photos courtesy of Alex Bleeker

The New Jersey-bred indie purveyors celebrate their 10th anniversary by returning to the studio that birthed their breakthrough LP.

“Especially after the second or third record, you start to feel like the next record is really important,” Real Estate frontman Martin Courtney says from his home in Beacon, N.Y. It’s mid-December, and Courtney and his band are deep into the process of recording their fifth full-length release. Especially as Real Estate enter their second decade, the sessions have offered the always-thoughtful singer/guitarist a chance to reflect on his career path and other artistic choices. “I feel like we need to make our best record right now,” he says. “I keep asking myself, ‘Why are we doing this if not to do it really well and not just coast?’”

Real Estate have been slowly crafting the follow-up to 2017’s In Mind since mid-2018, hunkering down for numerous sessions at Gardiner, N.Y.’s Marcata Recording—the same space near New Paltz where they laid down their 2011 breakthrough Days. The members of Real Estate—Courtney, bassist and occasional lead singer Alex Bleeker, drummer Jackson Pollis, keyboardist Matt Kallman and guitarist Julian Lynch, an old friend who officially joined the group almost three years ago—have also reteamed with Days producer Kevin McMahon, who has known the band’s principal members since they were teens. Courtney says that McMahon has become a confidant, encouraging him as he penned “darker” songs “about having a family, living in times that are heavy and wanting to make sure that everyone’s OK.”

Courtney welcomed his third daughter this fall and the weight of fatherhood and other adult responsibilities has continued to color his thoughts on the band’s future. “The main thing Kevin and I talked about was that you get to the point in your life where you think, ‘Is this what I’m going to be doing now?’ I’m a dad and my life is shaping up—I’m a musician, and I’m in a band, and it’s this thing I fell into when I was in my early-20s,” he says of his Saturn Return questions.

“My parents weren’t musicians, so I don’t know what it’s like to be raised by one, and I was coming to terms with whether or not I wanted to do this the rest of my life. But I’ve justified it to myself by thinking, ‘Doing something that you feel is really special for yourself is a good example to set for your kids.’ I had this exact conversation with another musician who used to be in a touring band who fell into having a ‘real job.’ Then, he found out that he was having a kid and was like, ‘I don’t want my kid to know me as someone doing a job that I hate, so I’m gonna quit and go back to being a musician.’ It helped to hear that from somebody else. I still have these questions, but this is what I’m good at and what I like doing.”

Old Friends

MARTIN COURTNEY: We came up with this tentative plan to record in two or three different sessions—at different studios with different producers. There were a lot of names and places thrown around, but we couldn’t come to a consensus. Then, Kevin and I connected in a way that felt good—he’s somebody we’ve known for a long time. I was in a band in high school that recorded with him, and Real Estate made our second record with him. Working with an old friend—somebody whose career has a shared history—felt good and I think he had the same feeling. But at the same time, we wanted push ourselves to make something special and better.

ALEX BLEEKER: Marcata is inside a giant old barn, and it’s nice to make a record in this place with such beautiful surroundings. There’s a huge history of records being made in Upstate New York, and it’s just a place to go to focus on the task at hand. It’s nice when the surroundings are so serene.

Creative Comfort

BLEEKER: The first time we got together, in earnest, was in April 2018, but Martin and the rest of us had been writing material independently before then. Similar to past records, Martin did most of the heavy lifting in terms of getting the initial songs written. Then, we played them as a band and tried these different things out. Jackson can bring a lot by adding a totally different groove to a song and, all of a sudden, it changes directions and that’ll affect what I’m playing on bass. So a lot of the fleshing out happens when we’re in a room together.

There are a couple of songs, which only have working titles, that are definitely moving us in different directions that we’re excited about. We’ll usually play two or three of the new ones that we’re trying out at shows. We’ve tested out five or six total so far, and a couple of them have really made their way into the repertoire. “Half a Human” has a long improvisational jam that we’re pretty psyched about, and that’s been a setlist staple during the past year. It’s funny—one of the band members saw a fan comment on Reddit like, “I hope they don’t play all the songs live so that there’s still some surprises for the record.” And, of course, there will be.

COURTNEY: After the second night of recording, we went back to our Airbnb and had this conversation in the kitchen where we said, “This is going really well. The work vibe is nice; it’s relaxed in a way where we feel comfortable, but also ironically puts us in the headspace of wanting to push ourselves.” Obviously, going back to the studio we made Days in felt like an easy narrative. Like, “We’re going back to our roots.” That was the opposite of what we wanted to do.

Real Estate 2.0

COURTNEY: This is the first record with Julian [Lynch] as part of the whole process from the beginning. We started writing and working on the last record before he joined the band, then he came in as the process was underway.

BLEEKER: He was finding his footing as a new member in our band. We’ve known him for a long time, but it’s a different chemistry when you enter something. Now, he’s been on the road with us, a part of the band; he’s contributing to the songwriting and that feels good. It feels like a fully formed, new chapter for us—Real Estate 2.0.

Play It Again

BLEEKER: We are always excited about every record we make, but this one feels special for sure. We’ve already recorded 19 songs, one of which I wrote. But we haven’t sequenced the record yet so we don’t know what’s gonna make the cut.

COURTNEY: We have enough material that we could do a double LP if we wanted to, but I don’t want to. To me, the ideal situation when listening to music is you finish a record and it feels like you want to play it again.

Talking Backwards

COURTNEY: I really opened myself up to taking advice lyrically. I’ve been talking to people about my lyrics more—not only with Kevin but also with the rest of the band. I felt comfortable asking, “Do these lyrics work for you? Do they make sense?” I wanted to make sure that what I was trying to say in each song was coming across. It feels like we’re accomplishing something that we can be really proud of—it feels like we did the best we possibly could, dotted every “i” and crossed every “t.” I’d go a month or two without writing a song and start asking myself, “Can I even do this anymore?” That’s a question I always have. If I go too long without writing a song that I’m excited about, then I’m like, “I guess the well has run dry. That’s it. All my best songs are behind me.” [Laughs.]

Then there’s something I’m psyched about and it’s like, “Cool, I can still do it.” Self-doubt creeps in very quickly, along with the imposter complex, and I start saying to myself, “I’m not a real musician; I just fell into doing this.” Earlier this year, when I was writing a lot of these songs, ironically, in the back of my head, I was thinking, “Is being a musician a silly thing to do with your life? Could I be accomplishing more doing something else? Could I be a more useful human being? Am I being selfish for doing something that isn’t necessarily stable, but is what I love to do, since I have a family? Am I being irresponsible? Is that an inherently selfish endeavor?” So I had this conversation with a lot of people, and I’ve decided that being a musician is a worthy thing.

This article originally appears in the March 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.