Real Numbers - Was It Always This Way (2026)

With their 2016 debut, Wordless Wonder, Minneapolis's Real Numbers displayed their C-86 aspirations with jittery tales of melancholy and romantic woe. A decade later, Was It Always This Way furthers the band's story with more ringing guitar tones underpinning lyrics of depression and disconsolate wandering that comes in short, uptempo blasts. This tricky alchemy is strikingly appealing when successful, as it is here. Most characteristic of this is "Everlasting Happiness," which at three minutes is also one of the album's longest tracks. Strummed acoustic guitar mixes with organ-like keys, bongos, and sweetly layered vocals from band founder and primary songwriter Eli Hansen and new member Sophie Durbin (keyboards) as they infuse gloomy lyrics with a soaring perkiness: "Who would have guessed/ That there'd be no happiness/ Evermore/ Forevermore."The title track is another snatch of lost love. It opens with drum rolls followed by guitar jangle and keyboards, and a snappy, attractive melody and insistent march beat buoy another set of worried, desolate lyrics, "Watch them wish their lives away/ Hand in hand so mournfully gray/ For always/Was it always. Real Numbers find new inspiration in the musical impulse to make pain and worry invigorating. In case there were any doubts, reference the pure, raw anxiety of the last line of the aforementioned song, "Could it be worse than I fear?"