American indie-haze rock stars Real Estate have released a new single ‘Paper Cup’ following the band’s album and European tour dates announced.
Titled ‘The Main Thing’, the fifth album will be released on February 28th which delivers Real Estate’s most inspired and self-aware set of songs to date, created over the course of a year at upstate New York’s Marcata Sound.
Following his work on 2011’s album Days, engineer Kevin McMahon returns as producer, and, for the first time ever, Real Estate has brought in outside instrumentalists and special guests like Sylvan Esso, whose vocalist Amelia Meath features on first single, ‘Paper Cup’.
Across the album’s 13 interrogative tracks – as full of depth, strangeness, and contradictions as they are lifting hooks – the band balances existential, environmental, and political anxieties with fatherly sentiments, self-satirizing lyrics, forever-lively guitar lines, and shimmering strings.
New single “PAPER CUP” (feat. Sylvan Esso) comes alongside a Nick Roney-directed music video chronicling the final performance in the life of a giant animatronic squirrel named Chipper.
On “Paper Cup” and the making of The Main Thing, vocalist and guitarist Martin Courtney says: “‘Paper Cup is a song about getting older and realizing that this thing that I fell into doing over ten years ago – being a musician, writing songs, being a guy in a band – this may end up being my life’s work.
“Watching the people around me change and evolve, take on new challenges, and feeling sort of stuck in a rut, in a way. Feeling uncertain of the validity of being an artist in an age of climate change and general political and social unrest around the world.
“It’s a song about questioning your chosen path in life and searching for meaning in what you do. Those questions don’t really get resolved in this song, but ironically, the process of making this record – really diving deep and trying to make it the best thing we’ve ever made – reaffirmed in me, and I think in all of us in this band, why we are doing this.”
The band underwent a collaborative evolution for this album, which saw each member experimenting in new roles, and alongside Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen, Aaron Johnston of Brasilian Girls and a string quartet all play on the record.
The Main Thing arrives with a fresh commitment the members of Real Estate – Alex Bleeker (bass), Martin Courtney (vocals, guitar), Matthew Kallman (keyboards), Julian Lynch (guitar, vocals), and Jackson Pollis (drums and drum programming) – have made to each other, 10 years and 5 full-length LPs into a career spent crafting unmistakable and influential palettes of sound.
In June Real Estate will be coming to the UK as part of their European tour including Leeds and London. Find out more below.
UK and European Tour Dates in June
11th – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
13th – Vicar Street, Dublin
14th – Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow
16th – Orangerie at Botanique, Brussells
17th – Luxor, Koln
18th – Trabendo, Paris
20th – Roundhouse, London
21st – Tivolivredenburg Pandora Hall, Utrecht
22nd June – Festsaal Kreuzberg, Berlin
24th June – Pumpehuset, Copenhagen
Tickets are on sale January 24th.
Featured image by Jake Michaels.
