Real Estate: Days

Label: Domino

Perpetual buzz band Real Estate's second album is so coolly understated that it's hard to make a ginormous fuss about their move to ginormous indie Domino for Days. From one song to the next, this album blurs into breezy, hazy imagery, and in another review this could be meant negatively. Not so here. The lead instrument is guitar, handled in varying combinations by no fewer than three Real Estate agents; classic in a UK-'80s indie-pop style, the guitars are always tinkling, tracing out heartache and gently urging these ten songs onward. In a sense, all the band does is modulate the pacing and placing of hooks, and yet, the whole of Days sounds so incredibly right on. While it seems particularly silly to draw out song highlights here -- neither a bummer tune on the album nor one that blows away the rest -- the bittersweet "Green Aisles" makes a romantic play in its vocals toward the end (wish we knew offhand which dude was singing which song), while the "oh, oh oh, oh OHH, oh oh, it's real" vocal hook on single "It's Real" stands out as a casually devastating move.