Many Moons

Many Moons is the debut solo album from Real Estate songwriter and frontman Martin Courtney.

Many Moons is a bright, lush, 10-song collection of soft psychedelia that recalls the Kinks and Big Star even as it probes the depths of his own life as a family man, father, and touring musician. The album is squinting-at-the-sun bright, full of subtle introspection, an elliptical document of Courtney's transition into family life and fatherhood, largely written while he was on the road touring Atlas, Real Estate's third full length release.

His players on this album, including Jarvis Taveniere of Woods, who produced the album, and Julian Lynch and Matt Kallman, help bring a newfound sonic clarity, a brightness evidenced in new single 'Northern Highway'. Songs are rounded out with orchestral arrangements, as in the previously-shared 'Vestiges', or the instrumental title track, a sweetly luxurious string and flute number that wouldn't be out of place on a prime-era Pentangle record.

Courtney has long made a career of writing songs about what happens when your image of home is something you're trying to hold on to, when the nostalgia that used to comfort you starts to feel unfamiliar. On Many Moons, he's moved through that. It's not so much a rejection of nostalgia, but an embrace of what's ahead - an album-length meditation on his life right now, which is the type of exploration Courtney has become exceptional at.