We continue our "Best of NYC Countdown", covering every day one of the artists that made our Year End Best of NYC list for emerging artists (a chart compiled by a jury comprised of local bloggers, music writers, promoters, record store personnel, DJs, and our writers and readers).
It’s sometimes easy to forget that Real Estate is merely influenced by 60’s surf, pop, and psych, not an actual surviving innovator, somehow still creating new hybrid sounds today. High-pitched and fluidly bending guitars drive most tracks forward with an unquestionably dreamlike surf quality. Working with lo-fi fuzziness or super clean cuts, the band’s psychedelic quality lingers while remaining hazily poppy. Though easy-going breeze is certainly a common characteristic across the tracks, there’s a serious nostalgic reflectivity that serves to balance out the vibe. Lesser musicians couldn’t pull off some of Real Estate’s more sober moments — the care-free naivety, slowly sliding guitars, and patient, steady bass-grooving of “Basement” is good a example. One of the truly genius qualities of Real Estate is their ability to evoke emotions, often using only a simple riff or lyric. The juxtaposing sensations of joyful reminiscing and melancholy longing come together with an impressive ease. “Beach Comber,” a beautifully hazy tribute to painful introspection and falling short, somehow produces muted hope and delight through the repetitive breezy guitar riffs (“What you want is just outside your reach…You’re stealing from the lost and found/But what you find/Ain’t what you had in mind”). Even the instrumental tracks bring you back to whatever “that moment” was – even if it didn’t involve the beach, it surely involved at least one endless summer. – Paul Dunn