Real Estate's Alex Bleeker Shares New Song + Video

Today, Real Estate member and songwriter Alex Bleeker shares a song + video from a newly announced solo album Heaven on the Faultline. It's been five years since the release of his critically acclaimed album Country Agenda in which Bleeker showed off his propensity for Grateful Dead-leaning country-rock.

He returns now having shed "the Freaks" moniker with new a new track called "D Plus." It's a rollicking guitar pop song that emphasizes Bleeker's homespun roots with nods to psychedelic heroes Neil Young and Popul Vuh.

The track premiered on BrooklynVegan who calls the song, "breezy and calming." In addition to the new song, we get a glimpse of Bleeker in a zany, green-screened music video directed by fellow Real Estate member Julian Lynch.

"D Plus" was written on January 20, 2017 - the day of Donald Trump's presidential inauguration. That dark day served as an inspirational backdrop for Bleeker as he explains:

"As I anxiously watched this terrifying political nightmare play out on the streets of America's capital, I wrote this song as a reminder that we're all plugged into a much deeper universal consciousness; one that is graciously indifferent to this seemingly precarious moment. In times of personal stress, it's comforting for me to remember that I am part of an unfathomably large system that will continue to achieve its own balance indefinitely. That said, it's not lost on me that this song is finally seeing the light of day just 11 days before the U.S. general election....VOTE."

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Alex Bleeker's forthcoming album Heaven on the Faultline is due out March 5th, 2021 via Night Bloom Records.

I've known Alex Bleeker my entire life. Well, okay, maybe not since I was born, but there's no doubt that I've shared a fair bit of memories with him over the years. We've acted in high school productions of Shakespeare together, gone on late-night diner runs, argued about which Weezer album is the band's best, and swapped mutual appreciation for the music of Yo La Tengo on car rides careening around the snaky suburbia of our hometown. Just like his Real Estate bandmates Martin Courtney and Julian Lynch, we attended high school in the New Jersey enclave of Ridgewood, a place where sticky summer days yielded cool nights with a glow so nocturnal that you can practically hear the fireflies buzzing off of this sentence alone.

Indie rock-a type of music that can easily be made or listened to in someone's garage-often dominates teenage suburban preoccupations, and both Alex and I were no exception. You can hear this legacy of listening on his new album Heaven on the Faultline, which departs from his last full-band outing as Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, 2015's Country Agenda. Whereas that album had a more full-bodied explicitly folky feel, Heaven on the Faultline finds Bleeker getting back to his homespun roots over the course of its 13 songs, from the jangly guitar pop of New Jersey heroes the Feelies and Yo La Tengo's hushed, acoustic reveries to the open-hearted folk-rock that marks so much of the Grateful Dead's early catalog.

Written and recorded over the last several years, Heaven on the Faultline's songs were initially recorded straight to GarageBand in Bleeker's bedroom before receiving further studio refinement in co-producer Phil Hartunian's Tropico Beauty space in Los Angeles. With contributions from Confusing Mix of Nations' Josh Da Costa, Cameron Stallones of Sun Araw, singer-songwriter Kacey Johansing, and Parting Lines' Tim Ramsey, Heaven on the Faultline achieves a warm and intimate feel that defines Bleeker's mission for the album: "I wanted to capture the moment in which I fell in love with making music to begin with. This is music for myself-me getting back to music for music's sake."

The unsteady times we live in certainly creep into view on Heaven on the Faultline. The deceptively easygoing "D Plus" was written on the day of President Donald Trump's inauguration with the cursed event in mind, while the anxiety of climate change hovers just above the lovely guitar loops of "Felty Feel." "The album is very much about dealing with the anxiety of a sense of impending doom," Bleeker states while discussing the album's portentous vibes. "When is the hammer going to fall? How do we go forward in the face of such anxiety and experience the complexity of life?"

Tough questions with few answers, but try not to stress too much. It's possible to experience such existential doubt while also enjoying the simple pleasures that life has to offer, and that ethos is square at the heart of Heaven on the Faultline. It defines who Alex Bleeker is, too, and is one of many reasons why I'm proud to have known this special person and artist for so long.