Half a Human EP

Every two and a half years or so, Real Estate return with 10 or so songs of meticulously casual and collegial music that evokes various phases of the past four decades of indie rock without being beholden to any particular era. Martin Courtney wistfully reflects on the way imperceptible daily changes add up to a world you no longer recognize. Fatherhood, solo albums, tectonic cultural shifts, and the dismissal of a foundational member have not altered what Real Estate do or how their music is critiqued; all five of their albums have earned aggregate scores between 76 and 79 on Metacritic. “Another good record from Real Estate. They’re still doing their thing. Just another Real Estate record,” Courtney joked about the reception of 2017’s In Mind, and so they made a protracted effort not to be taken for granted on 2020’s The Main Thing. The existence of a quickie EP like Half a Human is proof that Real Estate are indeed operating with a newfound sense of purpose.

Half a Human’s premiere event shared visualizers to accompany its six songs, most of which recreated the experience of staring at Winamp visualizer while passing a bowl in a dorm. The band also put on Zoomin’ With Real Estate, a “variety show” where Courtney hung out with fans on various social media platforms, bassist Alex Bleeker performed solo material, and guitarist Julian Lynch showed off his rig. It’s by far the most lavish rollout any Real Estate release has ever gotten, maybe even their first lavish rollout.

But the main purpose of Half a Human lies in the mere act of releasing reconstituted leftovers from The Main Thing, giving at least another nudge to see it the way Real Estate did—their New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a chance to hear a band known for economical songwriting and brisk albums brimming with more ideas than they can handle. Though nothing immediately pops like their yacht-rockin’ Sylvan Esso collab “Paper Cup,” Half a Human takes strides to make every inclusion at least objectively interesting—an instrumental of twinkly, harmonized guitars, one that imagines an alternate history where they stayed on Woodsist as a shaggy jam band with a wah-wah guitar solo and an exploration of ambient pure moods.

But a radio edit of the title track tacked onto the end serves as an unintentional critique of Half a Human—it’s just too easy to remove the two minutes of synthesizer drift and end up with a perfectly enjoyable Real Estate song about the deceptive nature of passing time. The song part of “Half a Human” is just as ambient as its actual ambient outro, the downiness of Courtney’s unruffled voice, the slight dissonant notes in the jangled guitars, and Kevin McMahon’s sympathetic production fading not so much into the background as into other Real Estate songs.

The bulk of Half a Human is tied up in the title track and “The Garden,” lengthier excursions that challenge Real Estate’s current perception as merely a jam-adjacent band. As with every time Alex Bleeker takes the lead, “D+” stands out by default; his proudly untrained warble is what can pass for assertive within Real Estate. But while he’s never been given more than one lead on any Real Estate album, Bleeker’s contributions are never “the one where the other guy sings.” At least in spirit, “D+” suggests what Real Estate want to become in their second decade: an indie rock gateway to the gateway albums of the Grateful Dead—Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, the ones that allow newcomers to start their jettison of Deadhead cultural baggage. But even “D+” doesn’t challenge the lingering familiarity of Half a Human—the type of diehard that might check out Half a Human probably heard the Bleeker solo album from whence it came.

In about six months, the 10th Anniversary cottage industry will turn its attention to Days and will certainly focus on its context as much as its content. In light of how emotionally raw and extroverted solo artists are the indie rock vanguard, how did an unassuming group of guys from suburban New Jersey playing gentle, chiming indie rock become the toast of “the super young, hip Brooklyn scene”? But Half a Human already challenges the pat compliment of “consistent”: if this were really true, why doesn’t, say, “Time” or “Paper Cup” generate the same excitement as “It’s Real”? Is it, as Courtney suggests, a matter of whether or not they’re cool anymore? Would “Ribbon” or “Soon” be as beloved as the Days deep cuts they could conceivably replace had they been written 10 years earlier? Are the core values of Real Estate just incompatible with the expression of urgency or reinvention? Or, the melodies aren’t quite as concise, Courtney’s gnomic expressions of wisdom a little more forced, their pivot to extended guitar jams is more admirable than compelling. Real Estate are just living the truth of their music, no more immune to the passage of time than their subject matter.

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