Long-running New Jersey indie band
Real Estate delivered their fifth album,
The Main Thing, just over a decade after they'd formed, applying the relaxed and melodic songwriting formula they'd perfected over the years to songs about adult responsibilities and the ever-changing tides of time. The album's release date of February 28, 2020 coincided with the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, canceling all touring plans for the album and putting
Real Estate, a band used to regular live performance and studio collaboration, into a newfound state of isolation. During this time, they stayed busy by trading tracks back and forth for material that became an EP release,
Half a Human. Many of the EP's six songs began as ideas while the band was recording
The Main Thing, but instead of the crisp production and defined hooks of that album,
Half a Human harkens back to the hazy dreaminess of the band's earliest days. After beginning with brief and bleary-eyed instrumental "Desire Path," the title track comes in as the project's catchiest song. While it's also the most polished production on the EP, there's an extra dose of reverb and experimentation added, with understated strands of harmonizing guitar leads and watery synths peeking through in the mix on the song's first half, and then a lingering outro that stumbles on for as long as what came before it. The phaser-heavy guitar leads of the outro push the song to nearly the six-minute mark, and there's a bonus track that edits the song down to just four-and-a-half minutes. "Soon" and "Ribbon" are similar, bringing slight experimental and softly psychedelic touches to
Real Estate's patented jangle. "D+," a composition by bassist
Alex Bleeker that also appeared on his 2021 solo album
Heaven on the Faultline, is less subtle in its psychedelic tendencies, riding
Grateful Dead-styled guitar leads into swaying verses of dusty vocal harmonies.
Half a Human reaches a perfect synthesis of the band's well-oiled songwriting machinery and the pleasant searching of their early days on the song "In the Garden." Steady, in-the-pocket rhythms and mellow chord progressions open up at the midway point into a twisting path of blinking synthesizer sequences, processed drum machine sounds, and gentle jamming from the band. The song, like the rest of the EP, never veers completely into noise or dissonance, but still finds
Real Estate loosening up ever so slightly, and returning to a time when they would follow unknown paths wherever they led. ~ Fred Thomas