The Timeless Suburban Sprawl of Real Estate’s Atlas

A decade after it’s original release, the band’s classic third LP still feels natural

March 4, 2024March 4, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 10th anniversary, 2014, Alex Bleeker, Domino Records, Martin Courtney, Matt Mondanile, Real Estate, Sammi Niss

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the band Real Estate is how they have been able to find beauty and experimental adventure within the margins of the upper middle class dystopia that is Northern New Jersey.

Bergen County, to be exact, perhaps one of the most congested, aggressive and gluttonous commercial areas of the East Coast. But when you look at the cover of their latest—and greatest—album, entitled Atlas, the heart of what once was an abstract mural painted by Polish artist Stefan Knapp on the side of the old Alexander’s department store that greeted commuters driving along the Route 4/Route 17 interchange is featured prominently (albeit in cubic fractions).

That iconic piece of suburban art now lives on the new Paramus campus of Valley Hospital in three giant columns. But 10 years ago, its existence was only made public thanks to the imagination of five boys who likely drove by it countless times throughout their lives while en route to Sam Ash or Tower Records or one of the two malls. These 10 songs exude the same feeling of nostalgic warmth you get from memories of shopping with family in the 70s and 80s. For the band, it was the production work of longtime Wilco collaborator Tom Schick who helped get them there.

“We wanted to make a really clean record,” frontman Martin Courtney told The Line of Best Fit in 2014. “And in his style, so obviously Yankee Hotel Foxtrot got brought up and I think through that someone at our label mentioned Tom Schick, who had been working with Wilco in recent years. I’ve always admired how their records sound, especially most of their recent shit. It’s so clean and lush; you can hear every part, you can hear every instrument and where it is in the mix and it just sounds like a bunch of people playing music in a room, and I think that’s what we wanted out of this record. We also really wanted to get out of New York City to record as we’d never done that before!”

VIDEO: Real Estate “Had to Hear”

The worn-in North Jersey jangle evidenced on Atlas, especially on such choice tracks as “Past Lives,” “April’s Song,” “Primitve” and “Had to Hear,” no doubt benefitted from the material being cut at the venerated Wilco studio The Loft in Chicago, IL, as well.

“Hearing them, you become a fan, and working with them you become even more of a fan,” Schick told SPIN in 2014. “They sound way more mature than a lot of other bands. They sound like a classic band that has been around forever, and it’s only their third record.”

The band has gone through some seismic changes since Atlas was released on March 4, 2014. Original guitarist Matt Mondanile was ousted from the band for being a bad human, and in his place is fellow Ridgewood luminary Julian Lynch, who joined the band in 2016. Drummer Sammi Niss replaced drummer Jackson Pollis in 2020. They also released an excellent new album, Daniel, which is honestly their best work since Atlas. And when you go back to where the band was a decade ago, you can see how wise they were to remain themselves all this time.

“We thought about it, because if anyone’s going to say something bad about this album – we’re all pretty happy with it – it might be because we haven’t changed that much, but we didn’t act on that impulse,” Courtney told Port Magazine in 2014. “Certain critics already have the record and luckily it seems that people are happy we haven’t changed. Not every band has to sound different on every record. Also, our style isn’t so rigid. It’s kind of crap when a band throws everything away and does something new – unless it’s totally natural. We did what felt natural.”

There aren’t a ton of albums from 2014 worth a 10th anniversary salute, but a decade later Atlas has certainly stood the test of timelessness.