Real Estate

While we're at it, here's a short piece I wrote for Athens' Flagpole on Jersey boys Real Estate, whose recent Days proved to be a sleeper fave of mine last year. Over the phone, singer Martin Courtney waxed nostalgic about teenage summer nights and the power of shared musical discoveries.

It’s an electrifying thing when a band realizes its potential. Last year’s Days was a turning point for Ridgewood, NJ indie-rockers Real Estate, whose 2009 self-titled debut was a marker of budding talent, yet displayed little cohesion.

“When we made the first record,” explains singer and guitarist Martin Courtney, “we were barely even a band. Those songs were recorded before we had coalesced into Real Estate. We played hundreds of shows between the first and second albums. When we started recording the first album we hadn’t even played one show.”

Read the rest here.

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Frankie Rose

Here's a piece I wrote a few weeks back for Creative Loafing on Frankie Rose, former Vivian Girls/Crystal Stilts drummer and current indie pop obsession. Her new record Interstellar is bold and beautiful - "dreamy," to employ an overused but admittedly apt adjective - if also unapologetically derivative and a tad on the slight side. (28 minutes? What is this, the Green Album?) Still, Interstellar is a worthy listen from an interesting interview subject.

From shitgaze to chillwave, the last half-decade in music has been a blur. Lo-fi recording techniques and impressionistic lyricism have come to represent a noncommittal norm, guided by ghosts of history and a very modern sort of ennui bordering on post-paranoia — the terrible and normalized acceptance that the worst can and probably will happen. It seems our only ongoing concern is how to get back — or pretend to get back — to where we once belonged.

"I was really tired of things just being kind of awash," songwriter and guitarist Frankie Rose explains. "I was tired of the haze."

Read the rest here.

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