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First Listen Live: Real Estate, 'Atlas'

By Stephen Thompson
Published February 27, 2014 at 7:00 PM CST

The members of Real Estate are awfully young to pine for their lost youth, but nostalgia remains crucial to the New Jersey band's tender, impeccable sound. Real Estate's shimmering pop-rock seems to echo out of the past — from beaches and garages and tape decks — with the kind of melancholy beauty few bands outside The Beach Boys could hope to match.

On March 4, Real Estate will release its third album, Atlas, which further refines and polishes the softly jangling sound it had seemingly perfected on 2011's Days. Wistful and lovely as ever, Real Estate's music chimes majestically in concert — a gift the band showcased when it performed Atlas in its entirety as part of NPR Music's First Listen Live series.

Set List

  • "Had to Hear"

  • "Past Lives"

  • "Talking Backwards"

  • "April's Song"

  • "The Bend"

  • "Crime"

  • "Primitive"

  • "How Might I Live"

  • "Horizon"

  • "Navigator"

  • "Beneath the Dunes" (Encore)

    • Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
    See stories by Stephen Thompson