Hey, this is cool: In just two days, Real Estate will be releasing a new rarities comp. The Wee Small Hours: B-Sides And Other Detritus 2011-2025 comprises 12 tracks from across the soft-focus indie band's career, including their spin on early Strokes heater "Barely Legal," recorded in 2011 for Stereogum's Is This It tribute album Stroked. Martin Courtney sums up the project:
This is something we’ve talked about doing for a while now: a compilation of non-album tracks with a title, subtitle, and maybe throw a span of years in there to make it official-sounding. The title comes from the lyrics to an unreleased song we recorded during the Atlas sessions at Wilco’s loft in Chicago back in 2013, which in turn references a great Frank Sinatra record. This feels to us like a worthy addition to the catalog and we hope you all love it.
Along with the announcement, the band has shared a video for opening track "Pink Sky," one of the newest tracks on the album. Courtney has a statement on that too:
"Pink Sky" was among the batch of songs we brought to Nashville to record for our album Daniel. Somehow it didn’t end up getting recorded, because it wasn’t totally finished, and it also just didn’t seem to play well with the others. About 18 months later, when we were in San Francisco to play Outside Lands, we recorded this and a cover of Elton John's "Daniel" in a few hours at Tiny Telephone in Oakland. A cool alternate title for the song could be "Mystik Spiral," like the band from Daria.
"Pink Sky" is top-shelf Real Estate, like a hi-fi take on their earliest music, so make sure to check out Micah Welner's wizard-themed video for the track below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Pink Sky"
02 "Exactly Nothing"
03 "Barely Legal"
04 "In My Car"
05 "Two Part, Part Two"
06 "Paper Dolls"
07 "Blue Lebaron"
08 "Days"
09 "The Chancellor"
10 "Recreation"
11 "Daniel"
12 "Two Part"
The Wee Small Hours: B-Sides And Other Detritus 2011-2025 is out 5/2 via Domino. Pre-order it here.
