{"id":990,"date":"2012-04-27T23:13:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T23:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=990"},"modified":"2026-06-27T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T23:15:00","slug":"real-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=990","title":{"rendered":"Real Estate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

April 2012, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The live show experience is one never to be missed, it\u2019s where you tell if a band really has it or not. With all the amazing aspects of production, any piece of crap music can sound palatable and perhaps even good on record \u2014 but all this goes away when you\u2019re on stage in front of people who expect you to recreate what they first heard. I never trust bands who don\u2019t tour, it tells me they\u2019re hiding something.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been listening to Real Estate for a while now, and have grown fond of the power indie pop\/rock sound they\u2019ve developed. On the album, the band belies its roots \u2014 it doesn\u2019t sound like a band from New Jersey (now Brooklyn), instead coming across as a group from the Pacific Coast, dabbling in breezy guitar clips and a calmness that comes with the territory. But I\u2019ve found that while this kind of sound is great on a record, it doesn\u2019t always work out live (I\u2019m looking at you Morning Benders), making for shows more meh than yeah.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say Real Estate has it worked out in ways I didn\u2019t expect, as its show at the 40 Watt was electric and bold. While the band roamed through tracks off of its 2011 release Days<\/em> and 2009\u2019s self-titled album, there were two things perfectly clear: The live tracks add a power and depth not obvious on the record, and the band emulates the best Jersey has to offer \u2014 with images of The Feelies and The Wrens wending throughout the quintet\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n

Singer\/guitarist Martin Courtney took center stage, and while donning the unassuming look of Clark Kent, provided a strong force in leading the band through the 15-song set. The band opened with \u201cDays\u2019 Municipality,\u201d a nice primer for the night, as it was clear from the start how important the rhythm section \u2014 Alex Bleeker on bass and Jackson Pollis on drums \u2014 is to the band\u2019s sound. While Courtney and Matthew Mondanile expertly picked through their inventive guitar lines, Bleeker and Pollis provided a pleasant punch to the proceedings. This was best seen in \u201cAll the Same,\u201d the fourth song of the night, which saw the band erupt into a celebratory jam that didn\u2019t ever have to end (and I am a famous hater of songs that go on too long).<\/p>\n

So good was the set that the more popular songs you\u2019d expect to move the crowd higher \u2014 such as \u201cIt\u2019s Real,\u201d \u201cEasy\u201d and \u201cBeach Comber\u201d \u2014 were met with the same enthusiasm as the rest of the set. \u201cThis is a great crowd,\u201d Mondanile noted at one point, and he was right. The near-packed Watt was invested and the band noticed. \u201cThis is a great town with a great crowd,\u201d added the talkative Bleeker, the band member most interactive with the audience. Even the Chris Spedding cover \u201cVideo Life\u201d brought the crowd in, and this was a group that wanted to hear nothing but Real Estate songs.<\/p>\n

And who could blame them, especially when the band was working it song after song. My a-ha moment came during \u201cYounger Than Yesterday,\u201d when closing my eyes, I heard the familiar Feelies guitar refrains emanating from the stage, but not in an easy, copy-cat way. Real Estate had taken a piece from the 1980s legends and made it part of its oeuvre in a seamless and heartfelt way. I haven\u2019t felt that too often coming from a newer band, and it made my night.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure what Real Estate had to offer live, but I\u2019m sure happy I found out. For this band, the best location, location, location is on stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 2012, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga. The live show experience is one never to be missed, it\u2019s where you tell if a band really has it or not. With all the amazing aspects of production, any piece of crap music can sound palatable and perhaps even good on record \u2014 but all this goes away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[45,177],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-40-watt","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}