R.E.M. – Up
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.
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- Airportman (4:13)
- Lotus (4:31)
- Suspicion (5:37)
- Hope (5:01)
- At My Most Beautiful (3:35)
- The Apologist (4:29)
- Sad Professor (4:03)
- You’re In The Air (5:23)
- Walk Unafraid (4:33)
- Why Not Smile (4:02)
- Daysleeper (3:39)
- Diminished (6:00)
- Parakeet (4:12)
- Falls To Climb (5:06)
Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 64:31
Once upon a time, it seems like I reviewed an earlier, and extremely popular, album by the Cardigans, and was kinda harsh about it. Didn’t mind the music, but I was even less crazy about the lyrics. I’m not here to say “I changed my mind, I take it back,” but I will fess up that the Cardigans have, perhaps, improved.
One can be forgiven for sometimes thinking that the post-Beatles British invasion bands were a dime a dozen, but every once in a while one emerged which kept itself afloat on the power of its own prodigious talents. Some, like The Move, spread their wings immediately and mixed deft Fab Four homages with experimenation in other styles. The Zombies, however, stayed a bit closer to home, sticking fast to the beat group parameters and even borrowing some of the Beatles’ trademark maneuvers, such as covering old blues tunes (including “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”, a Smokey Robinson classic which had already been appropriated by the Beatles). But it’s sometimes easy to overlook that the Zombies had their own dynamic duo in the form of Rod Argent (later of Argent) and Colin Blunstone (who, among other solo and session work, has done guest lead vocals for the Alan Parsons Project). While some of the Zombies’ material sometimes washes into the background of Beatles imitators, there are some bright gems which singled them out for praise.
It’s been nearly five years since it first hit PCs (which few people could have missed, given that a marathon Sci-Fi Channel airing of David Lynch’s Dune was sponsored by Electronic Arts in support of the release), and despite all the good stuff we’ve gotten from both game developer Westwood Studios and their in-house music guru Frank Klepacki, Dune 2000 is still my favorite PC strategy game – and still my favorite computer game soundtrack.
electronics almost steer it into the abstract, sounding in a few places like some of the better tracks from Evan Chen’s soundtrack from Crusade. It’s sinister, mysterious, and utterly appropriate to the game’s action. Even separated from the game itself, Klepacki’s music makes for a compelling listen. I highly recommend both the game and the music – they’re still among Westwood’s all-time best.
I’ll admit, I’m less of a Simpsons fan than I once was. Why, I remember working at a Fox station back in the days when the Simpsons were on once a week, years before you could see it at least twice a day in syndication. The Simpsons and I go back a long way.
This album – the band’s fourth and probably last – features just about everything that’s good about dada. The energy and harmonies most prominently featured on Puzzle are back, and so are the catchy melodies, this time with a little bit more electric guitar and production complexity. “Where You’re Going” uses echoing guitar as an anchor in the background, while the percussion, bass and more guitar drive the song. “The Ballad of Earl Grey and Chamomile” features more great guitar work and is a close second as my favorite song on the album. It’s yet another look back at happier times, which might become a clichè if dada didn’t do it so damned well. The background vocals on the chorus do a tremendous job of making you feel the excitement of those better days. “Information Undertow” has some of dada’s most inventive lyrics, and they only seem more apropos four years later, although my appreciation of lines like “I’m everywhere I want to be, nowhere especially” may say more than I want to about my own online habits. Goodbye is 
These two highly enjoyable singles give Neil Finn some common ground with Tori Amos. Both of them have released non-album B-sides that are, in some cases, better than material that actually made it onto their albums. On the first Australian CD single, supporting the single “Sinner” (still possibly my favorite song on Neil’s debut solo album), there’s also the album cut “Astro” and two wonderful, gorgeous ballads, “808 Song” (co-written with Try Whistling This collaborator and Midnight Oil alumnus Jim Moginie) and “Identical Twin”, both of which more than deserved slots on the album. To give one example, I would rather have heard “808 Song” and “Identical Twin” on the album than the exceedingly long and slow final track, “Addicted”. To fill out the “She Will Have Her Way” single (also an Aussie import), there are two bouncy, somewhat more upbeat songs – “Tokyo” and “She Comes Scattered” – and an incredible live version of “Sinner” recorded in Studio B at Abbey Road. “Tokyo” is a somewhat silly song, while “She Comes Scattered”, with its heavy helping of fuzz bass, reminds me a lot of “Kiss The Road Of Rarotonga” on the Finn Brothers album.
I’ve gotten out of the habit of touching on CD singles unless they’re something really unique – which this third offering by Neil Finn happens to be. One of Finn’s more unabashedly commercial tunes, “Can You Hear Us?” serves two purposes: providing a sort of anthem for the New Zealand All Blacks football team, and also donating part of the single’s proceeds to a charity benefitting women who have been victims of domestic violence. All in all, a couple of very worthy causes – and not a bad song either. Also included is the song’s video in MPEG format (with guest appearances by Tim Finn and one of New Zealand’s other internationally recognized celebrities, Xena: Warrior Princess herself, Lucy Lawless. (Around the same time as this single was released down under, fans aboard may have also noticed Ms. Lawless appearing out-of-character in some anti-domestic violence PSAs placed in Xena and Hercules episodes.) A Maori haka, performed by the All Blacks before the big game presumably, is included, as well as a rap version of “Can You 
When some of the tracks on the two volumes of ELO BBC recordings – Live At The BBC and The BBC Sessions – were exactly the same as the final versions that appeared on their albums, I had a few trepidations about picking up yet another BBC Sessions album. As it turns out, The Move: The BBC Sessions features some dandy rarities I’d never heard before, most of them taking the form of cover songs that haven’t appeared on previous collections.