Originally a Jersey boy, Real Estate frontman Martin Courtney recently jumped across the border to live in the small town of Beacon in Upstate New York.
The bucolic scenery captured in the music video for his recent solo single ‘Northern Highway’ is a depiction of his new locale. The song’s lyrics speak of travelling the world and visiting various beautiful places, but never feeling compelled to move away from home.
“Where I live now is about 45 minutes from where I grew up,” says Courtney. “It’s the same general idea, although it’s a pretty different town – the vibe is different. But just this kind of region of the country, the Northeast, is definitely where I feel at home. Part of that song is just thinking about moving to different places in the world and realising that this is the area where I want to be.”
‘Northern Highway’ is the second single from Courtney’s debut solo album, Many Moons. Courtney has fronted Real Estate since 2009, leading the band on three LPs and several global tours. Musically, Many Moons brings some novel adornments to his songwriting: ‘Northern Highway’ adopts a stripped-back country flavour, the chorus of ‘Vestiges’ evokes ’60s pop, and ‘Foto’ contains luscious Phil Spector string work. But despite this, nothing on Many Moons would sound out of place on a Real Estate album.
“I was kind of just writing songs, then I think I was trying to arrange them in ways that we might not do in Real Estate,” Courtney says. “So bringing in strings, or on ‘Northern Highway’ having just one guitar part in that song – there’s an electric and an acoustic but they’re playing the same part. Whereas that would never happen in Real Estate, because we always have lots of different stuff going on, at least two guitar melodies happening. I think it comes from the arrangements, but it’s true that any of these songs could’ve ended up on a Real Estate record.
“The difference is in the way they’re arranged and also in the fact that different people are playing on them. We have a different drummer on this record, which brings a totally different style to it. Also, Jarvis [Taveniere, of Brooklyn band Woods], the guy that produced it, he played bass on it and had a pretty big hand in the production and putting songs together.”
While Courtney seized the opportunity to stretch out and push these songs in different directions, he doesn’t feel constricted by Real Estate’s more democratic way of operating.
“Obviously we could do whatever we want, but we know that we do have a sound that works for us. That’s another thing – you don’t want to fall into repeating yourself. I don’t think Real Estate has done that yet.
“For me, things like bringing strings into the picture, I’ve always talked about doing that with Real Estate stuff, but I don’t think it would’ve worked because the songs are already so lush. The cool thing about Real Estate, each person brings their own thing to the table and it sounds pretty lush without having too much on top. It was nice to leave room for that in these songs, or find the songs where there was room for it rather than just throwing [strings] on top of everything. It was a good learning experience. And having a song that just starts with acoustic guitar and vocals – just things that are a little bit outside of my comfort zone. I was definitely trying new things.”
Real Estate are a band in the true essence of the term; each member plays an integral role in generating their signature sound. However, since day one Courtney has written the majority of the group’s songs. Stepping out of his comfort zone on Many Moons will no doubt have an impact on the way he approaches the next Real Estate album.
“Just the idea of working with other instruments – seeing how that can be done or developing my own approach to doing that will definitely come in handy in the future if we want to incorporate some instrumentation in or whatever. You’re always learning new tricks. The only thing that keeps me from throwing songs away, or the songs I end up holding onto, is because there’s something about them that seems interesting – there’s a new little thing I learnt while writing it. With every song that I feel is good enough to finish, I’m definitely learning something new.”
Many Moons has clearly been a constructive project for Courtney, so the question looms as to whether it’s the start of something more long-term.
“I actually don’t know at this point,” he says. “I could see it happening again. It worked out really well because we finished the last Real Estate record and had all this time to kill. We were finishing all the artwork and putting the whole thing together – that takes like six months before the record even came out, and then we were touring like crazy. This project was a way to stay busy.
“Especially right at the beginning, I started writing these songs and thought, ‘There’s really no reason for me to be putting these towards Real Estate, because any song I write now is not going to come out for another year or two years. So I may as well put it towards something else.’ I could see that happening again.”
[Martin Courtney photo by Shawn Brackbill]
Martin Courtney’sMany Moons isout Friday October 30 through Domino.
