CMU Playlists

Playlist: Real Estate

By | Published on Thursday 17 November 2011

Real Estate

There’s a pervasive flavour of the balmy suburban idyll to Real Estate’s second album, ‘Days’, which was warmly received upon its release via Domino last month. And no wonder, when childhood pals Martin Courtney, Matt Modanile and Alex Bleeker, the band’s three original members, met and matured in the sleepy locale of Ridgewood, New Jersey.

The natural successor to Real Estate’s eponymous 2009 debut, ‘Days’ was recorded with producer Kevin McMahon (The Walkmen, Titus Andronicus) in a rustic rural studio, taking around five months to complete. Now, having welcomed drummer Jackson Pollis and keyboardist Jonah Maurer into the fold, the band are set to promote the album with a date at London’s Scala on 6 Dec. Meanwhile, they were so kind as to compile a Powers Of Ten Playlist.

REAL ESTATE’S TEN
Click here to listen to the band’s playlist in Spotify, and then read on to find out more about their choices.

01 The Kinks – Do You Remember Walter
Martin: When we started Real Estate I had it in my head that I just wanted us to sound like The Kinks, especially the drumming. Those fills are so excellent. I just love the bouncy style a lot of their songs have, kind of silly lyrics sometimes, unexpected melodies. They don’t take themselves too seriously. The original indie-rock band.

02 The Feelies – Only Life
Alex: More and more these days I only want to hear acoustic driven jangle pop. Nobody does it better than hometown heroes, The Feelies.

03 Emit Rhodes – Somebody Made For Me
Matt: The king of 70s home recording, Emit was a genius with a beautiful voice. And the lyrics of this song are very inspiring.

04 Broadcast – Before We Begin
Martin: Another jam from high school that I still love. It sounds like a commercial jingle from the 50s that got warped or deteriorated with the passage of time. The jazzy drumming with that cavernous reverb has always represented some kind of zenith in recorded drum sound for me.

05 Pink Floyd – Green Is The Colour
Alex: Dave Gilmour sings this song on Pink Floyd’s original soundtrack to the film ‘More’, but the real deal is on the early live bootleg ‘Atom Heart Mother Goes On The Road’. Sweet melodies, complete with a mind blowing and climactic guitar lick outro.

06 The Rentals – Brilliant Boy
Matt: The band of Matt Sharp, original bass player of Weezer. This record is filled with hard-hitting synth pop.

07 The Jesus And Mary Chain – Happy When It Rains
Martin: I only recently got into this band, but feel like I’ve always known their music because of its obvious influence on most of the music I love. It’s like when you see a scene in a movie or read something in a book and finally understand a Simpsons reference from when you were a kid. I love their first album but the way it was recorded renders it virtually unlistenable on the crappy stereo in our van, it just sounds like hiss. ‘Darklands’ is almost as excellent in my opinion, and it really helps that they toned down the high end a bit.

08 Neil Young – Lookin For A Leader
Alex: Neil Young is probably my single greatest influence, I take in so much of his music all of the time. This is my favourite of his at the moment, mostly due to the addictive little turn around in the chorus when the backup vocals kick in.

09 Anika – No One’s There
Matt: Anika is on Stones Throw and this tube is about as close as you can get to a modern dancehall track.

10 Yo La Tengo – You Can Have It All
Martin: I couldn’t not put a Yo La Tengo song on here. I can listen to this band at any time, they reall



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