Real Estate / Days

Real Estate
Days
(Domino)
* * * * *

Recent surprise hits by the likes of Midlake, Fleet Foxes and the Shins have suggested a groundswell for music with a timeless sense of melody. To this list we may now add Real Estate’s sophomore LP ‘Days’. It must be said, this record’s the best of the lot.

Hailing from New Jersey but now based in Brooklyn, the group’s sound traverses both the rural and the urban; there’s a hint of shoegaze’s hazy dislocation on opener ‘Easy’, which suits its lyric about a lost summer, the sudden swallow dive into the chorus utterly transcendent.

With a minimalist sort of radicalism, quiet dynamics are the key here. The music knows just when to punch forward out of its elegiac, dream-like wash, such as when the lovely Marr-esque arpeggios assert themselves out of the luminous summer glow of ‘Green Aisles’.

Later, the lilting melody and gently cosmic guitar of ‘Wonder Years’ offers a gorgeous relation of the Byrds and early REM. The group’s sound throughout is remarkably pristine. Indispensable.