''Real Estate'' is the debut album by American

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent reco ...

band Real Estate, released on on

Woodsist Woodsist is an American independent record label founded in 2006 by Jeremy Earl of the band Woods and based in Stone Ridge, New York. Artists * Alex Bleeker and the Freaks * Art Museums * The Babies * Blank Dogs * Blues Control * The Chris ...

Background

Future Real Estate founders Martin Courtney, Matt Mondanile and Alex Bleeker had already played music together in various permutations as students at Ridgewood High School in

Ridgewood, New Jersey Ridgewood is a Village (New Jersey), village in Bergen County, New Jersey, Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Ridgewood is a suburban commuter town, bedroom community of New York City, located approximately northwest of Midtown M ...

. While studying in different colleges, they kept in touch and would send each other songs that they had worked on individually. Courtney's demos were impressive enough to inspire them to form another band after graduating and returning home to Ridgewood in 2008. They were joined on drums by Etienne Pierre Duguay, who had formed a band called Predator Vision with Mondanile in Northampton and also played with Mondanile, Courtney and Bleeker as the backing band for Julian Lynch. The quartet jammed in the basement of Courtney's parents' house, and when Bleeker moved to Philadelphia, the other three continued working on music. Eventually Bleeker returned, and after playing guitar since high school, he was asked to play bass to make it easier to sing for Courtney, who had played bass throughout high school and had recently picked up guitar to write songs.

Recording

Most of Real Estate's debut album was recorded from January until June 2009 at Yeah Buddy HQ in Glen Rock, New Jersey, a studio operated by the band's childhood friend Sarim "Sam" Al-Rawi. "Suburban Dogs" was recorded at Courtney's mother's house, while "Fake Blues" was recorded at Courtney's apartment.

Artwork

The artwork for the album comes from Italian architect

Paolo Soleri Paolo Soleri (21 June 1919 – 9 April 2013) was an American architect and urban planner. He established the educational Cosanti Foundation and Arcosanti. Soleri was a lecturer in the College of Architecture at Arizona State University and a Nati ...

's model for his 'Hexahedron City', from his 1969 book ''Arcology: The City in the Image of Man'' published by the

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

. The book details Soleri's architectural concept ''

arcology Arcology, a Blend word, portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology",. is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and Sustainable development, ecologically low-impact human habitats. The term was coined in ...

'', a vision of architectural design principles for very densely populated habitats.Arcology – City in the Image of Man

. Arcosanti. Retrieved December 13, 2015.

Critical reception

''Real Estate'' received largely positive reviews from contemporary music critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 79, based on 15 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'' labeled it "Best New Music".

Track listing

Personnel

* Martin Courtney – vocals , guitar, bass , drums , percussion * Matthew Mondanile – guitar , SK-5 * Alex Bleeker – bass , percussion *Etienne Pierre Duguay – drums ,

bongos Bongos (Spanish language, Spanish: ''bongó'') are an Afro-Cubans, Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. The pair consists of the larger ''hembra'' () and the smaller ''macho'' ...

References

{{Authority control 2009 debut albums Woodsist albums Real Estate (band) albums