The band wrote and recorded demos for the album at their Central Coast home studio in New South Wales, Australia. This time around, all three brothers had an input on the songwriting with everyone working on their songs individually before bringing them together for the final polish. Jon and Dann collectively wrote around 50 songs. All of the music was written on guitars and piano.
After two months, the band flew to Easton, Maryland in the United States where they met up with engineer John Alagía who the band worked with on Dreams. The band chose to work John Alagía because they knew he would let them get on with the job. "To be honest, we did nearly all of it without him," says Jon. "We basically worked with him because we had to - the record company wouldn't allow us to do it all ourselves."[4]
The Age reviewer Michael Dwyer described Real Life as "a roller-coaster of intense gestures and hollow sentiments", criticising the album's "overwrought drama" and lack of restraint.[6]Bernard Zuel of The Sydney Morning Herald said the album showed a lack of ambition, and said the most disappointing thing about it was not that it failed, but that "you suspect this is exactly what it was meant to sound like". He complained about the lack of excitement on the album, compared to Dreams.[7]
