In Mind, the fourth full-length record from Real Estate, is a portrait of a mature band at the height of its power. Long respected for their deft lyrical hand and gorgeous melodies, In Mind builds upon the band’s reputation for crafting perfect songs and carries Real Estate even deeper into the pantheon of great songwriters.

On the new record, the band fine-tunes the winsome songwriting and profound earnestness that made previous albums—2009’s Real Estate, 2011’s Days, and 2014’s Atlas—so beloved, and pushes their songs in a variety of compelling new directions. Written primarily by guitarist and vocalist Martin Courtney at his home in Beacon—a quiet town in upstate New York—In Mind offers a shifting of the gears, positing a band engaged in the push/pull of burgeoning adulthood. Reflecting a change in lineup, changes in geography, and a general desire to move forward without looking back, the record casts the band in a new light—one that replaces the wistful ennui of teenage suburbia with an equally complicated adult version. The record not only showcases some of the band’s most sublime arrangements to date, it also presents a leap forward in terms of production, with the band utilizing the studio as a tool to broaden the sonic landscape of their music to stunning effect.

In Mind offers passing nods to the sanguine qualities of earlier releases while also depicting a band in a state of real change. Since the recording of the band’s last album, Courtney had become a father of two and settled into a newfound domesticity living in Beacon, while bassist Alex Bleeker made the move out to sunny California, creating a complicated new set of logistics for the band to work around. Additionally, after the departure of founding member and lead guitarist Matt Mondanile in 2015, the band—Courtney, Bleeker, and drummer Jackson Pollis--faced the prospect of either closing ranks or embracing the changes that bringing in new people would ultimately bring. “It just seemed like a good moment to move in a slightly different direction,” says Courtney, “The idea of bringing in a stranger seemed too weird, but I wasn’t interested in recording as a four-piece and having some hired gun come out to play shows with us. In the end asking Julian Lynch—who we’d already been playing with and we’ve known since high school--to join the band made the most sense. He felt like a full-time member of the band already.” This was also true of keyboardist Matt Kallman, who previously played with the band on Atlas and on that record’s subsequent tour. Joining the band in a more official capacity before the recording of In Mind, Kallman contributed in both sound and scope, writing the keyboard parts and contributing to the album’s arrangements. With a new lineup secured and armed with an arsenal of songs that Courtney and Bleeker had spent the past six months writing, the band approached the business of fleshing out the songs in an almost workmanlike manner.

“It was good being outside of the city,” recalls Kallman. “We got a little Airbnb in Beacon and we rented a practice space inside an old converted high school. We would walk to the high school and play music all day, then go play basketball, go to the health food store or go out to dinner, then go back to the house. We did that every day for, in total, about three weeks. It was nice not having the headache of our regular lives. It all felt very open, like we were planted there to do a job and that's all we could do was just work on the songs. I think the music kind of reflects that space we were in--free and open and cautiously optimistic.”

Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Cole M.G.N. (known for his work with the likes of Beck, Snoop Dogg, Dam-Funk, Nx Worries, and Julia Holter), the eleven tracks on In Mind deliver the same kind of warmth and soft-focus narratives that one has come to expect from the band—pastoral guitars, elegantly deployed arrangements, a sort of mindful melancholy—but there is also a newly adventurous sonic edge to the proceedings. Album opener—the ebullient pop number “Darling” -- announces itself with a wash of synth tones rather than guitars. Elsewhere, on tracks like “Serve the Song” and “Two Arrows,” guitarist Julian Lynch employs a variety of distorted guitar sounds that might have felt out of place on previous Real Estate records, with the latter track stretching out beyond the six-minute mark—the closest thing to a jam the band has ever recorded. The band’s predilection for crafting airtight pop songs remains in full-effect here, with songs like “Stained Glass” and “Same Sun” occupying the same kind of rarefied universe as fan favorites like “Talking Backwards” or “It’s Real.” ‘Where does one thing ever end and the next begin?’ Courtney asks in the latter, ‘I do not wish to retrace the steps I’ve taken / All that matters now is where I’m going.’

Glittering pop moments aside, the record’s most stunning moments are arguably it’s most restrained— “After the Moon” unspools in waltz-like fashion, while album closer “Saturday” offers In Mind’s most pointed take on moving beyond the fascinations of youth: ‘When a stranger is living in your old house / What does where you were born still say about you? / It’d be best to jettison what you can’t redo.’

Perhaps more than on any other Real Estate record, the lyrics on In Mind seem to reflect a struggle between youth and adulthood, the desire for escapism balanced against the increasing demands of responsibility. (‘There’s no place I would rather be right now,’ sings Courtney on “Stained Glass”, ‘I’d love to never leave but I just don’t know how.’) “I feel like it takes touring a record for a few months and playing the songs over and over for me to really start understanding my own lyrics,” says Courtney, “but so much of this record feels like it has to do with my concerns about taking care of my family. I will often walk my wife and kids to the library and then just go out on my own, wandering around the town for three or four hours and writing the lyrics in my head.” Courtney continues, “We certainly never thought this would be our lives, but now that it is, we all want to protect that and nourish it and keep it safe. I think maybe that’s what this record is about.”

As for the band’s increasingly widespread appeal, both bassist Alex Bleeker and Courtney can only theorize as to what it is about their music that seems to strike such a profound chord with listeners. “I think there’s an earnestness to what we do,” says Bleeker. “It’s coming from a truthful place of human experience, but it’s also kind of raw. It evokes something for people, even though we are often dissecting subject matter that seems super normal and undramatic, it’s also relatable. We all grew up with this common, cookie-cutter kind of American suburban experience and we can’t help but write about that. I think there aren’t a lot of people who actually write about that in a very forthright way.”

Per bassist Alex Bleeker, the songs on In Mind reflect a kind of quiet ambition on the part of the band. A desire not to reinvent themselves, but rather to just be the best version of themselves that they can be. “We’re never looking to overhaul anything in a huge way,” he says, “But we do want to grow and explore new territory and use the studio in a different way. We didn’t want to change anything arbitrarily, but it felt good to reach out into some more exploratory space while still holding on to what makes us Real Estate in the first place.”

Wild Nothing is an American indie rock/dream pop band from Blacksburg, Virginia, formed in late 2009 by Jack Tatum. During live performances, Tatum is joined by additional musicians, currently Nathan Goodman, Jeff Haley, Matt Kallman and Jeremiah Johnson.
To date, Wild Nothing has released three studio albums, Gemini, Nocturne and Life of Pause, and two EPs, Golden Haze and Empty Estate.

Best Coast is an American rock duo formed in Los Angeles, California in 2009. The band consists of songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Bethany Cosentino and guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno. Cosentino, a former child actress, began writing music as a teenager and was formerly a member of the experimentalist drone group Pocahaunted. After a brief tenure at college in New York City, Cosentino returned to the West Coast and began recording lo-fi demos with Bruno, whom she met in the Los Angeles music scene.
After a string of 7-inch and cassette-only singles, the band signed to Mexican Summer, who issued the band's debut, Crazy for You, in 2010. Crazy for You became an unexpected commercial success following Internet buzz surrounding the duo. Lewis Pesacov of Fool's Gold and Foreign Born produced, engineered and mixed the album. Best Coast added a touring drummer, Ali Koehler of Vivian Girls, and spent much of 2011 on the road for festival appearances and tour dates. Best Coast's sophomore effort, The Only Place, was released in 2012 and featured a cleaner sound than their previous releases.

Hospitality are a Brooklyn-based avant pop outfit featuring songwriter and vocalist Amber Papini, Nathan Michel (who, at the time of joining the band, had several solo albums out on labels like Tigerbeat 6 and Tomlab), and Brian Betancourt.

Gardens & Villa is an American indie rock band from Santa Barbara, California, formed in 2008. The band consists of members Chris Lynch, Adam Rasmussen, Shane McKillop, Levi Hayden and Dustin Ineman. The band have released three albums and toured internationally.

Chairlift was an American synthpop band. Caroline Polachek and Aaron Pfenning formed Chairlift in 2005 while living in Boulder, Colorado, and Patrick Wimberly joined them when they moved to Brooklyn in 2007. In 2008, Chairlift released their debut album Does You Inspire You. Pfenning left the band in 2010, and as a duo, Polachek and Wimberly released two more albums: 2012's Something and 2016's Moth before announcing the end of Chairlift in December 2016.

Beach Fossils are an American indie rock band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2009. The group currently includes Dustin Payseur, Jack Doyle Smith and Tommy Davidson. They are known for their lo-fi, atmospheric sound and Payseur's vocal style.

Generationals are an American new wave duo formed in New Orleans, Louisiana. The duo, consisting of Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer, released their debut album, Con Law, in July 2009. An EP, Trust, followed in November 2010. Their second full-length album, Actor-Caster was released on March 29, 2011. The band's third album, Heza, was released April 2, 2013.

Surfer Blood is an American indie rock band from West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, currently signed to Joyful Noise Recordings formerly signed to Warner Bros. Records. The band has four members: John Paul Pitts, Mike McCleary, Lindsey Mills and Tyler Schwarz.

Craft Spells is an American indie rock/dream pop band from Stockton, California, formed in late 2009 by Justin Vallesteros. To date, Craft Spells has released two studio albums, Idle Labor and Nausea on the Captured Tracks label.

Mr Twin Sister, formerly Twin Sister, is an American band from Long Island. Their music has been described as chill wave, indie pop, dream pop, and disco. They have been compared to Cocteau Twins and Portishead. They have toured the US and Europe and have so far released three EPs and two LPs.
The band members are singer Andrea Estella, keyboardist Dev Gupta, bassist Gabe D'Amico, guitarist-singer Eric Cardona, and drummer Bryan Ujueta.

Beach House is an American dream pop band from Baltimore, Maryland, formed in 2004. The band consists of French-born Victoria Legrand and Baltimore native Alex Scally.
Their self-titled debut album was released in 2006 to critical acclaim and has been followed by Devotion in 2008, Teen Dream in 2010, Bloom in 2012, and Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars in 2015.

Pure Bathing Culture is an American indie pop band from Portland, Oregon.
The group's members, Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman, first met while college students in New Jersey, they lived in New York and both moved to Portland, Oregon in 2011, playing in the group Vetiver. Around 2012 they began playing live shows, and released an EP produced by Richard Swift in 2012 on Father/Daughter Records.
The band released its first full-length album on Partisan Records in 2013. The album was highlighted by the single, "Pendulum", which some critics likened in style to Fleetwood Mac. One of the tracks, "Scotty", drew its lyrics and melody in part from the 1980 hit single "Into the Night" by Benny Mardones.
The band released its second full-length album on Partisan Records, Pray for Rain, which was released on October 23rd, 2015 and was followed by a country-wide tour.

Cults is an American indie band formed in New York City in 2010. The band first came to prominence when they posted a three song EP, Cults 7", on their Bandcamp page. They are signed to Sony and In the Name Of, a record label that was set up by British singer Lily Allen.

We were all knocked out by the Frankie Rose and the Outs album from 2010, the effortlessness of its gorgeous girl-pop mantras, the intimate immensity of its Spector-esque walls of reverb, the beauty of a song sung sweetly over the most graceful two-chord vamps. But are you ready for the new Frankie Rose? – her transformation into a wholly other kind of pop, the reverie and revelation of Interstellar, an album that floats free of its maker's history – time spent with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, and creator of one of the most breathlessly compelling girl-pop albums of the past few years – and offers the listener something strangely other, as alien as it is familiar, as compelling as it is enchanting.

Talking with Frankie about the record, it's clear she was itching for a new start. The first big indication – production by Le Chev, remixer supreme (for Lemonade, Narcisse, Passion Pit, and Frankie's own "Candy"), an ensemble member of Fischerspooner, etc. "We recorded the record in a private studio dubbed The Thermometer Factory in Park Slope. I wanted this record to be totally different and in so doing I knew I had to work with someone who would lend fresh ideas and know how to make sounds that I wouldn't know how to make. I wanted to make a particular record and I knew Le Chev would be the one who could help me do it."

So, out with the reverb of the Frankie Rose and the Outs, and in with something altogether more glam, glittering, shivering. On Interstellar Frankie takes the lessons learned with her debut album – like reverb as the holy route to pop-grandeur, scaling a wall of teenage tears – fully digests, and transfers those skills into the brave new world mapped out by ten new songs. In its place is the confident swagger of a singer and auteur fully aware of how to build the simplest of pop moves into aching, full-blown melodramas, how to grab hold of an emotion and ride its darker waves. "I always have a big picture in mind," Frankie reflects. "I knew I wanted a HUGE sounding record. Big highs, big lows, and clean. There is no fuzz on this record. I knew I wanted to make a streamlined, spacious record with big choruses that sometimes referenced 80s pop." But that referencing never swamps the melodies: this record isn't a retro trip. If anything, it liberates sounds familiar from that decade and gives them new context, breathes life into clay golems of sound that too often become basic, pre-set triggers.

On Interstellar, Frankie Rose goes epic, goes widescreen. "Had We Had It" spins the sweetest sugar from chords that ascend into the firmament, a heavenly, palatial blur. "Gospel / Grace" rumbles with passion, a New Order-esque one-finger guitar figure leading the listener into the choral depths mapped by the chorus. "Apples For The Sun" is breathtaking, with Frankie singing out across a lone piano, before a glorious web of voice and organ pirouettes into the air, an arbor of pleasure connecting the verse with its instrumental shadow, a coda that slowly slips from your view, before making the briefest, most tantalizing of returns. A lot of Interstellar seems to be about disappearing into, or finding and reveling in, this kind of imaginary zone, something Rose confirms: "The whole record is about dreaming of some 'other' place."

And as you drift into the heartbreaking "The Fall," which floats out to sea on a lunar-aquatic cello riff that's pure Arthur Russell, you're ready to conquer those other places, too, to let Frankie Rose guide you out of the album's spell and land you back in the sensual world, slightly altered, adrift and in awe. How does it feel to feel? With Interstellar, your emotions come out so alive, your only escape is to dive right back in.

Caveman is an American indie rock band based in Brooklyn, New York. The band recorded their first studio album in 2011. Although originally self-released, the album was re-released by Fat Possum Records in 2012. Caveman performed at SXSW 2013 and Sasquatch Festival 2013. The band's musical style is a mixture of indie rock and indie pop. Caveman also performed at the latest Bonnaroo 2014 Arts and Music Festival.
The video for the song "In the City" features actress Julia Stiles.