SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: REAL ESTATE – THE WEE SMALL HOURS: B-SIDES AND OTHER DETRITUS 2011-2025

REAL ESTATE
THE WEE SMALL HOURS: B-SIDES AND OTHER DETRITUS 2011-2025
DOMINO RECORDS 

Following on from 2024’s reinventive effort “Daniel”, Real Estate attempts to bless our ears with this collection of oddities and deep cuts, and it’s a promising start. Both opener “Pink Sky” and second track “Exactly Nothing” are fun, shimmering slices of indie-pop, harkening to the likes of Shack in their musicality.

That pretty much holds true through the album’s runtime. There’s a lot of pleasant listening here, and it’s actually a more coherent and put-together effort, at least in my view, than the aforementioned last studio album. While some songs are unremarkable, “Paper Dolls” is a standout, with some latter-day R.E.M echoes (think “All The Right Friends”) to it that really make it a fun, radio-friendly song.

Ironically, in the latter half of the album, it’s the previous album’s namesake, “Daniel”, that stands out, a glorious mess of Beach Boys-esque psychedelia sung with gusto. In fact, all throughout the album, there’s no criticizing the vocals – Martin Courtney sounds positively angelic on most of these recordings.

It’s poppy, inoffensive, and sugary-sweet, so as with most Real Estate output, this isn’t reinventing the wheel. However when the wheel produces a solid, quality ride like this, there’s no problem at all with that. It’s an engaging afternoon listen and has matched up its release with the calendar perfectly, as it threatens to bring spring sunshine to all those who hear it. A welcome and worthy addition to the band’s body of work.

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