Real Estate Ready Days

Brooklyn by-way-of New Jersey collective Real Estate have signed to Domino and will release Days in October. The album’s first single “It’s Real” takes the band’s mellow garage sound – I still love the way they were first described to me as a cross between The Grateful Dead and Pavement – to a more confident and polished level.

But Real Estate won’t lose any of the fans they picked up with their brand of charming lo-fi garage rock on their 2009 self-titled debut. The songs on Days are still great, and the sounds are too. They may be trading in the one-man micro-labels and bedroom recording setups for an established indie label and a real studio, but the spirit of the music hasn’t changed.

On “Fake Blues,” one of the best songs on Real Estate, a killer hook gets buried under drums that sound like they were recorded under a blanket with two beat-up pawn shop mics positioned at a 20-foot distance. Compare “It’s Real,” from Days, a veritably shiny track where the bass is warm and pops in and out like some of my favorite ’70s records, and the drums are crisp and simple. Choruses have also never sounded better. Stream or download “It’s Real” below.