Photo: Press
It feels a bit wrong seeing a band like Real Estate – all dreamy sunsets, warm surf sounds and sun-dappled road trips – on a cold, damp October night in London.
Onstage however, it really could be a summer evening. Bespectacled, preppy lead singer Martin Courtney and the gang are lit up in warm reds and yellows as they groove their shoulders and bob their heads in unison, hazy smoke adding to the feeling of reverie.
The crowd respond best to tracks from 2011’s Days – ‘Easy’, ‘Green Aisles’, ‘Municipality’, and ‘It’s Real’ – a nostalgic record that already feels like a classic, an old faded photo album, yellow and curling at the edges, full of sentimentality. And the band play them flawlessly, the glowing, easy harmonies and bendy Shadows-style surf guitar wrapping us up in a familiarly warm blanket.
But crowd-pleasing aside, their performance is at its most refreshing when the boys meander off the sunny well-beaten track, away from their winning formula and Courtney’s idiosyncratic vocals. The beautiful instrumental ‘April’s Song’, with its tremolo-effect guitar gently shimmering, is surprisingly mesmerising.
Bassist Alex Bleeker sings an understated lead on ‘How Might I Live’, his deeper, touchingly vulnerable voice: “Down in my home, Louisiana / Down in my home where I stay / Got to find the words to say you're not the one I love / How might I live to see the day?” – with its southern drawl locating the band in a different US music tradition than they are accustomed to, more country than California, more Neil Young than Beach Boys. When Courtney harmonises with him it strangely sounds prettier and more delicate than on other tracks.
The boys, with a sound that remains similar throughout the majority of their set, sometimes run the risk of drifting into ‘samey’ territory, but with their smiles and charm – at one point they break into ‘ Happy Birthday’ for a bandmate – and their obvious happiness on stage, it’s impossible to hold it against them. Don’t fight the dreaminess, embrace it.
