In Mind, the fourth full-length record from Real Estate, is a portrait of a mature band at the height of its power. Long respected for their deft lyrical hand and gorgeous melodies, In Mind builds upon the band’s reputation for crafting perfect songs and carries Real Estate even deeper into the pantheon of great songwriters. 

On the new record, the band fine-tunes the winsome songwriting and profound earnestness that made previous albums—2009’s Real Estate, 2011’s Days, and 2014’s Atlas—so beloved, and pushes their songs in a variety of compelling new directions. Written primarily by guitarist and vocalist Martin Courtney at his home in Beacon—a quiet town in upstate New York—In Mind offers a shifting of the gears, positing a band engaged in the push/pull of burgeoning adulthood. Reflecting a change in lineup, changes in geography, and a general desire to move forward without looking back, the record casts the band in a new light—one that replaces the wistful ennui of teenage suburbia with an equally complicated adult version. The record not only showcases some of the band’s most sublime arrangements to date, it also presents a leap forward in terms of production, with the band utilizing the studio as a tool to broaden the sonic landscape of their music to stunning effect. 

In Mind offers passing nods to the sanguine qualities of earlier releases while also depicting a band in a state of real change. Since the recording of the band’s last album, Courtney had become a father of two and settled into a newfound domesticity living in Beacon, while bassist Alex Bleeker made the move out to sunny California, creating a complicated new set of logistics for the band to work around. Additionally, after the departure of founding member and lead guitarist Matt Mondanile in 2015, the band—Courtney, Bleeker, and drummer Jackson Pollis--faced the prospect of either closing ranks or embracing the changes that bringing in new people would ultimately bring. “It just seemed like a good moment to move in a slightly different direction,” says Courtney, “The idea of bringing in a stranger seemed too weird, but I wasn’t interested in recording as a four-piece and having some hired gun come out to play shows with us. In the end asking Julian Lynch—who we’d already been playing with and we’ve known since high school--to join the band made the most sense. He felt like a full-time member of the band already.” This was also true of keyboardist Matt Kallman, who previously played with the band on Atlas and on that record’s subsequent tour. Joining the band in a more official capacity before the recording of In Mind, Kallman contributed in both sound and scope, writing the keyboard parts and contributing to the album’s arrangements. With a new lineup secured and armed with an arsenal of songs that Courtney and Bleeker had spent the past six months writing, the band approached the business of fleshing out the songs in an almost workmanlike manner.