Hot property

You can’t take the suburbs out of Real Estate

Nostalgia permeates the sophomore record by Real Estate, from the sweet melancholy of their windswept vocals and guitars to the lyrics haunted by childhood half-memories to the photo that adorns its cover, a row of houses in Bayonne, New Jersey shot by Dan Graham in 1966 for a series entitled Homes for America. But what era the band seems to be evoking or emulating has proven debatable—some critics draw comparisons to late-60s bands like the Byrds and the Zombies, others to mid-80s acts like the Smiths, (early) R.E.M. and the Feelies, who were regarded as retro in their time.

“It’s funny you say that because a lot of the stuff we were trying to make the record sound like is from the 70s. We were really trying to catch the Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan drum and guitar sound, that kind of soft rock,” says singer Martin Courtney. “We heard all these comparisons to [80s Australian indie pop band] the Go-Betweens and I never really listened to them until after this album came out, but it’s funny ’cause I can definitely hear that, I can hear what people mean.”

The Brooklyn-based band chose the Graham photo partly because it suited the repetitive nature of the album title, Days (and, by extension, Courtney says, the samey-ness of their songs). But the band also sought out Graham’s work because the three primary songwriters hail from the same state.

Originally from Ridgewood, the band’s pride in New Jersey—and defense against the damage done to its rep by real and fictional gangster lore and, moreover, the horrors of reality TV— made them ambassadors of sorts while they were promoting their debut album.

“We kind of brought it upon ourselves,” says Courtney, “but that’s okay. We need to represent.”

Courtney describes Ridgewood as “like any suburb, really, but it’s upper-middle-class, with older, nicer houses and taller trees. It’s nice to look at, to drive through [laughs].” Despite its relative afflu­ence, the effects of the economic crisis were felt there, particularly in the commercial sector, but the residential areas were not untouched. The band was founded shortly before the housing crisis caused a national meltdown in late 2008, one that would soon affect the world, so their choice of band name was strangely fortuitous.

“It was weird timing ’cause we chose that name in August, and in September, the shit hit the fan,” says Courtney. The name’s meaning is personal, however, and not some sort of social com­mentary.

“My parents own a real estate business in Jersey, so I was going to real estate school to get my licence,” says Courtney, possibly the first musician to name a band after his fall-back job. “It was actually our drummer’s idea—I hated it, ’cause I’ve grown up with that as part of my life so it seemed like the most boring name. But that was sort of the point. We didn’t want to choose a ‘cool’ name ’cause usually those end up sounding stupid in six months.”

“But it also means a lot of different things to different people. If anything, it meant absolutely nothing to us and it gained meaning when we started to realize that a lot of our songs are about life in the suburbs.” ■

WITH THE BABIES AND REVERSING FALLS AT LA SALA ROSSA ON WEDNESDAY, JAN. 18, 8:30 P.M., $15, ALL AGES

Short URL: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/?p=28398