On February 23, US indie rock outfit Real Estate released their sixth studio album Daniel, a spellbinding collection of melancholy pop that sees the band embrace their melodic sensibilities to the fullest. Headliner joins lead singer and songwriter Martin Courtney for an in-depth chat about anxiety, finding comfort in their own skin, and “just letting Real Estate be Real Estate”.
You can listen to this interview here or read on below.
There’s a hint of anxiety in Martin Courtney’s demeanour when he joins Headliner via Zoom from his home studio on the outskirts of New York. The Real Estate singer, guitarist, and lead songwriter is – at the time of our conversation – one month away from the release of the band’s sixth studio album Daniel and its accompanying tour. It’s the latter that is causing him some consternation.
The band’s last album The Main Thing was released on the cusp of the Covid pandemic in February 2020, meaning all live engagements were canned. As such, it's been several years since Real Estate embarked on a tour of any kind, save for the odd show here and there, and Courtney has nestled snugly into a state of domestic stability.
“I’m looking forward to the album coming out and playing concerts and all that stuff, but I’m pretty stressed and nervous about the amount of travel,” he says. “The last few years have been really quiet, just at home with the kids, so I’ve really been a full-time dad during that time... but it is exciting,” he adds with a slightly nervy laugh and a smile.
It quickly becomes apparent that Courtney is the very embodiment of the Real Estate sound. The sweet, gentle melancholy that courses through so much of the band’s work is easily detectable in conversation with its chief creator. He speaks honestly and openly about both his passion for the band and the pull of home when faced with the prospect of being apart from his family. His tone is soft and a touch shy, just like his voice on record.
“We had to cancel our last tour due to Covid and I really felt the absence of that final step of making a record, which is connecting with people outside of my personal bubble,” he continues. “Writing a record is very solitary, then making a recording is a group effort and really fun, but it’s still very insular. So once you finally put the record out you feel like it’s going to connect with other people, but if you don’t get the chance to play the songs and talk to people after the show…[pauses] so I am excited to get to do that with this record.
“But it’s impossible for me to imagine what it’s going to be like right now. I envision myself standing on stage with a guitar singing and it’s hard to imagine that happening because my life has not been like that for so long! I know it’ll be fun, but I have little kids, so I know it’s going to be hard to travel. I’m really dreading that, but there is the positive of being onstage and connecting with people, which is so much fun. But there is going to be a lot of sitting in a van being depressed wishing I could be with my family. Just to be totally honest with you... I’ve gone soft! It demands a lot that is sometimes hard to give. It’s hard for anyone whether you have a family or not. It can be brutal being on the road, but it does get harder as you get older, and you start to appreciate home life and stability a little more. We went really hard for the first couple of years of the band, and I realised quickly that I didn’t like that. I try not to be gone for longer than two weeks at a time. That’s basically the rule, I can’t be gone for more than two weeks.”
At this point he laughs, as if acknowledging that he’s spent the first portion of our conversation focused solely on the drawbacks that come with the life of a professional musician.
“This is our sixth record, and it sounds like I have all these qualms about being a musician, but I keep doing it because I really love making records, and I feel very fortunate to get to do it,” he says with genuine conviction. “We get these opportunities and it’s like, why wouldn’t we make a record with this really cool producer and go to Nashville and do all these things I could have only dreamed of when I was a kid playing music with my friends? I really love writing and I feel like I still have music in me, so I’m going to keep doing it.”
Whatever anxieties exist around Courtney and his relationship with touring appear to have dissolved upon contact with the recording studio, as Daniel is among the finest collections of songs the band has assembled to date. Produced by The Silver Seas co-founder Daniel Tashian in Nashville over the course of less than two weeks, the record documents Real Estate at their laid back and self-assured best. Of course, there is a steady flow of melancholy throughout, but there’s a warmth and a confidence in its delivery, due in no small part to Courtney’s decision to channel his pop sensibilities to the fullest.
In this regard, it’s very much a reaction against its predecessor, 2020’s The Main Thing. In an attempt to stretch the parameters of Real Estate’s signature sound further than had been done previously, the band ended up spending longer than ever before in the studio. While still a rewarding listen, the effortlessness that has always been such a staple of the band’s work is conspicuously absent. And it would take a lockdown solo album (Magic Sign 2022) for Courtney to work out where he wanted to head next.
“As soon as I realised we weren’t going to be touring The Main Thing I started writing a bunch of songs that were ostensibly for Real Estate, but the months dragged on so I just took them to make a solo album,” he explains. “I needed to keep busy, but it felt like lower stakes and I just wanted to have fun. The last Real Estate record we made we spent a lot of time on - it was a really intense process only for it to fall on its face. I was a bit burned and traumatised by that, so I thought I’d just make a solo record.
“I listen to it now and feel like I made some strange choices but in a good way, and that process reset my approach to songwriting. That’s where I came up with the idea of just writing a pop record. I made that album, put it out, and then I’d usually be on tour, but I started writing again for the next Real Estate album and the first song I wrote was Water Underground. I really liked it and felt like it was an exciting direction for us. That’s really how this whole album came about. The writing process was in 2022 then we were in the studio in early 2023 and it’s coming out now. It feels like it was really quick, but it was a couple of years in total. It’s disturbing to me how quickly time feels like it’s moving these days. I was thinking about that yesterday, like, I don’t like this! I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older, but time feels like it’s just slipping away.”
One of the songs that best encapsulates the tone of Daniel is latest single Haunted World, which is released on the day of our conversation.
“That guitar chord sequence, I’ve had recorded on my phone for about 10 years and I just never figured out how to finish the song,” he recalls. “It felt almost too poppy, so I didn’t know what to do with it, and then this record came along which was me wanting to embrace the poppier side of my songwriting. I liked the idea of having a roadmap for this record, which is not something I’ve ever done before, like, ‘we’re going to make this type of record’. So, I listened back to that chord progression and thought it would really fit with this batch of songs. Lyrically, like a lot of songs on the record, it touches on the Covidness of the times. It’s about how everything kind of looks the same but something is wrong, like, why do I feel so bad when it’s such a beautiful day?
“It’s also one of those songs where I was happy with the demo, but then we got in the studio and somehow the vibe we were able to capture transcended… [he trails off] it’s not something that’s super special, but to me it is. I thought it just felt and sounded really good. Sometimes a song does something in the studio that you can’t put your finger on, but it comes out better than you thought it would.”
Part of the roadmap Courtney speaks of was the decision to make the record in close quarters with his fellow bandmates. For their past few albums, with members living in different states, songs and ideas have taken initial shape by way of email exchanges before entering a studio together to flesh out their musical sketches. This time, the band relocated to a shared house in Nashville, where they made the album in under two weeks with producer Tashian.
“We chose Nashville because Daniel lives there and we thought it sounded awesome to work there,” Courtney elaborates. “We’ve made records in New York and California, and Nashville has such a rich musical history. Also, it was a reaction to the last record. We spent a year in and out of the studio, writing in batches, for a whole year. If you put all that time together, we probably spent two months in the studio, which is a lot for us and I didn’t want to do that again.
“And being in a different city, living in a house together felt like a nice way of doing it. You wake up and everyone is making breakfast and we drive to the studio together. It’s fun and feels very focused. Everybody’s head is in the game. And it came together even faster than we thought. We finished tracking in about nine days. The whole process of making this record feels like everything has fallen into place.”
It was during those days holed up together in Nashville that the band happened up the album’s title. Was it, as some have guessed, named after its producer?
“We kind of brought this on ourselves,” Courtney laughs. “It’s an unusual title and really isn’t named after anyone. We were discussing what to call the album, and it’s weird because it’s the least important and most important thing at the same time. It’s not a concept record where there is an obvious title, so we were talking about titles we liked and I brought up Tim by The Replacements, which I like because it’s always seemed so mysterious, like, why Tim? Who’s Tim? There must be some story. I looked it up and they just thought it was funny to give an album a human name. We found that funny and thought we should do the same.
“We were working with Daniel as producer and that name came up and we thought it’s a good solid name, but it’s not named after him. I just liked the idea that people could hear it and think it’s intriguing or mysterious.”
Over 15 years and six albums into their career, it seems Real Estate are still finding new ways to refresh their creativity and approach to making music. The sound they have cultivated during that time is unlikely to take too many drastic turns at this stage, but as Daniel demonstrates, their ability to keep evolving that instantly recognisable sound into something fresh with each record remains potent as ever.
For Courtney, the Real Estate sound is something of which he is rightly proud, perhaps more so than ever before.
“A criticism we have received is that a lot of our stuff blends together, although I feel like we’ve evolved over the years,” he reflects. “With our last album I think that got into our head, so we were thinking we really had to show we have range and was trying to push ourselves to do new things. It’s fun to do that, but one of the things I love about this album is that we just let Real Estate be Real Estate. Let’s just do what feels good and embrace the fact we have this sound and make the best record we can without trying to appease anyone’s expectations. I think this is our best record and I’m really proud of it.”