61st verse, same as the first!
That's what I thought upon first listening to Real Estate’s new album, Atlas. I didn’t necessarily mean it negatively as I’m subjectively quite fond of the band. However, their consistency is truly remarkable. It’s as if they built a studio over the opening to a three-minute guitar-pop mineshaft and every two years they manage to dig out another ten songs and put them on an album. The most surprising thing about the third batch of Real Estate songs is how mostly unsurprising they are: another ten gems, carefully dusted off and cleaned up and just variable enough from the prior row of gems to convince you they’re originals and not knock-offs.
There’s an implacable trait to Real Estate’s songs that give them the feeling of having “always existed,” despite being convinced that you’ve never actually heard them before. It’s as if their guitar-pop mineshaft is connected to an alternate reality where they unearth songs that some other version of you has already heard. They scratch at you in a tiny, familiar way as if you had dreamed about them and then forgotten them. Part of that is probably due to Real Estate’s sonic regularity. A refusal to stray outside of the established canon of what it means to sound like a Real Estate song, giving them all a somewhat “too perfect” quality that doesn’t necessarily seem real or likely.
In that sense, Atlas is almost a mirror image of Real Estate’s last album, Days: ten songs, the third song a snappy upbeat single, the fourth song a Matt Mondanile-penned instrumental, a late album laid-back lead vocal turn by Alex Bleeker. Whatever else Atlas may be, it also appears to be the “atlas” to making a Real Estate album. Whether you consider this to be a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on what you make of Real Estate to begin with. If you’ve previously found comfort in those tireless, shimmering guitars then it’s hard to imagine you won’t love Atlas. If you’re someone who feels Real Estate is capable of “boring you to death” and merely “our generation’s version of easy listening” (quotes attributable to my unimpressed girlfriend), then Atlas will be unlikely to change your mind.
Other than a few chords played during the intro of “Past Lives” and a droney undertone to “Primitive” it’s hard to even determine that the band has a new keyboard player. The instrumental “April’s Song” (written by Matt Mondanile, also of Ducktails), with its heavily reverbed lead guitar sounding like a mischievous rainstorm, is probably the most experimental sounding thing Real Estate has ever done. That’s saying something, as the song isn’t exactly groundbreaking, (though it’s also probably the best piece of music on the album).
However, while it’s safe to say Atlas doesn’t sound much different than Real Estate has in the past, the eight new songs sung by guitarist and lead singer, Martin Courtney, do have a certain thematic weight to them that’s been absent on prior Real Estate albums.
Atlas was the Titan who was punished by being forced to bear the weight of the heavens on his shoulders and that’s certainly a reference that might be in play for the frequently anxious narrator of the album. However, the more apparent reference seems to be to the everyday atlas, the collection of maps, presumably, meant to guide someone toward a particular destination. The album’s narrator is certainly concerned with “finding” something (clarity, peace of mind, “you”) and Courtney uses the idea of physically traveling with an atlas as a parallel for the way we might use feelings and memories as guidance on an emotional journey. The most often referenced destination on Atlas seems to be an unnamed third party and the driving force behind arriving at that destination seems to be, as Courtney says in “Crime,” not wanting to “die, lonely and uptight.”
On opening song, “Had to Hear,” the narrator is “out again on his own” and calling “you” because he “had to hear you just to feel near you.” There’s’ separation, there’s isolation, and there’s a “horizon,” which is interesting imagery for someone trying to get somewhere as a horizon is a place that you can see but never actually reach. In “Past Lives,” the narrator’s atlas brings him back to his hometown where he marvels at much nostalgia and does everything but explicitly say, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The focus remains on reuniting with another individual, however, as Courtney sings, “I see past lives, but somehow, you’re still here.”
Beyond merely finding “you,” Courtney is also concerned with communicating clearly with “you.” On “Talking Backwards,” the narrator seems to be speaking with that same unnamed, distant person he called up on “Had to Hear” when he says “we’re not getting any closer, you’re too many miles away” and regrets that he “might as well be talking backwards,” apparently signaling a standard-issue failure to communicate. He echoes this sentiment on “The Bend” with the first line, “Have I not been clear? Or do I sound insincere? I’m just trying to make some sense of this, before I lose another year.” The helplessness of not being understood then seems to be amplified by a feeling of not actually being in control of one’s journey when Courtney sings: “like I’m behind the wheel, but it won’t steer,” giving us some indication that having the “atlas” is only half of the solution and the unspoken other half is actually having the control to set yourself on the correct path.
The “horizon” from the first track comes up again on second-to-last track, “Horizon,” when Courtney sings: “just over the horizon, that’s where I’ll always think you’ll be, it’s always so surprising, to find you right there next to me.” (See this echoed also on “Primitive” – “don’t know where I want to be, but I’m glad that you’re with me.”) The revelation here seems to be that all of this wandering (be it physical or emotional) has been a bit pointless. The fact that he’s been looking so hard for something that’s already there seems to call into question the sincerity with which he actually wants what he claims he’s been searching for.
To close out the album, a “Navigator” is, of course, someone who might use an “atlas” and lines about meeting where the “pavement ends” and “waiting for the hands on the clock to stop” definitely let us know we’ve reached the end of the trip. “Navigator” is a bit of a let down compared to the final songs on Real Estate’s last two albums (“Snow Days” and “All the Same,” both of which ended with dramatic instrumental send-offs) but here, it might be appropriately so. At the end of the song the band opts for anti-climax as Courtney sighs: “I have no idea where the day’s been,” and the album ends almost immediately thereafter.
There’s an unsettling gravity to this final, unexpected declaration. That the navigator who seemed to be so earnestly trying to employ his atlas to bridge the distance between himself and another suddenly admits he was really just unnecessarily screwing around and finds himself unable to even account for all of his wasted time. Real Estate might sound as light as they ever have, but they’ve certainly never felt this heavy.
