The follow-up to 2017’s In Mind February 28th via Domino Records, according to the press release, it delivers the band’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. Pre-order your copy here.
Following his work on 2011’s Days, engineer Kevin McMahon returns as producer, and, for the first time ever, Real Estate have brought in outside instrumentalists and special guests like Sylvan Esso, whose vocalist Amelia Meath features on first single, “Paper Cup”. Across the 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.
On “Paper Cup” and the making of The Main Thing, 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 Main Thing dives even further into the musical dichotomies they’re known for—lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily— and what emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.
Check out the album's tracklist and watch the video for "Paper Cup", below.
The Main Thing Tracklisting:
01. Friday
02. Paper Cup [ft. Sylvan Esso]
03. Gone
04. You
05. November
06. Falling Down
07. Also a But
08. The Main Thing
09. Shallow Sun
10. Sting
11. Silent World
12. Procession
13. Brother
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 Main Thing dives even further into the musical dichotomies they’re known for—lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily— and what emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.
Check out the album's tracklist and watch the video for "Paper Cup", below.
The Main Thing Tracklisting:
01. Friday
02. Paper Cup [ft. Sylvan Esso]
03. Gone
04. You
05. November
06. Falling Down
07. Also a But
08. The Main Thing
09. Shallow Sun
10. Sting
11. Silent World
12. Procession
13. Brother
