New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The past year of lockdown and self-isolation might just be the longest time that the band Real Estate has ever spent off the road and away from each other, but today they announce a brand new EP of their most intuitive and interconnected music to date. Out March 26th on Domino, Half a Human is a collection of six songs created between two different worlds. While the architecture of each was constructed during sessions for their 2020 album, The Main Thing, the tracks came to life when vocalist/guitarist
Martin Courtney, bassist/vocalist Alex Bleeker, keyboardist Matt Kallman and guitarist Julian Lynch began trading the material back and forth remotely throughout the pandemic. They found new ways of working together as they further explored the emotional landscapes they've been perfecting for more than a decade, and in taking stock of themselves and the uncertainty of their future, Half a Human helped them arrive at a new thesis statement for the band.
"Life keeps changing and additional responsibilities and stresses keep being added, but this band is still here," says
Martin Courtney. "When I was writing a lot of these songs, I was feeling a little weird about being in a band. Like, 'how is this still a thing?' I was feeling silly about it and then coming around to it at the same time. This is what we're good at and it's what we love to do and want to keep doing. I don't want to do anything else."
After premiering on SiriusXMU this morning, Real Estate have released EP title track "Half a Human" everywhere alongside a mind-bending, multimedia music video directed by FISK.
"Half a Human" has long been a staple of Real Estate's live set, a loose and epic jam they loved playing in front of a crowd, but
Martin Courtney originally wrote the lyrics about the alienation of life on tour. No one could have expected that hanging in cheap hotels and parking lots, wandering overpasses and desolate roads would soon become such nostalgic pastimes, and as a sense of formless uncertainty continues to dominate our days, the disconnect that inspired the song now feels uniquely suited to the current moment.
Since the release of their self-titled album in 2009, Real Estate have become "expert at communicating a particular type of suburban ennui...and fantasizing about life elsewhere" (The New Yorker). Across Half a Human they cement themselves as indie rock lifers, tackling subjects of aging, connection and loss of innocence by focusing on the small moments of complicated, concentrated emotion that come from existing in this world. On "D+" - written and sung by Alex Bleeker - he recalls watching the aftermath of 9/11 from the outskirts of Real Estate's native New Jersey. On "In The Garden," the band reflects on the push-and-pull of the central question asked by the whole Half a Human EP: what does it mean to make art in
America while holding on to your roots and pushing yourself into exciting new places?
Released mere weeks before COVID-19 shut down the country in 2020, The Main Thingwas praised as "deeply reflective" (NPR Music), "self-questioning and frequently beautiful" (UPROXX), "strikingly more adventurous" (VICE) and "the continuation of a laud-worthy evolution" (Aquarium Drunkard), but the new sounds of Half a Humanbridge the gap to the next era of Real Estate. In addition to the EP, the band have stayed as idiosyncratic and creative as ever over the last twelve months, between releasing an augmented reality concert experience called The Quarantour, performing in a refrigerator, covering The Doobie Brothers, Galaxie 500 and Joni Mitchell, raising money for Fair Fight and more.
Half a Human is available digitally and on 1000 copies of a limited edition 12".
Half a Human Track List
Desire Path
Half a Human
Soon
D+
In the Garden
Ribbon
