The cover art for Real Estate’s second album Days features a faded photograph of a row of seemingly identical suburban houses — a mixture of nostalgia and banality. In a way, that sums up the album. The sound is breezy indie rock and feels like the soundtrack of a sappy, West Coast road film movie in which a coming of age hero on his way home looks at passing fields and beaches and then contemplates friendship, growing up, girls, and other stuff. The album fluidly transitions from one song to the next, the difficulty in deciphering when they change and how they sound different is comparable to the passing of wasted summer moments.
The band’s lyrics can be fun. On the second last song, singer Alex Beeker chimes, “If it takes all summer long / just to write one simple song / There’s too much to focus on / Clearly that is something wrong.”
But the band has given more than just one simple song, and has offered ten charming and slow tracks for a long and boring summer.
