Real Estate leader Martin Courtney released his debut solo album, Many Moons, back in 2015. Since then, he’s released two more albums with his main band. Today, he’s announcing his second full-length album on his own, Magic Sign, which is out in June. Courtney worked on it over the past two years, writing late at night while his kids were sleeping upstairs and his wife worked overnight shifts at a hospital. Kicking off the album rollout is the pastoral and plaintive “Corncob.” Here’s what Courtney had to say about the track and how it ties into the album as a whole:
The lyrics are about a specific time, the end of youth, pre-adulthood, scummy kid hanging around your hometown a little too long, smoking weed and driving around the surrounding area with your friends to get as completely lost as possible. Eventually getting home using these little green signs that are posted throughout the NJ suburbs telling you which way to go to reach different towns. We called them magic signs.
You do this enough times and it eventually gets harder and harder to get lost. A song about pushing the boundaries of where you grew up until you exhaust the mystery and hit a different kind of boundary. A song about aimless kids looking for direction.
Listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Corncob”
02 “Outcome”
03 “Sailboat”
04 “Shoes”
05 “Time To Go”
06 “Merlin”
07 “Living Rooms”
08 “Mulch”
09 “Terrestrial”
10 “Exit Music”
Magic Sign is out 6/24 via Domino. Pre-order it here.
23