Category: R.E.M.

After the tremendous success of Out of Time and Automatic for the People, the members of R.E.M. were determined to, in the words of Peter Buck, put away the dulcimers and make a rock and roll record. The result was Monster, an album that fueled the band’s 1995 arena tour and a metamorphosis in their image but that doesn’t quite meet their high standards.

The opening track and first single, “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?,” gets things off to a rather good start, with layers of harder, slightly distorted guitar setting the album’s tone while Michael Stipe sings about the inability to understand a younger generation and the foolishness of trying. (The song also marks the beginnings of the health problems that plagued this album and tour, as Mike Mills began to feel the symptoms of appendicitis toward the end of recording it and soon wound up in surgery.) While the sound isn’t quite like anything the band had done before, the underlying structure isn’t too far removed from previous up-tempo songs, and there’s enough of a melody to support the sonic touches.

The same can’t be said of every song on the album; the second track, “Crush with Eyeliner,” doesn’t seem to go anywhere and ultimately drowns under the feedback wail. The album’s closer, “You,” suffers the same malady. On the other hand, the most powerful song on the album is one of the slowest and least melodic; “Let Me In,” which Stipe wrote after learning of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, contrasts a quiet, mournful lyrical performance with a howling lead guitar played by Mills to very powerful effect. (The live performance of this song was a highlight of the tour as well.)

There are a couple of fast-moving, high-energy songs on the album as well, which are among my favorites. “Star 69” and “King of Comedy” are successful experiments that prove the band can indeed still rock out. “Strange Currencies” takes the basic melody from Automatic‘s “Everybody Hurts” and reworks it to fit the album’s style; like many of the songs on Monster, Stipe’s new lyrics suggest the darker, possessive aspect of relationships. That dark edge, and the more pronounced sexuality of songs like “Tongue” and “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream,” are Monster‘s primary themes.

In the end, Monster isn’t the attempt to cash in on grunge’s popularity that some critics accused the band of making; it’s a not-always-successful experiment that epitomizes R.E.M.’s determination not to get stuck in a rut. Of course, even failed experiments can yield results, and I’d argue that’s the case with Monster, which helped set the stage for one of the group’s finest works.

1. What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? (4:00)
2. Crush with Eyeliner (4:38)
3. King of Comedy (3:41)
4. I Don’t Sleep, I Dream (3:28)
5. Star 69 (3:08)
6. Strange Currencies (3:53)
7. Tongue (4:13)
8. Bang and Blame (5:30)
9. I Took Your Name (4:03)
10. Let Me In (3:28)
11. Circus Envy (4:15)
12. You (4:54)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1994
Total running time: 49:16

Up was R.E.M.’s first album without Bill Berry, and it was almost their last. The sudden recalibration of creative and professional dynamics that had been established over the course of 17 years was almost too high a hurdle to overcome, and that uncertainty and gloominess certainly makes its way onto these 14 tracks. Filled with drum machines, sound loops and droning effects, it’s not an album that leaps out at you. In truth, my first few times through Up were a difficult process. The musical richness and emotional strength I had come to expect from the band were hard to find.

With time, I think I was able to put what I was expecting out of my head and listen to what was actually on the record, and gradually my opinion shifted. I still find the opening track, “Airportman,” fairly dull and uninteresting, and I’m less than crazy about number three, “Suspicion.” Song number four, “Hope,” is where things really start to pique my interest. Michael Stipe takes the vocal melody of a Leonard Cohen song and imposes it over a sequence of synthesizer loops, as he sings of someone hoping for something to believe in. Now, I am normally quite reluctant to try to provide any kind of literal interpretation of Stipe’s lyrics outside the context of a song; that way lies madness. But I first heard the lines “And you’re questioning the sciences and you’re questioning religion” at a point in my graduate studies where I was doing exactly that, so this song was quite a useful reference point. I do think that this album features some of Stipe’s strongest lyric writing in the band’s history, even as those lyrics rely heavily on the musical support offered by Mike Mills and Peter Buck. Many of the songs on this album are more direct than usual for R.E.M., and Up includes the full lyrics to every song on the album for the first time, so those who do want to brave the interpretative woods will find a few useful trail markers.

When Stipe writes a love song, he usually inserts some kind of cynical twist; I haven’t been able to find it in “At My Most Beautiful,” a Beach Boys-inspired song built around Mills’ piano and backup vocals. The momentary sunniness is quickly dispelled with the next track, “The Apologist.” The song’s protagonist is a member of a self-help group who gradually becomes more and more aggressive with his apparent humility and contrition, and the music captures that building tension perfectly. The rest of the album explores that darkness in different guises, such as the nocturnal desk jockey of “Daysleeper,” the drunk “Sad Professor” who hates how he’s wound up, and the criminal defendant who wants to convince a jury that he’s “Diminished.” The darkness is not quite unrelenting; “Walk Unafraid” is a rousing celebration of individuality with all its attendant mistakes, and Stipe takes a moment to ask someone who’s “been sad for a while,” “Why Not Smile?” The closing track, “Falls To Climb,” encapsulates the conflict; Stipe argues that “someone has to take the fall,” and decides, “Why not me?” In making that decision, he finally declares, “I am free.” It’s a fairly triumphant rebirth, and one that signals that R.E.M. is not quite finished yet.

1. Airportman (4:13)
2. Lotus (4:31)
3. Suspicion (5:37)
4. Hope (5:01)
5. At My Most Beautiful (3:35)
6. The Apologist (4:29)
7. Sad Professor (4:03)
8. You’re In The Air (5:23)
9. Walk Unafraid (4:33)
10. Why Not Smile (4:02)
11. Daysleeper (3:39)
12. Diminished (6:00)
13. Parakeet (4:12)
14. Falls To Climb (5:06)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 64:31

I first heard of R.E.M. when I heard “Stand” on the car radio during a snow day in eighth grade. When Out Of Time rolled around during my sophomore year in high school, the band became my favorite, and it hasn’t relinquished the title since. Many of their songs serve as the anchor points through which I can recall my life and how I lived it when I originally heard them. It’s no coincidence that this Best Of collection that covers the group’s time with Warner Bros. also parallels my awareness of their music – without the major-label push that got “Stand” and “Losing My Religion” on Top 40 radio, there’s no way this music would ever have reached my sheltered ears. I can only thank the heavens that it did.

This collection is not quite a greatest hits package, since “Shiny Happy People” isn’t included and few, if any, of the included post-Monster songs qualify as hits. It’s not quite a greatest-songs collection, either, since it limits itself to singles, a couple of soundtrack cuts, and two new songs. It is a solid, although not perfect, retrospective of the band’s last fifteen years.

The album many consider to be the band’s best, Automatic For The People, gets the lion’s share, with four out of the eighteen tracks. “Man On The Moon” and “Everybody Hurts” are included, of course, as are “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” and “Nightswimming”. The last of those is a bit of a surprise to me, since even in the summer of R.E.M. that song didn’t seem to get much airplay. But I’m grateful it’s there, since “Nightswimming” is probably my favorite song. Mike Mills’s piano is beautiful, the string arrangements are terrific, and Michael Stipe’s lyrics and delivery so perfectly capture a feeling of longing for the past that as soon as I heard it I just knew I’d knew I’d be listening to it a decade later.

Out Of Time, the band’s breakthrough, is represented only by the obvious “Losing My Religion”. I would have loved to see “Radio Song” on this disc, but I guess the band figured if “Shiny Happy People” wasn’t going to be there, nothing else from Out Of Time would. I can understand the sentiment, and “Shiny Happy People” was never one of my favorites. But the result is that a very important album feels under-represented. The only other album that doesn’t contribute two songs to the disc is Monster, which adds “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” Since Monster, despite its popularity at the time, is considered by many to be something of the odd bird in the R.E.M. discography, I can certainly see the sense of that decision.

I think that New Adventures In Hi-Fi, the last album Bill Berry contributed to, is on a par with Automatic, but many of its stronger songs never caught on as singles. While “E-Bow The Letter” has grown on me in the years since, I still think it was poorly chosen as the album’s first single, and may have contributed to the album’s somewhat-disappointing performance. “Electrolite” is another track with a solid Mills piano line, more fun and up-tempo than “Nightswimming” but still a fine song.

The post-Berry selections are rather interesting. Up and Reveal both contribute two singles, and they’re good songs that nonetheless reflect the band trying to find its way as a trio. My favorite song on the disc from this era is “The Great Beyond”, the single from the soundtrack to Man On The Moon. It combines the electronica-tinged moodiness of Up and Reveal with a solid song structure and energetic lyrics from Stipe. The band also reaches into the past for “All The Right Friends” (from the Vanilla Sky soundtrack) and the current single “Bad Day”, older songs that the band completed and re-recorded in the last few years. They certainly have a more ‘traditional’ R.E.M. sound, and I enjoy listening to them. Part of me wonders if the mining of the past isn’t part of the post-Berry learning process, as Mills, Stipe and Peter Buck reclaim and reinterpret some of their older material. The other new song, “Animal”, is fairly forgettable, but doesn’t detract from the collection.

In Time is also available as a 2-disc special edition. In addition to a liner notes booklet written by Buck, the second disc contains demos, live performances, and additional soundtrack cuts, such as “Fretless” from Until the End of the World, “It’s a Free World Baby” from Coneheads and Friends, and an alternate version of “Leave” from A Life Less Ordinary that I personally don’t think holds a candle to the original from New Adventures. The acoustic version of “The One I Love” is damned good, however. As for William S. Burroughs delivering a spoken-word rendition of “Star Me Kitten”…that one, you gotta hear to believe. I highly recommend both versions.

Disc one
1. Man on the Moon (5:14)
2. The Great Beyond (5:07)
3. Bad Day (4:07)
4. What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? (4:01)
5. All the Way to Reno (4:45)
6. Losing My Religion (4:29)
7. E-Bow the Letter (5:26)
8. Orange Crush (3:52)
9. Imitation of Life (3:58)
10. Daysleeper (3:40)
11. Animal (4:02)
12. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite (4:08)
13. Stand (3:12)
14. Electrolite (4:07)
15. All the Right Friends (2:48)
16. Everybody Hurts (5:18)
17. At My Most Beautiful (3:36)
18. Nightswimming (4:18)

Disc two (special edition only)
1. Pop Song 89 (Acoustic) (2:58)
2. Turn You Inside-Out (Live) (4:18)
3. Fretless (4:51)
4. Chance (Dub) (2:34)
5. It’s a Free World Baby (5:13)
6. Drive (Live) (3:31)
7. Star Me Kitten (Featuring William S. Burroughs) (3:31)
8. Revolution (3:05)
9. Leave (Alternate Version) (4:43)
10. Why Not Smile (Alternate Version) (3:02)
11. The Lifting (Demo) (5:21)
12. Beat a Drum (Demo) (4:28)
13. 2JN (3:27)
14. The One I Love (Live) (3:25)
15. Country Feedback (Live) (6:16)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 2003
Disc one total running time: 76:17
Disc one total running time: 61:22 (special edition only)

R.E.M. pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch with the first single from their new album, Reveal. “Imitation of Life” sounds a lot like the band’s work on albums like Lifes Rich Pageant and Green, enhanced by the acoustic and orchestral effects the band mastered on Automatic For The People and “The Great Beyond” (from the Man On The Moon soundtrack). Some longtime fans of the band, perhaps a bit disappointed with 1998’s Up, listened to Peter Buck’s uptempo electric guitar and said, “Ah ha, old school R.E.M. is back.”

Well, as it turns out, not so much.

As good a song as it is, “Imitation of Life” is something of an anomaly on Reveal, which consists mainly of slower, sparser songs with a heavy amount of electronica, sampling and looping. Many of the songs sound more like they were assembled than performed. But while fans of the band may have once again had their hopes of seeing the band be what it used to be dashed, Reveal is another example of R.E.M.’s skill at the art of songcraft. Some of these tunes are forgettable or best left as background music, but some are among the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.

The opening track, “The Lifting,” is just outstanding. Michael Stipe’s lyrics conjure the possibilities of a break from worn-out routines and conventions and our reluctance to leave the safety that they provide. (The refrain: “You said the air was singing/It’s calling you you don’t believe/These things you’ve never seen never dreamed”) The electronic elements are crucial here; they give the song that otherworldliness that balances lines like “The weather’s fine/The sky is blue/It’s perfect for our seminar.”

The weight of missed opportunities and failed relationships haunts “I’ll Take the Rain,” an excellent ballad with some fine acoustic guitar work from Buck and what I believe to be Mike Mills’ usual excellence on the keyboards. The song alternates soft, understated verses with more expansive, lush choruses for an effect that is beautiful in a way that almost hurts to hear.

Those three highlights make the album more than worth your time, but the rest of the album will grow on you if you give it time, and if you listen to it as a whole. I’m not sure “All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)” will stand up well as the next single, for example, but on the album it fits. If you absolutely hated the very idea of Up, you probably won’t like this album, but if you liked Up, or thought it was a good concept but poorly executed, I’m pretty sure you’ll find something on this album worth adding to your favorite song list.

1. The Lifting (4:39)
2. I’ve Been High (3:26)
3. All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star) (4:45)
4. She Just Wants to Be (5:22)
5. Disappear (4:15)
6. Saturn Return (4:55)
7. Beat a Drum (4:21)
8. Imitation of Life (3:57)
9. Summer Turns to High (3:32)
10. Chorus and the Ring (4:31)
11. I’ll Take the Rain (5:51)
12. Beachball (4:14)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 2001
Total running time: 53:46