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Real Estate is an American rock band from Ridgewood, New Jersey, formed in 2009. The band is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, and consists of Martin Courtney IV (vocals, guitar), Alex Bleeker (bass, vocals), Matt Mondanile (guitar), Jackson Pollis (drums) and Matt Kallman (keyboards).

Biography
In 2008, singer and guitarist Martin Courtney, guitarist Matt Mondanile (Ducktails), bassist Alex Bleeker (of Alex Bleeker and the Freeks), and drummer Etienne Pierre Duguay formed Real Estate in Ridgewood, New Jersey. In 2011 Jackson Pollis replaced Duguay on drums and Jonah Maurer joined the band on keys and guitar.

After issuing singles on the Underwater Peoples and Woodsist labels, the band's 2009 self-titled debut received critical acclaim, including an 8.5 rating and Best New Music tag from Pitchfork Media. Review aggregator Metacritic gave the album a normalised rating of 79%, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Tours followed, supporting acts such as Girls, Kurt Vile, Woods, and Deerhunter. In 2010, Real Estate performed at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona.

In 2011, Real Estate signed with the Domino Recording Company. The group issued their second record, Days, on October 18, 2011. The album received positive reviews, including a rating of 77/100 on Metacritic and 8.7 on Pitchfork. Later that year, The Fader featured Real Estate on the cover of Issue #76. 2012 saw the band perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California and the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago.

A single "Talking Backwards", was released in early 2014, followed by the band's third album, Atlas. During the album's recording, keyboardist Jonah Maurer was replaced by Matt Kallman.

Influences
The band is influenced by The Feelies, as Real Estate said to Still in Rock. "Our songs are pretty poppy and melodic, like The Beach Boys and we're a little more slowed down. I think we took the surfy-type rock vibe and we tried to slow it down a little bit as part of our sound". Specifically, the band takes a large influence from The Beach Boys' album Surf's Up. The band grew up around such groups as Titus Andronicus and the Vivian Girls during high school; the three founding members looked up to these bands who were gaining popularity at this time.

During college, Martin Courtney first learned how to play guitar through learning Elliott Smith songs. He admired how the sound of many of his songs could sound happy, but maintain sadness in their lyrics. Martin also studied song structure from Elliott, stating that Smith is "kind of a genius".

The cover art of Atlas drew heavy inspiration from the book Design as Art by Bruno Munrai through the use of a tiled pattern against a white background.

Songwriting
In college, Martin began working on writing songs, one of the first songs being written for Real Estate was "Green River". Kinder Blumen was written by Matt Mondanile and Martin Courtney. Kinder Blumen, was the working title for the song which was conceptualized by Mondanile; it was supposed to be the German way of saying "flower children", which is actually "blumen kinder".

"I liked the idea of just making music and not thinking about specific parameters set out to make this record different from the last... Having written the last album, you've learned so much more about songwriting." said Courtney to. On the Real Estate's 2009 release, songs like "Suburban Dogs" were recorded quickly to Mondanile's 8-track tape and were written in the process of recording. "That song is one of my favorite recordings we've made." For the recording of Atlas however, the band wanted to make sure that they rehearsed before heading into the studio. "Atlas is much more of a transitional record... we're all much older now than we were, I'm living in a different place, we're still doing this seriously, where as it's a little bit more clear as of what we were doing on Days" says Mondanile.

In 2013, Alex Bleaker told The Ripe TV about having done the band's second album (Days) in a home studio which allowed them to keep a lot of the low fidelity quality from their 2009 LP, but paved the way for more professional grade recordings. Later on in 2014, they followed the trend of recording methods by tracking and mixing/mastering the album at The Loft in Chicago, which is a professional recording studio. This recording studio is best know as being owned and used by largely famous music group Wilco.

The band incorporates ideas of growing up in the suburbs, reflecting on high school experiences. The first record talked a lot about being an adult, but not feeling the maturity level or independence needed to fully leave home or the suburbs. On Atlas however, the band decided to leave behind a lot of it's previous use of nostalgic emotion in the lyrics and instead focused on a more current state of being. Having been just married, Courtney says," Yeah, that plays into it. And once that happened, I found myself thinking more about where my life was going and where it was at, thinking about plans and kids. That definitely comes into the lyrics." During the time of recording the song "Navigator", Courtney told Stereo Gum of the emotion he felt when recording the 2015 LP in Chicago and how it reflected into his lyricism and stance on his current situation.

When talking about how the musical process will work for the band after the release of Atlas, Courtney is quoted saying,"It’s basically, I’ll write the songs, we can all write and get together for a couple weeks and rehearse them as a band and come up with arrangements. We make it work."

Studio albums

 * Real Estate (2009)
 * Days (2011) #52 US
 * Atlas (2014) #34 US, #43 UK

EPs

 * Reality (2009)

Singles

 * "Fake Blues" b/w "Pool Swimmers" (7″ Woodsist, 2009)
 * "Fake Blues" b/w "Green River" (7″ Half Machine, 2009) UK issue
 * "Suburban Beverage" b/w "Black Lake" & "Old Folks" (7″ Underwater Peoples, 2009)
 * "Out of Tune" b/w "Reservoir" (7" True Panther Sounds, 2010)
 * "It's Real" b/w "Blue Lebaron" (7" Domino, 2011) UK issue
 * "Easy" b/w "Exactly Nothing" (7" Domino, 2012) UK issue
 * "Talking Backwards" b/w "Beneath the Dunes" (7" Domino, 2014)
 * "The Chancellor" b/w "Recreation" (7" Domino, 2014)
 * "Had to Hear" b/w "Paper Dolls" (7" Domino, 2014)