the album leads off with a song called "Easy"). For music that so clearly fits in with the past half decade or so's revival of the 1980s, though, the songs on Days are surprisingly bittersweet in their nostalgia. Memories are what's left of the past here, and not necessarily good ones, filled with longing for innocence, for hope, for love--the tenderness of the music and singing has a tendency to mask just how brutal songs like "Green Aisles" and "Wonder Years" really are. The triumph of the album--of the band's career, really--and a serious contender for song of the year in my book is "Municipality," which takes everything that "Beach Comber" did so well and amplifies it to create the kind of gorgeous melancholy that will keep misunderstood teenagers in their bedrooms for days. Few songs have captured the pain of being far away from someone so simply and so effectively: "How can I feel free / when all I want to be / is by your side / in that municipality?" The small dramas of suburban life, then, but with a killer set of tunes.