Real Estate – Atlas (Domino)

Real Estate – Atlas (Domino)

Real Estate’s third and best album captures the fear of the transitional limbo between “quarter-life crisis” and real adulthood more than any album in recent memory. Between what you can’t go back to and what you haven’t reached yet. That anxiety (“It’s so hard to feel in control here”) and displacement (“This Is not the place I used to know”) seeps through endlessly dazzling arrangements. But Atlas isn’t about something as boring as 20-something arrested development, it’s about gracefully moving into the uncharted. “Don’t know where I wanna be, but I’m glad you’re with me, and all I know is it’d be easy to leave” goes the chorus to one song, and you’ll find few more honest expressions of faith, in each other and ourselves, this year — and none that go so well with cracking a beer in the backyard. –Miles [LISTEN]