Real Estate release new single ‘Flowers’
Indie mainstays Real Estate have shared ‘Flowers’, the final pre-release song from their forthcoming album Daniel.
The quintet recorded their first album in four years across nine days with Grammy-winning country producer Daniel Tashian in Nashville. Arriving on February 23rd via their longtime home of Domino, the band have already shared the singles ‘Haunted World’ and ‘Water Underground’ from the record. They have now heightened the excitement for Daniel with ‘Flowers’.
Drawing upon the musical heritage of the city in which Daniel was recorded, ‘Flowers’ fuses a heartland and even country essence, cultivated by the pedal steel, Wurlitzer, and acoustic guitar, with Real Estate’s customary approach, as it features one of the group’s trusty lead guitar harmonies.
“This song is the closest Real Estate will ever get to like a Shania Twain style country rocker,” the band explains of ‘Flowers’. “We keep saying we didn’t go to Nashville to make a country record – we didn’t – but then we put out shit like this. Who cares though this song rocks. Check out that guitar solo.”
The song is accompanied by an animated video directed by Magnus Carlsson, the Swedish illustrator and director famed for bringing Radiohead’s OK Computer highlight, ‘Paranoid Android’ to life. In the ‘Flowers’ clip, the band members assist frontman Martin Courtney through a physical metamorphosis, which produces the track.
“For me, the greatest animated music video of all time is Magnus Carlsson’s iconic ‘Paranoid Android’ video for Radiohead,” Courtney says of the video.
He continues: “It looked like nothing else on MTV in 1997. So when we decided to do an animated video for our next single, that was at the top of the mood board. Let’s make something like the “Paranoid Android” video. It didn’t even occur to us that we could actually ask Magnus Carlsson himself to make a video for our song, or that he would actually do it, or that it would end up just as weird and beautiful as we could have imagined. Big thanks to the legend Mr. Carlsson for being up for working with us.”
Listen to ‘Flowers’ below.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.