The Main Thing
Real Estate
Week 66: May 3-9, 2020
I don't remember my mindset during this week of Record Club, like I don't remember living this week or any of the details. But based on the evidence presented to me through the Sunday write-up and a couple of the reviews, it was a rough week. And nothing about this Real Estate album got me out of that ostensible funk.
The Sunday write-up is most like the shortest I've ever written in Record Club history. Based on how blown-out those fuckers are these days, I imagine this record will stand until RC is kaput. Dwyer, that week's reluctant RC captain, gave a four-word reasoning for choosing the album. My own intro was sparse, no doubt due to COVID pressures weighing on me. Even the "Reading Some Shit" section doesn't contain any words, but instead a joke—an ongoing joke, and a joke that I hold very dear, but still.
My own review is tossed-off. One medium-sized paragraph that basically amounts to "I wish I didn't have to do this." And then more of my words end up in Dwyer's review, in the form of a grumpy editor's note. Rereading it, I may have misinterpreted what Dwyer was saying. I think I assumed at the time that he didn't listen to the album at all before writing a review, and that pissed me off. But he says "I planned to listen to this album again," the word "again" indicating that he's listened to it at least once before, which is good. He probably didn't deserve the editor's note. Oh well, I'll leave it up for posterity.
At least Sunny and Rachel C. took the assignment seriously. Though they both came to the same conclusion—this album is pretty light—they both use that conclusion to different ends. "Light" was a synonym for "pleasant" in Rachel's life, and it was a synonym for "empty" in Sunny's life. For the record, they are both right—this is light, pleasant, and empty music. I wonder if RC was blessed with some dense and interesting and fun albums over the first however many weeks of the pandemic, and then, when we finally stumbled upon an album that wasn't any of that, it all fell apart pretty easily.
The thing about The Main Thing is that it's actually not that bad (2 pukes out of 5 was a total underrate based on outside circumstances). It's nice to listen to in the same way that most Real Estate albums are nice to listen to. They all have the same feel. All the songs blend into each other a little bit. Sure, there are some standouts throughout the discography, but for the most part, you can easily pinpoint their sound.
Real Estate is released a rarities compilation album last week, and so I was scrolling through some interesting discussion in the comment section under the announcement of that album. (Fortuitous timing, knowing that I had to soon write this blog post.) The discussion was vaguely pessimistic in the same way that our reviews here are too, basically how Real Estate has a couple standout hits over the years but mostly they coast on a specific sound. (I was more forgiving about last year's Daniel than they were.) But there was some speculation that Real Estate was hit hard, artistically speaking, from the righteous and correct removal of Matt Mondanile for being a sexual abuser. Someone said that Martin Courtney and Matt Monadanile each only had like two or three great songs in them every album cycle, but without Monadanile, the number was cut in half, and it showed.
Maybe that's true, but it's also a moot point. I'd rather not have an abusive piece of shit in a band I'm listening to than listen to an abusive piece of shit's three good songs. I know that's just me. We're covering Hookworms next week, so obviously I'm going to be dropping another 1000 annoying words on the subject then. But I think that we can acknowledge the veracity of such speculation without even talking about Monadanile any more than we have to.
Real Estate is a band with a shtick, and they do it well, even if that shtick wears on you with repeated listens. They are a good band to have on while you're trying to chill. They are a bad band to have on while you're trying to dig deep and come up with important facets of their music to write about in an album review for a blog. And then maybe if you're not able to chill at all during a global pandemic, then this becomes the wrong album to review for two different reasons.
Real Estate is a band with a shtick, and they do it well, even if that shtick wears on you with repeated listens. They are a good band to have on while you're trying to chill. They are a bad band to have on while you're trying to dig deep and come up with important facets of their music to write about in an album review for a blog. And then maybe if you're not able to chill at all during a global pandemic, then this becomes the wrong album to review for two different reasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment