Real Estate
Atlas

Music and marketing.

I don't know about you, but if I were an artist, I would carefully study the time of year to release the album and then choose the appropriate date based on what you want to communicate to the listener, the scents, the sensations, and the landscapes, in short. Because in the end, if there is a wardrobe for every season, there are also stacks of records in hibernation, ready to be thawed with each change of season.

“Atlas” by Real Estate was released on March 4th, but as the New Jersey band's monicker seems to suggest, it is a meal to be consumed warm, leaning against a bus window in deep thought, perhaps immersed in a vast field of wheat or vegetables that smells of earth and life, or taking a walk along the seafront with the breeze that for a moment allows you to breathe.

This album kept me company in bursts in this first part of the year, straddling spring and summer, and the impressions I had from the first listens haven’t changed with subsequent listens.

A formally impeccable album, with all the elements in their place, that stands on its legs, but fails to leap and take flight.
The jangle-pop structure is indeed the result of airy moments, but linked to a writing that is way too homogeneous with some jolts and without true drops in tone, yet penalizes its performance in the long run.

Take a notepad and pencil in “Atlas,” but then remember to ring the bell at Granduciel's in Pennsylvania at mealtime.

For fans of The War On Drugs and Mac DeMarco.

Key tracks: Had to Hear, Talking Backward, April's Song