Darling

"Darling" arrives like a letter written on the back of a bus ticket — tender and slightly provisional, aware that the feeling it's trying to describe might slip away in the describing. The guitar work is characteristically Courtney: clean-toned, melodic, with a fingerpicked quality even when strummed, the notes hanging in the air rather than attacking. There's a sweetness to this song that Real Estate only occasionally allow themselves, usually keeping their emotional temperature at a studied warmth; here they edge closer to something unguarded. The vocals carry an earnestness that doesn't quite tip into sentimentality, a declaration of feeling that sounds more like an observation than a proclamation. Lyrically the song circles the strangeness of loving someone well — how proximity can make a person harder to see, how the word "darling" contains all the weight of accumulated small moments. The bass is melodic, wandering alongside rather than beneath the guitars, and the whole arrangement has a looseness that suggests the song was arrived at organically, that it knows where it's going but is in no hurry to get there. This is the kind of music that sounds best on Sunday mornings with someone sleeping nearby, a mug of coffee going cold on the table, the particular peace of not having anywhere to be.