Real Estate

Last night, I made my way over to The Independent in San Francisco for the psych indie sounds of the New Jersey born Real Estate. I started my night out by missing my bus stop. This had me rushing to make up ground as I hoped to get to the venue in time for the opener Melted Toys. They are a new psych lo-fi project from San Francisco who are quickly making a name for themselves.

I made it to the venue just in time as Melted Toys were already filling the air with their spacy lo-fi sounds. For some reason the rather large crowd that had already gathered had created a barrier between themselves and the stage. My guess is that they were identifying the sounds as infectious and did not want to get hooked. The local three-piece certainly did not fail to impress. They continued their set with the announcement of new song preceding each of the last four songs of their set.

Melted Toys

Next up we had another local indie outfit – Dominant Legs – fronted by San Francisco native Ryan William Lynch. Their sound is extremely catchy from the strum of the first guitar riff.  Ryan started the set off by saying this one goes out to the Giants because I hate losing streaks as they dove straight into “Young at Love and Life”. New music must have been the theme of the night for the openers as Dominant Legs also announced their fare share of new songs throughout their set. This was a fun set that brought their local fan base alive on the dance floor with their tracks “Take a Bow” and “Clawing out at the Walls” before exiting the stage.

Dominent Legs

It was now time for the members of Real Estate to get their gear in place while their fans began to find good spots on the floor.  The lights went down as front man Martin Courtney shared his love for the city of San Francisco. The set kicked off strong with “Beach Comber” which starts out with a slow airy guitar, but quickly picks up once the drums, lead guitar and smooth vocals of Courtney are introduced. They moved into the jangly surfer guitar intro of “Pool Swimmer” which took us on a smooth trip.

The psych instrumental jams throughout the night were mesmerizing and set me off into a trance on multiple occasions. The faded sounds of “Suburban Dogs” were thrown into the set as one ecstatic member of the audience yelled for “Green River”.  Closing out the set was the song “Fake Blues” this preluded a necessary encore as the band returned to play “Green River” jammed into “Suburban Beverage”. This was a show that I can’t wait to see again and I am looking forward to hearing the new album as soon as it drops.

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