Wednesday, September 25, 2024

It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 91 Real Estate - Daniel

 


Talking of Estate Agents. I first connected with Real Estate and their records about ten years back in the early days of this blog. 2014, Ten years exactly. Atlas, their album from that year was the first I listened to. It highlighted precisely what I liked and what puzzled me about the band and what they did. Ten years down the line and a new album Daniel. Little it seems has changed either in terms of what the band do or my own reaction to it.

Real Estate hail from Ridgewood, New Jersey and everything about them screams leafy suburbia. This is not a crime nor a handicap by any means, Modern Lovers and The Feelies made the very same factor work in their favour in The States, The Cure and Ride and multiple others did precisely the same in different ways in the UK. Real Estate plot a less contentious but equally valid version of suburbia in terms of their output.

They choose never to go on about the books they've read or the films they've seen. They have precisely no interest in troubling you with their political preoccupations or blinding you with their intellect. They might be interested in romantic engagements but from the sound of their lyrics only the blandest most non committal ones. Filtered of passion and turbulent experience. Nothing wrong with that either.

I get the sense they like watching cloud formations and plotting their geometric patterns. I have no problem with any of these things but it does tend to banish actual excitement from the equation. Real Estate are like a Cameron Crowe film for better or for worse, Daniel is another Real Estate production featuring Cameron Crowe as Executive Producer and advisor. I'd say it's sure to do well at the Box Office, I enjoyed it actually. Contentment is much underrated.  

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