When a band is known for making distinctly guitar-oriented music and the lead guitarist decides to move on that could easily be the end of said band ( should be in some cases). But that wasn't what happened with New Jersey's Real Estate. Last year it was announced that Matthew Mondanile had left the band in order to focus on his other project Ducktails. Being one of indie rock's most gifted guitarists, Mondanile left a pretty massive void to fill, but like the temperate rock music they make, the rest of the band—singer/guitarist Martin Courtney, bassist/singer Alex Bleeker, drummer Jackson Pollis and keyboardist Matt Kallman—remained calm. Longtime friend Julian Lynch, a successful solo artist himself and known guitar virtuoso, stepped in and gave Real Estate the refresh they didn't realize they needed. "Basically, Alex, Matthew, Julian and I all met around the same time—I actually met Matthew and Julian on the same day, when I was 14 years old," explains Courtney. "So he's an old, old friend. It was more than asking some musician guy we knew to join the band: It was asking someone that we grew up with. It made a lot of sense for him to jump in at that point."
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