Surreal Estate: Redux

back in september, pitchfork did a news piece on the forthcoming debut album from the recently extant band Real Estate. (i wrote about it.) today, less than two months later, the band has joined the fork's "best new music" club, with an album that turns out to be just one and a half points shy of perfect.

in my post about september's news story, i wrote, "people who really like music that makes them remember high school should be banned from the internet."

in today's review, david bevan says, "Over the past year, many of these songs have soundtracked a time when it feels like every kid in or just out of college seems to be handcrafting/clamoring for music that shuttles us back to a time before career choices, adult responsibility, and this recession."

how deeply pathetic is our generation? before we turn twenty, we're already lamenting our lost youth. think about it this way: if we go on like this, what will we have to be nostalgic about ten years from now? still early childhood? damn, some people really hate their armpit hair.

"clamoring" to be free from adult responsibility may indeed be the sound coming out of america's uber-educated white kids, but the notion that this results in some sort of creative movement? nigga please! you're explicitly saying it's a leap backwards! you just fucking said it!!!

no matter, backwards is okay. the past isn't scary, at least not if you're an american who attends or once attended college. it's the future that terrifies these people, in art as in their lives. in art because the future may, at any moment, render useless their intricate understanding of american independent rock music (1980's-present); in their lives because the future threatens to be less fun than high school.

the final paragraph of the reveiw reminds us that you can't write for pitchfork unless you can string together a diarrhea-inducing metaphor. in today's entry, bevan says that even though this is clearly a summer-themed album, "this music transcends the notion of seasons."

holy shit! i once thought i had transcended the notion of seasons, but then i started coming down and realized i was in a bowling alley.

"There's much more at play here than what goes on between the months of June through September." in a related point, sushi has more rice in it than what goes on between 2 and 2:30 in the morning.

Surreal Estate

i noticed a curious headline while running my eyes over pitchfork's "news" section: "Real Estate Announce Debut Album".

i thought: huh... that's odd. usually when a debut album is announced (as opposed to simply being released), it's coming from some long-awaited supergroup, which of course goes on to suck.

recently, though, bands that haven't produced a full work, are having their debut albums pimped. all you need is just less than six songs to stay popular with just more than 500 writers for a little more than a month, and your in. black kids was a perfect example of this, and if you click through to that real estate story, you can see it all happening again.

"Hazy Jersey-based indie poppers Real Estate have been setting our RSS feeds on fire all summer with tracks like 'Fake Blues' and 'Black Lake'-- blurry, innocent evocations of high school beach trips and first tokes."

now i haven't bothered to listen to the music. my internet's kinda shitty these days, and anyway it's been a while since i've gotten excited by something that sets "RSS feeds on fire". to be sure, though, the language is pretty fucking revealing. this writer, one Tom Breihan, misses high school.

those were the days, no? playing hookie, "blurry, innocent" trips to the beach, that "first toke"... all this shit's rushing back to me, it's like PROUST!

but seriously, people who really like music that makes them remember high school should be banned from the internet. nevertheless, with song titles like "suburban dog", "let'srock the beach", and "suburban beverage", you can't blame a 20-something for getting sucked in. after all, many 20-somethings are FROM the suburbs, and can totally relate. (it, like, sucks there because of your parents, but it can be totally fun sometimes cuz you can drive to the beach and there's parties!)

but who am i to judge? the blogs are abuzz about this band. and we all know how important blogs are. (cue crickets)