When Matt Mondanile, the lead guitarist and a founding member of Real Estate, announced his intention to leave the band, it sparked no such thought. Instead, work on the band’s fourth studio album continued, business as usual, frontman Martin Courtney says. 

“If we were going to split up, that wouldn’t have been the reason. Deciding to do this next album, it was a huge decision. When you commit to any new project; you’re deciding what the next three years of your life will be. Going on the road, recording, touring, it’s huge. And as life changes, that gets harder. Harder to commit the next portion of your life to that. Harder to commit to being uprooted.”

Courtney makes it clear that starting work on In Mind truly was a big decision, with an overflow of factors affecting the way the band operates, and treading the line of being a breaking point. The biggest change in Courtney’s life, his marriage to Heather Joyce, the birth of their daughter, and their move to upstate New York, meant that not wanting to commit to uproot his life for the band was the biggest obstacle he faced in the creation of In Mind.

“Having my family, and being happy, being content, it makes me want to stay home. I don’t want to leave,” Courtney says.

To work around his difficulties when it came to approaching a new project for the band, the other band members – Alex Bleeker, Matt Kallman and Jackson Pollis – shifted their own lives, putting down musical roots in a short trip from Courtney’s house. The band members balanced their music around family life, living the suburban rock’n’roll dream.

The sharp production of the album is the work of Los Angeles based producer Cole M. Grief-Neill, as Courtney took a step back from the production process.

“It comes back to just life changes. With my family, I really want to be at home. I used to sit for hours working with a producer on mastering and mixing, but now I want to spend my time elsewhere. Cole is around our age, he understands where we are, and what we want. I trust Cole.”

In comparison to these changes, Mondanile’s departure to focus on Ducktails, a project he’d begun working on before Real Estate’s formation in 2009, leaving the band without lead guitar, was an easy process.

It was Mondanile himself who went about finding his eventual replacement, in the form of his good friend Julian Lynch.  The band publicly showcased Lynch for the first time during a string of tours in late 2016, teasing the approaching arrival of their new album, and the first with their new member.

“Matt and Julian are so different. They’re good friends, but their styles are really something different. Matt plays with delay, his guitar is roomy and echoey. Whereas Julian is denser, more textured. He’s brought something unique to the album.”

In the time before Lynch joined Real Estate, the remaining band members continued working on the bones of what would become In Mind.

“By the time Julian came along, the songs were almost done, and could stand alone without lead guitar. It’s like they were already finished without it. For Julian, it wasn’t that he was filling a gap in the band, but he was filling the gaps in our music. There’s definitely times where he gets his own moments, where the guitar is the focus, but he added something fresh to what we already had.”

Though In Mind is the first Real Estate album since Atlas, before, during and after the creation of the 2014 album, Courtney was working on Many Moons. Though it’s often attributed as a solo project, Courtney is quick to dismiss any such observation. “The album ended up with only my name on it for no reason other than lack of a better band name. It wasn’t really solo, it was really a band in itself, with me and Jarvis Taveniere.”

Taveniere produced and played on the album alongside Courtney, while fellow Real Estate brethren Lynch and Kallman both appear.

“It started as just an experiment, writing with Jarvis and making tracks. But then there were enough tracks for an EP, and then for an album, and it went much further than I thought it would.”

The album became a true extension of Courtney’s creative process, allowing him to work with elements that would be out of place on a Real Estate project.

“It was mainly an exercise, I pushed myself on that record. For instance, doing things like using strings, which is something I’d never do on a Real Estate record. But it worked so well. It was like going away and working with Jarvis was an experiment, to challenge and stretch myself, and then I could come back refreshed,” says Courtney.

Coming back to Real Estate after his sort-of-solo-hiatus didn’t affect the way he saw the project in any negative way.

“Coming back felt like a sort of relief. When I came back to Real Estate, it felt familiar and good. Real Estate is natural to me.”

That natural inclination towards the band is evident in the true-to-form sound of In Mind. Despite the change that has plagued the band in the lead up to this album, the gently breezy basic components of the band is present in full strength, maintaining the delicate balance of soothing, dream-like soundtracks, and emotive and at times mournful lyricism.

“I think this marks a new era for us, the band. I think it’s really good, that it’s the best work we’ve done. It’s definitely the work I’m most proud of. So hopefully when people hear it, they agree, and like it.”

By Claire Morley