US indie rockers promise vibrant tunes tonight in city

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

The New Jersey band Real Estate, which is a fan of ‘90s indie rock bands, will perform tonight at Istanbul’s Babylon.

Even in a flurry of bands emerging from the United States indie rock scene, Real Estate is a standout.
The New Jersey band made its big break last year with “Days,” and the quartet will be playing on the Babylon stage in Istanbul tonight. Its second album “Days” meant a bigger break for Real Estate, arriving two years after the band’s self-titled debut. It did not rock the charts or break the records, but it garnered highly positive reviews from several media outlets. One wonders what made the difference for the band, since “Days” brought them to a modest success from near-obscurity.

“I guess ‘Days’ was just better recorded and therefore more accessible,” the band’s vocalist and guitarist Martin Courtney explained to Hürriyet Daily News during an email interview. “Also the songs are more fully formed.”

The definitive quality to Real Estate’s music is the band’s vibrant, fluid and soulfully crafted guitar melodies reminiscent of 1990s American indie rock recorded with lo-fi aesthetics, which creates a warmer sound through lower-quality equipment.

Big fan of ‘90s rock band
“We’re all big fans of classic ’90s indie rock bands like Built to Spill, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Galaxie 500, etc.,” Courtney said, explaining the band’s influences. “Another influence on Real Estate is ’70s and ’80s soft rock – Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Prefab Sprout.”

The band’s guitar lines are usually so dominant that the listener may not be aware that several Real Estate songs do not have words. Courtney says the decision to leave a song instrumental or write words for it is completely instinctive.

“Most of our songs start off instrumental, and I write a vocal melody while we’re jamming it in practice,” he wrote. “Sometimes a song just sounds good without the vocals and we get used to playing it that way and before we know it, it’s become an instrumental.”

Following a successful second record, the band will continue “touring until all of our personal lives are in shambles,” Courtney jokingly explained. Catching the band onstage in their first visit to Turkey sounds like a good idea.

The concert at Babylon starts at 10:30 tonight.