I don’t have a prolonged review of anything right now. I have albums for review, but I’ve got very little interest in listening to them. They are these rather generic rock albums. While I’m sure they are competent, they aren’t really grabbing my attention in any meaningful way right now. Although from first synth strike on this Body Language EP, I will have to write about it very, very soon. I have been more interested in the follow-ups from bands that have been coming out recently. The two that caught my attention are Real Estate’s second album Days and M83′s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

I saw Real Estate back in 2009, and it was the best show I saw that summer. If there was any disappointment from that show, it was that fact that we couldn’t get Alex Bleeker or Matt Mondanile any weed that night. I ended up jamming out to their record continuously for the next couple of years. This fall, a single for “It’s Real” pops up, and it’s, literally, stunning. Their psyched out garage sound found some indie pop speed and harmonies. These things mixed together and created a 2-minute lo-fi classic.

I think that the album delivers on the promise of that single. The songs are more put together, keeping some of that nostalgia from the first album while eliminating some of its underlying misery. The band is far more focused on Days, sharpening the elements of the first album while never actually losing the hazy, summery psych sound which made Real Estate such a special listening experience. If I have one complaint about the album, the songs are really similar sounding. While this does make for a nice, continuous listening experience, it can make the album somewhat forgettable in some ways. Said differently, there’s no “Suburban Beverage” on this album, a track that comes out of nowhere and completely blows your mind. Even with this shortcoming, I would actively recommend this album to Real Estate veterans and newbies all the same, as it’s a thoroughly compelling pop record. As well, if they listen to it once, they’ll have “It’s Real” stuck in their head for the coming months.

Switching to M83, Saturdays = Youth was one of my favorite albums of 2008. It’s mix of 80s nostalgia and shoegaze walls of noise made it an album that stayed in steady rotation in my house/car/headspace/lifestyle. News had come down the pipeline that not only was Anthony Gonzalez (a/k/a M83) making a new album, but a double album at that. It came out last week and appeared on my Spotify. Since it was there, I sat down and listened to it. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is obviously a very long listen. If you make it to the end, I don’t know if you will be fulfilled in the same way as with any of his other albums.

This is not to say that it is a bad album. On the contrary, the songs on the album are rather strong, mixing past elements of M83 while not keeping slavish devotion to its past sounds. There is a clear progression to mixing up the sound and creating a different listening experience. Unlike with other artists where the album titles are just random and expressionistic, Gonzalez has a tendency to match the names of his albums with the spirit of the music. Saturdays = Youth recalls a past nostalgia for a time when everything was bright and sparkly…well, when you weren’t suicidal. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming recalls, for me, the insanity that is a dream.

At one moment in a dream, you can be flying above the ground, staring down at all of the houses that dot the prairie. At the drop of a hat, you could be plummeting out of the sky and landing in an underwater city. The album does move like this. There are very sudden mood shifts from song to song. While this makes for an uneven listening experience, there is a clear logic to it. This constant shifting is also where the album fails as it makes an already long listening experience just a bit too frustrating.

If you listen to a lot of music, there are those albums that you respect, but don’t have spinning all of the time like, for me, Built To Spill’s Keep It Like A Secret. It’s an album that’s actually technically good, but I don’t have the actual patience nor the interest to listen to it in full very often. That is Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. I liked what I heard on this album, but I already know it’s not going to be in heavy rotation in my house. It was too trying to get through it the first time, and it’s not going to get better with more listens. I definitely will spin a track or two every once in a while, but I’ll stick with Saturdays = Youth for the time being.