I Ate The POLLtus: REM's "Up"

"At My Most Beautiful", although "The Apologist" and "Walk Unafraid" are both great.

When I was... however old I was when this album came out (15? 16?), this was my shit. It was just this and Eels on constant rotation for about four months.

this is too difficult. not heard some of the songs in many years, as Stylus' playing god column convinced me of a much better, and shorter, tracklisting.

"Sad Professor" the one that really sticks with me from this record. I can't hum a note of the rest of it.

aw i loved this album. "hope," "the apologist," and "sad professor" were my favorites. also i love "why not smile," even though it's the corniest.

I like this album a lot even though the jetlagged/insomniac sadness can bit a bit too much at times. The subtly electronic nuances have aged well and the lyrics are beautiful, they often sound like something a Raymond Carver character would say ("you always listen carefully/ to awkward rhymes/you always say your name, like I wouldn't know it's you/ at your most beautiful"). I'm voting for "Daysleeper".

"Why Not Smile" worth it for "I feel like a cartoon brick wall" if nothing else. Even the songs that I don't really love on this have lots of great things going on in the mix, too.

ha i've had "i feel like a cartoon brick wall" in my head since i read the thread title!

Airportman

This was their last good album.

Shit, forgot an option for "I'm Not Over You" tucked after "Diminished." Not that I think anybody would really go for it, but...

Ooh, forgot about the "sunspots flares of the early 90s" on "Parakeet."

This is a great article.

Yep. That was my favorite "Playing God" on Stylus. I haven't listened to Up in a few years, original or Stylus-style, but the writer is absolutely OTM in his argument for why "Why Not Smile?" would be a much improved album opener over Airportman.

Nice read, thanks for the link. I kind of disagree on some key points, especially the exclusion of "Airportman" - but always nice to read in-depth praise of songs you like!

Nice album, "Hope" is my favorite.

This was a surprisingly hard choice on a surprisingly good album. I'd genuinely forgotten how much good stuff was on this record. It's somehow enervated, rootless, yet very self-contained. As much as I really like (on re-listening for the first time in years) "Daysleeper", "Airportman", "The Apologist", "Sad Professor", etc., I went with "Parakeet". Then I had a minute when I regretted not voting for "Falls To Climb", a great album closer...

"Falls To Climb" sounds like early Peter Gabriel.

Daysleeper is my favourite REM song.

"Lotus" is so awful.

ha yeah i hate "the lotus"

"lotus" is great. But it's either "Hope" or "Sad Professor" for me.

"Hope" - probably my favourite REM song.

The whole self pitying outsider non conformist theme of this albulm, hell yeah, I lapped it up in 199?, also disagree about "airportman" it makes the songs work as an albulm, the whispered lines about "oppourtunities" before a set of some fucking sad songs on lifes regrets--"why not smile" is my fav but wouldnt work as an opener for these songs, its much too pretty and hopeful.

I fucking caned this album when it came out, it wasn't a terribly great period in my life though. It's either Parakeet or Falls To Climb for me, although there's a mystery and a vagueness to You're In The Air that I really love. They lost that mystery over the couple of albums that followed and never really managed to do the old synth thing as well again.

A boring pic maybe, but I feel that "Daysleeper" is in a league of its own here.

Boring pick even, although the lack of pic probably meant that it was a boring pic too :)

i like daysleeper and at my most beautiful. this was my drop off album as far as REM were concerned - was it really 10 years ago?

never liked the apologit or the sad professor.

"apologit"(!)

'Daysleeper' for me, one of their best ever singles. Loved 'Walk Unafraid' too. This whole album is one of those records that screams 'Late 1990s'.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'm as stuck as I was when I first drew this up... these are all really good:

Airportman
Lotus
Hope
At My Most Beautiful
Sad Professor
Daysleeper
Falls To Climb

..and most of the others have at least something going for them. If this was 17-year-old me voting, it would have been "At My Most Beautiful" in a heartbeat, but jaded, weary 27-year-old me can't really admit how good it is, so something like "Sad Professor" or "Daysleeper" sort of recommends itself. The lyrics on "Hope" are probably the best here, but then Lotus has "~HEY HEY!~," the closest R.E.M. ever got to my dream that they would take Fred Schneider on as their regular guest vocalist.... fuck.

After Green's "You Are The Everything" graced Dylan McKay's devastating moment of isolation in a second season episode of "90210," how sweet was it for the band to play "At My Most Beautiful" live.

Pretty sure we've done this already, but it's still "Daysleeper", then their best single since "Drive".

Geir, was the "already" back on the 14th when you voted? :)

Yep. This poll has lasted a bit longer than I used to, I guess. And I discovered when I tried to vote that I'd done it already. :)

Yeah, I've been giving them two weeks each, which is maybe a lot, but they don't have SO many albums that we won't get through 'em all. And then of course, we get to do the mega-poll of top finishers (and the "poll of everything that got zero votes" of course)...

I don't know how I missed this poll. I keep missing these REM polls, which is crazy because corny or not, it's still probably my favorite band (blame it on my GA roots).

I voted for "Why Not Smile". I love the feedback layers that come in at the end, it's like a chorus of voices that keep getting louder and more intense. I love the Oxford American version a lot too.

After that one, I'd probably vote for "Hope" or "Falls To Climb". This album is a little long (could lose at least "Parakeet" and "Undiminished" without being diminished), but trimmed down, it's great.

Sequencing was R.E.M.'s biggest foe for a while there I think - the whole stretch from Monster through Reveal (not sure about Around the Sun, never actually heard the whole thing) falls into the "great album, kind of wants to reshuffle and lose 2-3 songs though" category.

That's true about sequencing and length. On Monster I could trim a couple of songs at least. I still haven't gotten into New Adventures in Hi-Fi, but probably there's a great album somewhere among the mess. I'm less sure of that on Reveal, because I've only listened once or twice, and never gotten into it. And like you, I've never heard Around the Sun. Some fan I am!

Of all those, NAIHF best rewards the time spent learning its curves, but I'll still rep for Monster and goodly swaths of Reveal - I suppose one of these will have to be the next poll since we're on the subject! May as well hold off discussing them till then...

Up may be the one album I've given the most chances to, waiting for it to finally click, and it just never did. New Adventures took a lot of listens, but now I love it. Up, not so much.

Voted "Falls to Climb."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Once again, thanks to everybody for participating - nice to see unknown album track "Hope" doing so well on a poll like this! Next poll up shortly...

wow that's an amazingly poor showing for WALK UNAFRAID. hurray for HOPE mind you.

for anyone in the UK by the way, FOPP has the recent remastered cd + 5.1 dvd packs of the warners back catalogue for 3 quid each. THREE QUID!

This is my favourite Rem album, not sure it's their best but I think it's a solid contender. It used to be my favourite album by any band at all in my teens but it still would probably be in my top 15 albums.

I love the dense and ethereal atmosphere, the brooding obsessive insomniac element.

Maybe the album could have a better track order but I really don't think I could get rid of any of these tracks. If I had to it might be "Walk Unafraid" but there's a lot I like about that one too. I don't agree with the track order in the article above at all. I think the way "Airportman" sets up the impact of "Lotus" is amazing.

I'm amazed "Suspician" gets one vote and no talk at all! The guy in that article said he'd leave it off the album. Pure evil!
I would have voted for it as best track, I think it's completely mesmerising, so many beautiful parts that come together so well.
We talked a little on the American Music Club/Mark Eitzel thread about how similar the track "Helium" is to this track and can be viewed as sort of a companion piece. When I heard Peter Buck did an Eitzel album (called West) around the Up period I was very excited but I only really liked two or three tracks and "Helium" is easily the standout.

"Apologist" is a strange one, it isn't that sad or overtly horrific but it's one of the most miserable songs I've ever heard. It sounds like a really thick foggy headache, there's also something pestering about it.

I love so many of these tracks but don't have much to say about the others.

Bruce Kaphan from AMC played on this album also. can't remember which song though.

I didn't know that. Is there any other REM/AMC crossovers?

I pulled this out for a listen the other week when I was going through one of my phases of playing the shit out of New Adventures In Hi-Fi and found I wasn't quite in the mood for it. It's got some excellent stuff on it, though: particularly love 'Lotus', 'At My Most Beautiful', 'Hope' and 'Walk Unafraid'. I've heard the album enough times to know that I think highly of it, but it's a very mood-dependent record for me. When I'm in the right mood, it really hits the spot for the most part, but even I can't deny that as much as I like the record, if I'm not in the mood for it I find it a bit of a slog, especially towards the end of the album with tracks like 'Diminished' (which, alongside 'Sad Professor', would have been the first to get the chop if I'd been the editor of this record).

This is the REM album I'm most likely to put on as I've played the IRS albums much more. There's still some novelty in "Up" and a unique sound in their catalog. If they hadn't backtracked on their sound they could've gone in an experimental direction a-la Radiohead.

Ah maybe so yeah.

I often listen to this entire album because I want to hear Falls To Climb, and it's a very enjoyable ride to there.

Could never see the point of Hope though, if you end up with a melody -that- similar to Suzanne, why not simply cover Suzanne? (I never read up on the lyrics of Hope, maybe I should?)

The phrasing seems similar but it's not the same melody.

It's not exactly the same, no, but it's similar enough that they gave Lenny co-credit for the song. Can't help but always think of Suzanne when I hear Hope.

I’m rarely sold on Stipe as a lyricist but I really like the lyrics of “Hope” - “but the last try was a failure and the intern was a mess” is a nicely grim line, and the whole thing is a really compelling look at the places that someone’s mind can go if they’re stuck in the hospital with nothing certain to hold onto anymore. I’ve been loving “Suspicion” lately as well, the album does kind of lose me as it goes on though.

iirc they realized once recording was done that they'd unconsciously gotten it from "suzanne," or sth like that. i agree, the lyric's fantastic. also like the pulse of the backing track.

Adore this album.

honestly you could ditch "Airportman," "Parakeet", "Why Not Smile", "Diminished" and "Suspicion" and lose almost nothing from what this album was trying to accomplish

Those are some of the best songs though.

in fact if you swapped all those out for the two b-side instrumentals ("Surfing the Ganges" and "Emphysema") it would be a more colorful and better paced record imho

Before this album came out, I was listening to an advance copy in the bedroom of my third-story apartment, with the window open. My roommate came up from the street and said a guy was standing down on the sidewalk, staring up at my window. As my roommate approached the front door, the guy asked her who was playing music up there. Then he said — “No one’s supposed to be listening to that album yet. I’m friends with the band, and I’m gonna tell them about this.” It was very weird.

Up is REM's Dukes of Stratosphear record -- self-consciously ditching their identity to make a bunch of songs in the styles of their various heroes. I tend to like these records bc while they don't always produce a group's best music, they usually tell you more about the band than just another release at this point in their careers.

All of the songs are here are unmistakably "REM Songs"--how could they not be?--but dressed up in arrangements like they are staring in a mirror wearing mom's party dress. The Beach Boys nightswim across this album in a million places -- "At My Most Beautiful" is the most obvious (and least successful), but not one but two songs nick the vibe(s) of "Til I Die" ("Suspicion" and "Diminished"). Meanwhile, "Lotus" tosses a few seconds of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" strings in the intro.

The other influences are fun and/or interesting -- "Parakeet" has Richard Wright playing the leslie speaker piano of Pink Floyd's "Echoes," the Paul Thompson whomp of Bryan Ferry's "Tokyo Joe" in "Lotus." Mid-70s Eno crops up in a bunch of places as well -- notably on the rhythm generator and piano chords break midway thru "Why Not Smile."

"Daysleeper" is the one track where they pay homage to themselves (and was unsurprisingly the single) -- it's ... fine? It doesn't say anything about who they are I didn't already know from Out of Time nearly a decade earlier. By contrast, "Walk Unafraid" feels like it could be a highlight on any record of theirs.

Fun record.

great observations---I thought of Reveal as more the Beach Boys rip, but you're right that it's here too. It's good to note the influences on the songs you mention, because "Parakeet", "Diminished", and "Suspicion" bleed together for me and the influences are a way to crack them apart. I prefer the "Sad Professor" on the 2001 Unplugged set.

I love all the unabashed somnambulist miserablism on this one, because of course I do (Sad Professor, Daysleeper, Falls to Climb all come to mind)

Excellent perspective! This is still the only post-IRS album I'll rep for, but I do so unreservedly.

Peter Buck is a huge Soft Boys / Robyn Hitchcock fan, if this is their Dukes album I wonder where we find that homage.

I may have to get this

https://craftrecordings.com/products/up-25th-anniversary-edition-2-cd

oooh same! I was waiting for this one.

I was going to say, “25th anniversary already?” Then I saw this:

Unreleased 11-track performance from R.E.M.’s Party of Five taping

I love the new cover. Seen much bitching elsewhere about the lack of extras/demos etc. I'm guessing this is the docu, it'll be nice to get it in a HD version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT1wdva2jbU

Always truly loved Up, and saw the tour.

I think for this record they effectively released the demos? Not intended as a slight, I love it.

I loved this record in spite of not really wanting to (as a Bill Berry stan).

It's only grown on me since then. Poll results are basically accurate, but I still harbor affection for the less adored tracks. Diminished, Sad Professor.

would have voted for “diminished”.

Ooh, is that the doc with Berry on a tractor, declaring good-sportedly, that "it figures, I leave and they make their best album"?

I love watching/reading/listening to Up-era interviews; there's a Radio 1 one where Peter or Mike mention that the 'psychedelic' qualities of dance music, rather than (naturally) the beats, were an influence and I'd like to have known specifically what they were listening to.

Xp oh.. possibly yeah I remember him being generous about it.

Adversity does tend to force artists to make different creative choices. Bill leaving made the other guys work harder to come up with stuff, and I think that shows.

I will never not love the full lineup
and Mr. Berry, but I can see why coming to that crossroads in their career kinda forced them out of their comfort zone and made them create a pretty damn good album.

Sadly, that energy did not produce sustained quality. Apart from maybe "Imitation of Life" I rarely even think about REM post-Up. Sorry nit sorry.

There's an album's worth of good stuff post-Up, but no good albums.

There's an album's worth of good stuff post-Up, but no good albums.

Yup. I collected everything I'd want to hear on to one CD-R - filled the disc to the very limit but it also had songs from Up and several non-album cuts.

"Hope" really is good -- that electrofuzz fade-out *chef's kiss*

My last pair of headphones would make the noise bit torturously loud. All sorted now though.

Walk Unafraid 0
The Apologist 0

Still baffling!

Well, we only got to vote once. A multiple-choice ranking of Up tracks would have gotten more balance into the mix. I love Walk Unafraid, Apologist, Lotus... but Daysleeper and Hope are undeniably grebt.

Really quite an extraordinary record and I am glad it happened. I have sentimental faves on Fables, Green, etc., but I think Up is a special case. An album that happened exactly once. It cannot be compared to anything else because it just sits there like Mont St. Michel at low tide.

I feel like much of what they learnt doing Up would go on to contribute to the more songful album they perhaps always originally wanted to make in Reveal. So Up is amorphous and open-ended by design. Absolutely a one-off yeah, their own enigmatic Victorian folly.

Except Up is way better than Reveal.

But the band rather disagree afaict

(Personally my love for Up is such that I listen to it more than any of the first four I.R.S. albums so...)

Xp If so, they are wrong.

I'm interested to read their reflections on Up in the 25 set's liner notes. I remember Mike(?) in particular seeming a bit sullen about it at some point in some context when someone told him it was their favourite (pausing and then saying "it's good but it's not our best"). Ofc what I'd really love to happen is for Michael and Mike to do promo including a song-by-song radio interview but that understandably only ever happened for AFTP and Monster.

(and to a degree Out of Time)

there was some time about a decade or so back when i heard this and i remember thinking "of course that's where thom yorke got that idea to do kid a/amnesiac"

I have to find the interview, but somewhere there's a look back at Up (maybe an oral history) where it's mentioned that Mike Mills had little involvement in Up and openly complained about it, to which Peter Buck responded in the present day: "Want to participate? It's easy - JUST SHOW UP."

I can see them preferring Reveal if it was more of a collaborative effort - very uneven, their worst outside of Around the Sun, but I don't think they really settled into the idea of being trio until then.

Hmm. Up has so many keyboards

I'm pretty sure it was Up only because I was taken aback for that reason - it's the one post-Berry album I like in its entirety - but if I can remember where I saw it, I'll post a link. It's tough because I've read way too many articles on R.E.M.

I'm quite used to being the solitary Reveal lover wherever I am. And while it isn't as strong as Up their constant talk about it being a summer record lines up perfectly with my own liminal R.E.M. nostalgia from many, many moons ago.

(Like Up it is also soaked in keyboards and synths, but more in the sense of bubblebath dressing. Cosy lite-psych sfx sprinkled throughout folky soft rock was a spring 2001 aura, cf. Travis' likely-very-despised-here Sing.)

Here's the perfect Up bonus disc (79 minutes, even fits on a single CD):
Emphysema
Surfing The Ganges
Why Not Smile (Oxford American version)
Sad Professor (live in the studio)
Lotus (Weird mix)
Suspicion (live in the studio)
At My Most Beautiful (radio remix)
Suspicion (live in Ealing Studios)
Walk Unafraid (Peel session)
Daysleeper (Peel session)
Lotus (Peel session)
At My Most Beautiful (Peel session)
Passenger (live on Jools Holland)
Country Feedback (live on Jools Holland)
So. Central Rain (live on Jools Holland)
Electrolite (live on Jools Holland)
Man On The Moon (live on Jools Holland)
Perfect Circle (live on Jools Holland)

Man, I love Reveal and I’m so sick of seeing it casually dismissed as a piece of trash not worth debating. It’s great. No skips. The Lifting, All the Way to Reno, Imitation of Life - all fantastic.

Sequencing was R.E.M.'s biggest foe for a while there I think - the whole stretch from Monster through Reveal (not sure about Around the Sun, never actually heard the whole thing) falls into the "great album, kind of wants to reshuffle and lose 2-3 songs though" category.

Below is my long-time Up edit; to my surprise, the four songs I've omitted are among the top six in this poll, so it may displease.
The singles are frontloaded on side 1, which ends with an epic. Side 2 slows down with each subsequent song til it reaches stasis (I was thinking of Before and After Science as a model).

Daysleeper
Lotus
Suspicion
Sad professor
You're in the air

Walk unafraid
The apologist
Diminished (sans "I'm Not Over You")
Parakeet
Airportman

I mostly like Reveal and what particularly impresses me is the production, it makes me think of heat making the air shimmer

Below is my long-time Up edit; to my surprise, the four songs I've omitted are among the top six in this poll, so it may displease.
The singles are frontloaded on side 1, which ends with an epic. Side 2 slows down with each subsequent song til it reaches stasis (I was thinking of Before and After Science as a model).

Great edit, I think you nailed Side A. I'd start Side B with "Hope" and end with "Falls to Climb".

Not that I would change the final album but I think Why Not Smile would make a great opening song