R.E.M. trio albums POLL

Up is gonna walk this

Has this not already been done? Anyway, voting for Accelerate.

holy shit those are ugly

Up in a heartbeat. Some passable-to-good-ish cuts on Reveal and Accelerate, but come on.

Up. Incredibly diminishing returns after that

Exactly what I was going to say.

polling the best of their worst is borderline cruel

as crap as "Around the Sun" is, at least they're kinda/sorta trying to do something. the last 2 are those dreadful "returns-to-form" beloved by Mojo, hardcore fans and no one else

Well, there's a lot of songs on Up that I like and I enjoy in isolation. However, as a start-to-finish experience I find it a bit overlong (there's one or two tracks which could have been cut, IMO), there's not as much variation in tempo compared to, say, New Adventures In Hi-Fi which is of similar length (and feels shorter as a result). There's a slickness to the production this record that I like, but only in small doses as I think it gets a bit sickening after an hour or so of it.

Accelerate I can listen to from beginning to end, is less slick, has more energy and I like every song on it (yes, even the goofy 'I'm Gonna DJ'), hence why it gets my vote.

Which is worse, Reveal or Around The Sun?

You won't immediately turn off Reveal.

Around The Sun is the worst album R.E.M. ever put their name to, I think even they'd say that themselves.

After the release of their following album, Accelerate, guitarist Peter Buck said that for him Around the Sun "... just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore."

as crap as "Around the Sun" is, at least they're kinda/sorta trying to do something. the last 2 are those dreadful "returns-to-form" beloved by Mojo, hardcore fans and no one else

― col, Saturday, January 17, 2015 12:19 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What, like fall asleep? 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge' and 'Horse To Water' alone wipes the floor with anything on Around The Sun. I don't rate Collapse Into Now as highly as Accelerate, but it has 'All The Best' on it, which again is better than the whole of Around The Sun combined IMO.

I definitely think R.E.M. splitting up was the best thing they could have done at the time when they did it, though. It's hard to say where else they could have taken it.

look, I agree Around the Sun is an utterly shit record. But I find the last 2 are just dispiriting: a band trying to recapture what it thinks its fans want.

The contract w/Warners was a devil's bargain--they had to keep grinding these records out when they should've broken up around 2000. I just wish they'd done some weird thing like Up every 4 years rather than trying to pull a U2.

I mean, yeah, on paper it's easy to point to Accelerate and say "yeah, this band are deliberately, and cynically, trying to go back to their '80s sound", but when I listen to it I don't get the sense that the band are just going through the motions for the sake of pandering to their fanbase even if that may have been the case. If anything they seem to be into it, committed to it and there's a sense that they're having fun (particularly Peter Buck, who if you read between the lines of various interviews preferred to make records this way compared to how they approached the three before), which is something that is definitely absent from Around The Sun. If the band weren't into it, you'd be able to tell on the final product. You can definitely tell on Around The Sun!

I think most people would say that they should have split when Berry left, to be honest. I'm kinda glad they didn't, though.

I still think Up is the best album they ever did. I think they should have split after Reveal.

I have to agree about Around The Sun being better than the next two albums. I think it had more good material and some lovely moments even if it isn't executed as well as it could have been. Really wished I agreed with Turrican.

Up is kind of impressive as a post-Berry left turn, but it's not a fun record. Reveal is a decent summertime album. The other three I've heard once and don't need to hear again (I never made it all the way through Around the Sun).

fp'd omar for starting this poll

I'm basically with Turrican: I don't think Accelerate is *great* all the way through, but its kinda daddish rock moves feel like they're sincere, like it's literally a bunch of dads who play in a bar band and are pretty stoked about these riffs and how loud they get and stuff. It sounds more like New Adventures, or the way they sounded on tour by the mid-00s, than it does their 'classic' records, especially if you compare to 'Bad Day' or even 'Imitation of Life.'

The strongest links back are Mills's backing vocals (pointing to the 80s stuff) and Stipe's sentiments and vocal style (very much their 90s stuff on). It's a different combo of elements, they hadn't really done something that sounds *quite* like ''Supernatural Superserious'' before.

I really like the last two records. It's like listening to REM without any baggage at all. At that point in their careers I was kind of over hoping that they would make something that meant as much to me as Up or Automatic, or really most of those earlier albums. After Around The Sun there was no where to go but up. Those last two records let me listen to REM songs that aren't super familiar and carry zero emotional baggage whle still sounding like REM so I get those residual good vibes from the hundreds of hours spent listening to earlier "better" records. And looking at the track list of Collapse it's all pretty solid, maybe no huge standouts, but no huge duds leap out at me. And that part where Blue goes back into Discoverer always kinda gives me goosebumps.

I still think Up is the best album they ever did.
I still think Up is the best album they ever did.
I still think Up is the best album they ever did.

I was a regular on a big REM fansite and I can definitely say that 'giving the fans what they want re. 'classic' REM was a HUGE deal on the forums after the release of Reveal and Around The Sun - many, many arguments.

Alfred- I'll take that as enthusiastic agreement.

I can totally appreciate why people would prefer Murmur, Reckoning, Out Of Time, Automatic and New Adventures but Up is just so beautiful in places. I suppose on a track by track basis Murmur would seem the best but I still prefer Up.

fp'd robert adam gilmour for being young

Is "fp" face palm? I'm really bad at that stuff. It taken me a bloody year to figure out "otm"

"open thy mouth"

landslide. UP is amazing, literally as good as anything they did, for at least half of it.

as a live band they still could take the roof off. that run of Dublin shows (for a week?) in 2007 looked amazing from the YouTubes.

Also becoming convinced that "Suspicion" is a contender for their best song. So fucking good.

as a live band they still could take the roof off. that run of Dublin shows (for a week?) in 2007 looked amazing from the YouTubes.

― piscesx, Saturday, January 17, 2015 2:39 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is another reason why I love Accelerate so much.

My ultimate favourite R.E.M. album, though, if I must choose one and only one, would definitely be New Adventures In Hi-Fi.

Up >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Accelerate >>>>>>>> reveal >> around the Sun > collapse into now

Up >>> Monster >> Accelerate > Collapse Into Now >> Reveal >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Around the Sun

But New Adventures towers over all of these.

Collapse Into Now is my favorite. Around the Sun (which has "Leaving New York" and "I Wanted to Be Wrong" and "Aftermath") is my 2nd favorite.

And this is the period of R.E.M. that I relate to most.

guitarist Peter Buck said that for him Around the Sun "... just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore."

Yeah, but having probably read numerous interviews with him about this, I think he was talking about becoming bored with the material because he didn't like the laborious process.

are there any decent songs on Collapse.. i never bothered to check.

I cant believe I'm actually considering listening to Up again. Why did I open this fucking thread? !

I know why; I thought we were polling the REM albums in threes, and I wanted to see if I could vote for Automatic-Monster-Hi Fi

I'd rather listen to Up than New Adventures. but not more than any of the other earlier albums. and I've nothing much positive to say about the albums after up except that the "I've Been High" on the recent Unplugged second disk is terrific.

Leaving New York is actually a pretty good song. Doesn't sound like really anything in their pre-trio catalogue.

killer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo0jga73ruA

Up is by miles the best of this, Reveal has a couple of moments that are mainly down to production choices rather than songwriting. Of the albums that followed, only Accelerate is worth the time of day, they can do that sort of stuff standing on their head but at least they sound like they mean it on that one.

The way the song titles are broken up on the back cover of Up conveniently divides the album into thirds, iirc, which is a great way to approach it.

http://www.doohan-covers.com/Audio/REM_Up_back.jpg

Up, while overlong and inconsistent, has some fine songs and the sense of the band forced into trying something different.
Reveal's production ruins some lovely songs, not least Beat A Drum. Compare the piano demo to the cluttered sub-Brian Wilson confection on the album. Wilson always left space in his arrangements/productions, something REM and the useless Pat McCarthy (worst producer they could have had at this point and major reason Reveal and ATS sound so lifeless). The switch to digital synths really didn't help either. I'm not in anyway an analogue purist, but they made some poor decisions with keyboard sounds around this period - glassy, rinky dink melody lines and bland pads.
Accelerate certainly has a confidence they'd been lacking on record for years, but it does get a bit REM by numbers at times. It was a necessary exercise in getting back to basics, or at least as back to basics as a massive corporate operation can get. Collapse Into Now might seem just as calculated, but it's a pretty nice exercise in late style, and does some quite interesting things with various REM tropes. The glam rock track is poor, but the likes of Uberlin and Oh My Heart are very well crafted bits of folk-rock. The final non-album single, We All Go Back To Where We Belong was lovely - Mills finally nailing the Brian Wilson thing he'd been trying for on Reveal, and Stipe pitching the sentiment just right.

I should add that Reveal also has some utter stinkers - I'l Take The Rain is my least favourite REM song*, as if they were going for a big U2 adult contemporary ballad. Thing is, U2, love em or hate em, are very good at that sort of thing, whereas REM don't suit being quite so calculated.
*I'd probably hate stuff from ATS more, but the material is so dreary and unmemorable it's hard to dislike in the same way.

Said it before, but post-Berry REM is very much the sound of a band playing to a click. I wonder if any of them were ever in the same room together.

Otoh, Imitation of Life.

I got the clicktrack impression from Green on. Out Of Time especially sounded incredibly stiff to me; it's less that it sounded like they weren't in the same room and more that it sounded like the idea of playing together as a unit was fundamentally unappealing to them.

At least they were in chamber band mode for much of that, but Berry's drums still have a loose character and quality to them. He may have played to a click, but he's as energetic and non metronomic as Stewart Copeland.

"Up" and on, it sounds like Buck and Mills recorded their demos in different countries to some drum machine, then dropped them off in the mail slot at the studio. Btw, you can kind of tell how unappealing it become, on a personal level, because since the breakup (and a bit before) Buck has been touring non-stop with a bunch of collaborators (Escovedo, Baseball Project, Minus5, etc.), while Mills has been popping up here and there. Even Stipe finally broke stage silence, though I get the feeling he may have been the deciding factor in the breakup.

I thought Mills was more the Baseball Project guy than Buck; I saw them last summer, and Mills was there (and sang on most of the songs), but no Buck.

But I dunno about Berry post-Green...for me, his peak was Reckoning and their early/mid-80s live shows. Once they got into the arenas, and the gestures got broader, a lot of what made him special vanished (including, but not limited to, how he propelled the rest of the band).

(I do think he had his moments here and there on OOT, though)

piscesx Collpase Into Now does have a couple of decent songs. Actually the first 2 songs (Discoverer, All The Best) are fairly great, and as the band generally made no secret of the fact they recorded it knowing it full well this was their final work, there's an extra bit of poignancy to lines like 'just the slightest bit of finesse/might have made a little less mess'. Then you spend the rest of the record in the same vortex of Accelerate wondering is this good, or is this good because Reveal and Around the Sun were so awful and fuck it's just nice to hear them sounding like R.E.M again (That Someone Is You)? It seems like on Collapse they decided well hell if we're just going to give the people what they want we may as well get Mills singing a lot of great backup lines again (uBerlin in particular)

Summary: Good, but not good for you

(unimportant sidenote: It's so great how they just let Riefin cut loose on these last 2 records. There's a fill towards the end of 'All The Best' that Berry would never have played, and possibly couldn't have.)

Oh, man, I will say, I saw the band on the Up tour, with Waronker, and he was a stiff. But REM with Rieflin live was a joy and a half.

Collapse Into Now might seem just as calculated, but it's a pretty nice exercise in late style, and does some quite interesting things with various REM tropes.

Yes, and given that it was a farewell, these can be all the more affecting.

Reveal's production ruins some lovely songs, not least Beat A Drum. Compare the piano demo to the cluttered sub-Brian Wilson confection on the album. Wilson always left space in his arrangements/productions, something REM and the useless Pat McCarthy (worst producer they could have had at this point and major reason Reveal and ATS sound so lifeless).

I definitely agree that Reveal is more than a little overproduced. I remember hearing it for the first time just after it was released and thinking "holy shit, this must be the slickest thing they've ever done". I wouldn't lay the blame solely with Pat McCarthy, however... if I recall, the way the production was laboured over on Up, Reveal and Around The Sun was very much the way that Michael Stipe and particularly Mike Mills wanted to work. Peter Buck preferred to work more spontaneously, like R.E.M. did on their earlier records.

lol i don't like collapse into now at all, though it's hard to say why. no one seems to be trying hard enough? whereas i made myself like around the sun in high school (couldn't endure the thought that my favorite band had made a bad record) and iirc it becomes vastly enriched when thought of as the most drained-of-life post 9/11 record probably ever. haven't heard it in years though. i really like "aftermath" still

Said it before, but post-Berry REM is very much the sound of a band playing to a click. I wonder if any of them were ever in the same room together.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, January 17, 2015 2:11 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Up, Reveal and Around The Sun sounded like they were layered up piece by piece. Accelerate and Collapse Into Now sound like a band performing all at the same time.

"Up" and on, it sounds like Buck and Mills recorded their demos in different countries to some drum machine, then dropped them off in the mail slot at the studio.

Accelerate was worked on as a band.

I think the production is appropriate on UP. It gives it kind of a dense, almost humid feel at times.

Probably said this in another thread (similar to The Cure threads, most of us are probably repeating our stances on the last half of their discography, I must have said UP is their best album several times) but there are more of those Reveal demos and Buck seemed to prefer the demo version of the album and said there was a possibility of that version being released.

I have a hard time imagining it being released any time soon, I think a lot of people would be quite cynical about it now. But a lot of fans really love the acoustic (I think that's what they called them? I don't remember them being called demos on the single b-sides) versions of "Beat A Drum" & "The Lifting".

"the lifting" was a demo and it was pretty unbelievably different from what ended up on reveal. demo didn't really have a chorus even

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwuRgvcPAL4

definitely better than the album version. I think I was especially disappointed by the album because these versions set my expectations quite high.

Is that the version you mean Brad?

They were both included on the bonus disc of In Time

yep

i kinda prefer "beat a drum" rich and overproduced but i like the og "lifting" a lot more these days

I still like things about Reveal, it's pretty good. It's one of the sunniest and warmest albums I've ever heard.

Never knew about this.

The February 2001 master of Reveal differed from the March 2001 master of the album, which ended up being the final version. Compared to the official, the differences of the Reveal Advance 2001 disc include:
Two tracks that never made it to the finished version: "Fascinating" and "Free Form Jazz Jam".
An alternative version of "Beat a Drum" called "All I Want".
A longer version of "Imitation of Life".
A version of "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" with an alternate ending, and simply titled "Reno".
Slightly different mixes and/or instrumental changes in "I've Been High" and "She Just Wants to Be".

Neither of the unreleased tracks or any of the alternative mixes have ever been released commercially. However, the band allowed the Murmurs.com fan community to offer downloads of "Fascinating", which had recently been covered by Fischerspooner.

voted for Drop Shadow

"The Lifting" is one of REM's great openers. The first three Reveal tracks are way better than the opening trio on Up actually. Can't stand the rest though.

oh yeah "i've been high" is the greatest, unfortunately it's probably the peak of the record (minus "beat a drum" which was for a short while my favorite r.e.m. song)

It is, seriously check out the unplugged version though

'I've Been High' is one of my least favourites on the record, fwiw. Looking at the tracklisting, the one I really find myself wanting to listen to is 'Saturn Return'.

well you'd be the first

Listening to it right now, in fact. Wonderful song, IMO.

the last third of Reveal is a condo complex in Cape Coral that was built, never lived in, and abandoned years ago.

"i'll take the rain" is such a by-the-numbers r.e.m. ballad that it feels emotionally vacant even as stipe struggles to inhabit it

sunken condos, as Donald Fagen said

that makes it sound more intriguing than it deserves xp

Oh, I love 'Summer Turns To High'.

Up is a really cool album! Favs are "suspicion", "diminished", and "falls to climb". Doesn't sound very dated, I can imagine it coming out right now.
Everything I've heard from the others didn't do anything for me. Wish they had kept making sleepy lounge songs with vibraphones and harmoniums

That song on accelerate where michael stipe makes fun of djs is really bad iirc

I like it.

"Saturn Return" is indeed great. Partly because it feels similar to the broodier parts of Up.

I don't generally care about an artist's interpretation of their own work but I think Stipe's "REVEAL equals druggy hypnotised summer" kinda put some sort of perspective on that record that made me appreciate it a little more. It's funny because when I think about "All the Way To Reno" and "She Just Wants To Be" I think I never, ever want to hear them but I don't mind them when they're on.

I think "All The Way To Reno" is great but I find myself mostly waiting through "She Just Wants To Be".

Having a listen to Reveal and Around The Sun this eve.

Reveal is much better than I remember, especially the first half, overall though it's dynamically *really* soft, the drums are mixed as to have no real impact, songs are all of a very similar tempo (I'm guessing that when you remotely create click or loop based demos you probably never naturally write anything strident or uptempo, it's a 100-120bpm all the way), it's a weird thing to hear an REM record sound so emphatically inoffensive.

Listening on headphones exposes some really wretched glitchy bookend treatments that sound cheap and misplaced, there's like a grasping towards the sound Beck was achieving around 'Mutations' but it comes off sounding like that trend that 90's loop/click based records have of just trowelling on little layers of sonic muck that is great fun to create in lieu of dealing with broader structural problems.

Unsurprisingly, Around The Sun is even more sonically milquetoast, it's translates like one long jangly guitar and pad chord that lasts for the entire record. Even potentially radical changes in dynamic come off as incremental, like cut bars and that jaunty Britpop rhythm in Wanderlust.

I'm at The Worst Joke Ever now, and from Wanderlust to this point has been especially forgettable.

Oh and The Outsiders! Holy balls!

xp I remember AOL streamed their Rock in Rio performance shortly before Reveal came out and that was the first time I heard "She Just Wants To Be" and I remember it being significantly faster and it got me really excited for the new record, and then I bought the album and that song sounded like it was in slow motion.

Oh wait, the last 2 mins of the title track (ATS) is kinda cool!

Yeah, I love the way that song ends. I remember at the time having a discussion with a friend about how they should call it quits, not because it was a bad record, but because that song had such a perfect "last song, last album" vibe to it.

"The Ascent of Man" was my favorite track on Around the Sun. It took me several years to admit that that was a bad record, like I couldn't come to terms with a band I loved so much for so long making something so lifeless and exhausted. But "Final Straw" at least makes me think they were in on the joke; Brad's comment earlier about it being a "drained-of-life post 9/11 record" otm.

Listening to Accelerate, so far so Pageant, I'm enjoying Man Sized Wreath's subtle nods to Back Of A Car.

"Man Sized Wreath" was the one song I liked on Accelerate. Reminded me how well he can sing.

Oh wait, the last 2 mins of the title track (ATS) is kinda cool!

― MaresNest, Saturday, 17 January 2015

That was one of my least favourite things about it. I thought the big ending really didn't suit them. I think REM just don't do epic. I suppose maybe "King Of Birds" and maybe "Fretless" could be considered epic.

I think "Leaving New York" and "High Speed Train" are good songs and there are good moments scattered across the album.

Finest Worksong and Turn You Inside Out are pretty epic I would say.

'Leave'?

I mostly meant that the end of "Around The Sun" has a big crescendo that is something like a brief attempt at that sort of epicness you get in post-rock and symphonic rock. And I don't think it worked for them. Maybe it isn't right to dismiss them ever taking that approach just because I don't think that song succeeded but I feel that it just isn't REM.

I am glad at least Turrican likes I'm Gonna DJ. I kinda love that song. It might be my favorite off Accelerate. It's between DJ or Supernatural Superserious, and I really like that album.

My favorites:

Up - Why Not Smile
Reveal - Beat a Drum
Around The Sun - I Wanted To Be Wrong
Accelerate - I'm Gonna DJ
Collapse Into Now - All The Best

To me it doesnt work because the song isnt memorable enough to warrant it.

Besides, in their heyday REM would have toned that side if it down especially if the tune didnt hold up

i remember feeling so dismayed by around the sun in high school. it's between up and reveal for me - i love the weird buoyancy of "lotus" but "imitation of life" and "all the way to reno" are still two of my favourite REM singles. (IIRC "reno" is my friend ari's favourite REM song period.)

"supernatural superserious" is a fun entry in the "michael stipe barks a bunch of syllables" canon

Im still not sure about Imitation - I think its catchy enough but at the same time the sound of a band trying very very hard to do and sound the way it once did almost effortlessly

Tell it to the Decemberists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR9DjdMrpHg

There's this part of "Man-Sized Wreath" that always sounds like they're about to break into a cover of "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang. I feel like 1984 R.E.M., playing this live, would actually have done it.

As for the poll, there's probably not a song they wrote after "Sad Professor" I think is as good as "Sad Professor," but in terms of my actual listening I think I rate both Accelerate and Collapse above the others. Maybe it's fanservice, but sometimes it's nice to be serviced.

The live in Hansa videos for Collapse are terrific. Their final live performance, so poignant but also celebratory. Rieflin sounds great and Stipe sings the shit out of Discover.

like everyone, this discussion has led me to revisit the albums in question. I still think Reveal and Around The Sun, are, well, terrible, but I'm not sure if Stipe the singer has ever sounded as good on record as he does on those two (vocally, Around The Sun in particular is a great performance).

album picks
Up-Hope, Why Not Smile
Reveal-All the way to Reno, Imitation of Life
Around The Sun-Around The Sun
Accelerate-Houston, Horse to Water
Collapse Into Now-All The Best, UBerlin

Reveal really does have some good songs, even if they're not the best recordings or arrangements or performances of those songs. I definitely gave it way more listens than the ones that followed, though I gradually started skipping over the long, I guess 'ballad' ones. MaresNest is totally right on about the consistency of the tempo. I think it works great on "Beat A Drum," "The Lifting," and a couple other things but it just doesn't feel like a record that was urgently made or urgently needed to be released. I quite like "Imitation of Life," but in memory it wasn't as much of a throwback to "Shiny Happy People" as it really is. Not a bad thing, since I like "Shiny Happy People" etc, and I dig Stipe's lyric, especially the opening line, but it does raise the specter of a band trying to hit a mark instead of doing what they want to be doing.

Up maybe involves some degree of trying to be "experimental," but mostly they seem like genuine experiments and the songwriting is there to back them up. One or two tracks should've-been-B-sides, but it's able to sustain much more of a 'feel' despite a greater variety in tempos and sounds. It also sounds, in hindsight, like a pretty reasonable step forward from where they had been as a band, with the long grinding, wails of Buck's Monster/NAIHF guitar sliding into the background as color and texture (Airportman, Apologist, Sad Professor, etc.). If NAIHF really would have been the best place to end it, Up would also have been a pretty satisfying, dignified final record, which I don't think can really be said of any of the others.

What do you think are the shoulda been bsides? Parakeet for sure

That was the one that prompted my thinking that! I guess the other would be "You're in the Air," everything else is kind of a solid REM song, part of the canon to me. Maybe that's the big dividing line after Up - there start being way, way more songs per record that stop feeling like key pieces of what the band did or was good at... less quotable, less relevant, less unique. Whereas I feel like almost every song on Up is probably in somebody's top ten REM songs.

i love "parakeet" jeez guys

I like Up and Reveal a lot, I'm still kind of mystified by the speed of the decline to Around the Sun.
re: the 'not sounding like the three of them were ever in the room at the same time' factor, I'm sure I read something suggesting that for the Around the Sun sessions they would all eat dinner and have a few drinks together every evening with Pat McCarthy, and then go back to the studio slightly tipsy to do a bit more recording, and the person that wrote this thing was suggesting that this was the reason the album came out a bit underwhelming. I like the idea of the three of them sobering up one morning and discovering they had recorded and released a terrible album on a bender

I do wonder to what effect their gradual realization that critical and commercial acclaim were now mostly beyond them played into those last albums. New Adventures' underwhelming numbers they could write off on unclear promotion (the idea it was a rattle and hum tour album), Up was inherently transitional but by the release of reveal it must have been clear their long day in the sun was done. And while I don't think they necessarily lived for that appreciation and attention it must have been a change to stop being cool after being the pinnacle of cool to an evergrowing audience for so long. Do you actively try to be pop again? Be a critics darling? Just do your thing? And what does "doing your thing" mean if Your Thing always seemed to pop and a critics darling before?

And before someone notes rolling stone still gave them four stars or whatever, there's critical acclaim and then there's critical ACCLAIM. I'm sure these guys were astute enough to recognize the difference.

Definitely clear in hindsight that pat McCarthy was the worst producer they could have had during such a directionless period, aside from reminding them that they still make enough money to hang around in studios across the globe for months.

Up is the best here, sure, but it's I can't imagine listening to it again. There are plenty of decent songs from Monster onwards, but "Electrolite" and "WTF Kenneth" are the only two I'd save.

Two notes - I also love "I'm Gonna DJ" - and good god the 2nd go-round of the chorus on "Diminished" is so transcendant, it's always bugged me how annoying the verses are.

I do wonder to what effect their gradual realization that critical and commercial acclaim were now mostly beyond them played into those last albums. New Adventures' underwhelming numbers they could write off on unclear promotion (the idea it was a rattle and hum tour album), Up was inherently transitional but by the release of reveal it must have been clear their long day in the sun was done. And while I don't think they necessarily lived for that appreciation and attention it must have been a change to stop being cool after being the pinnacle of cool to an evergrowing audience for so long. Do you actively try to be pop again? Be a critics darling? Just do your thing? And what does "doing your thing" mean if Your Thing always seemed to pop and a critics darling before?

― da croupier, Sunday, January 18, 2015 8:43 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Reveal was a UK #1 album that went platinum.

In fact, it went Top 5 everywhere... aside from The Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand and the US.

I remember cutting the UK TV ads for Reveal, Warner booked Paul Gambaccini for the voiceover and the first line was 'The love affair is back on!'

I imagine Reveal was the last time a lot of people thought, "I suppose I gotta buy the new REM record" -- it was for me.

I remember being excited to pick up Reveal after David Cavanagh's rave review -- I think that actually increased the letdown after hearing it.

turrican, please apply what i said about critical appreciation to commercial appreciation. it's not that the world took a collective shit on it, but that "still doing ok in europe" kinda pales to the new plateaus of success they achieved with each album through monster

It really is amazing how their turn towards a more generic alt rock group was reflected in their album covers and marketing. They really wanted to lose every trace of "oddball" after awhile or so it seemed.

Here is that Cavanagh review -- which is actually the source of that "love affair" quote!

turrican, please apply what i said about critical appreciation to commercial appreciation. it's not that the world took a collective shit on it, but that "still doing ok in europe" kinda pales to the new plateaus of success they achieved with each album through monster

― da croupier, Sunday, January 18, 2015 9:35 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Of course they weren't as huge worldwide as they were around the time of Automatic For The People or Monster, but that doesn't mean they still weren't a big band.

In fact, Reveal was probably more successful outside of the US than Up was.

But then, I've always found the American perception of this band, their albums and even some of their individual songs to be wildly different to the UK/European perception. In the UK in particular, this undoubtedly has a lot to do with the fact that R.E.M. didn't have their breakthrough here until Out Of Time.

I imagine Reveal was the last time a lot of people thought, "I suppose I gotta buy the new REM record" -- it was for me.

I remember being excited to pick up Reveal after David Cavanagh's rave review -- I think that actually increased the letdown after hearing it.

― Chuck_Tatum, Sunday, January 18, 2015 9:32 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nope, I think Around The Sun was actually the tipping point commercially. Y'see, Around The Sun made it to #1 in seven countries, and also made the Top 10/Top 5 pretty much everywhere else aside from Japan, New Zealand, Portugal and the US. Problem is, the fans didn't like it and this had a knock-on effect on what came after.

xposting, Up is also where we really learned, if we did not know it already, just how Bill contributed, not just musically (singing, piano, drums, guitar, etc.) but as a mediator between Buck and Mills in the studio. They have both conceded, iirc, that Up could have been shorter but neither of them wanted to cut any of their songs.

Up would have made such a great final album. Or the place they should have recorded an acoustic album with, say, no drums. Or the place where they should have gone on hiatus. I really could have seen the group coming back strong after a long break, rather than dutifully churning out records that at best occasionally got the sound right but rarely captured the spirit of REM. But of course, they also conceded that minus Bill they were a different band.

Incidentally, "Up" and Berry's departure all happened right after or around the firing/retiring of their longtime manager Jefferson Holt. Don't underestimate what a change in management can do to a group. U2 losing Paul McGuinness has clearly been bad for the band.

for reference btw:

I Ate The POLLtus: REM's "Up" 30 votes
POLL The Way To Reno: REM's "Reveal" 29 votes
Leaving Was Never My POLLed: REM's "Around The Sun" 18 votes
SuPOLLnatural, SuPOLLserious: REM's "Accelerate" 06 votes

otm about Holt's departure (which was a bit later, early 2000s, right?) and very ugly, involving sexual harassment claims, iirc. That kinda was their equivalent to Brian Epstein's death for the Beatles. They lost a mediator & sounding board & became a set of occasionally-hostile interests, compromising w/each other to keep things going for a while longer.

correction: you're right: happened in '96, around the same time Berry left

Feeling like piping up again against what seems to be a lot of consensus here. Around the Sun has a lot of slow songs. But I've never seen how they're inherently worse as a group of songs than those on the two albums that preceded it. Collapse Into Now is a wonderful record with very moving songs and was an awesome gesture by the group in finishing their career.

You know Up winning this would be ironic, in that it's the only one Berry was actually involved in writing.

The Holt thing was really 'off' - the whole close knit, 4 way tie thing, suddenly there was all this uneasiness, coupled with Berry's departure.

96/97 was generally a weird time to be an REM fan.

I remember reading the news about Bill Berry leaving R.E.M. and their decision to carry on and remember having mixed feelings about it at the time. On one hand, I knew it would never be the same again, which was saddening to me as I loved New Adventures In Hi-Fi (and still do) even if it didn't then receive the praise that it does now. I just didn't feel like they were finished at that point. On the other hand, I was curious to see how they'd handle the departure and was looking forward to seeing what they'd come up with. They did a really good job at first of putting on a front and making it look like they were successfully carrying on as normal with a near-same degree of chemistry as they had before and that they hadn't much trouble adapting to becoming a three-piece, if I recall. Then of course, the stories started coming out about communication breakdowns between band members and a stark difference in working methods between Stipe and Mills (who liked to labour over the details of the music) and Buck (who liked to work in a more instant way). From what I can gather, Berry was very much in the same school of "no fuckin' around, let's get this track done" as Buck was, so his departure left Buck pretty much out on a limb. I suspect Pat McCarthy was going along with the way that Stipe and Mills (the "majority" of the band by this point) worked and that alienated Buck further.

Buck, I guess, was no stranger to doing work outside of the band, but he seemed to be increasingly more interested in working outside the band than with the band. He eventually got his way on Acclerate and Collapse Into Now, which are more in keeping with his preferred working methods and I think Accelerate in particular is as underrated now as New Adventures In Hi-Fi was when it first came out, and I think it'll take a while for people to catch onto it because "it doesn't have Berry on it, therefore it's not a real R.E.M. albumzzzzZZZzzzZZZzzzz..."

However, I do think a difference in working methods between Buck and Mills were one of the reasons for R.E.M. splitting.

Like, I see Reveal as being a Mike Mills-driven record, and Accelerate as being Peter Buck-driven.

When did Mills start rockin' the nudie suit?

Or, you know, Nudie suit. I'm sure they all rock the nudie suit at times, like on their birthday.

Around the time of Monster, I think?

Which is when Pat McCarthy first started working with R.E.M., funnily enough (he engineered on Monster)

yeah that 'love affair' quote is from Dave Cavanagh in Q. the last line of his 5/5 star Reveal review ("Let the infidelity cease. The love affair with REM is back on.. "). he'd been THE music press REM champ in his days at Select but two years later it seems he had some kind of epiphany and in a 2 page WORD mag piece in 2003 he banged on about how much he wished they'd knock it on the head. "If there’s no more to create, or if there’s nowhere to go but back, REM must stop. They have already ceased to be unique and are in danger of looking foolish. Let them be different to those bands that go on too long and become an embarrassment.” etc etc. it seemed a big deal at the time.

The Mills/Buck tension makes a certain amount of sense, but on the other hand, Mills is a really strong presence on the final two albums, both in his playing and singing. For all that Buck's method may have won out, Mills was clearly enjoying being the driving bass player and second vocal line guy again.

i don't buy any theories that suggest things were TOO contentious between anyone in the band because every other day you see photos of any two of them hanging out at a concert or a restaurant or something. seems like whatever disagreements they have, they all get on board once its sussed out.

Turrican, NAIHF got excellent reviews at the time. Before its release there was little hint that it wouls be a commercial disappointment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZQhTJ4SHP0

i think i just straight up hate stipe's lyrics on collapse which is my barrier to enjoying it

The title of that record is the worst! I think his lyrics started getting over-cutesy on Monster, and were genuinely bad by Reveal - "She Just Wants To Be", ugh.

i like a lot of the lyrics on reveal (and around the sun despite "leaving was never my proud" has a lot of affecting lyrics)

The Mills/Buck tension makes a certain amount of sense, but on the other hand, Mills is a really strong presence on the final two albums, both in his playing and singing. For all that Buck's method may have won out, Mills was clearly enjoying being the driving bass player and second vocal line guy again.

― Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. (Stew), Monday, January 19, 2015 11:06 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh yeah, there's no doubt in my mind on Accelerate that they sound like they're enjoying themselves, including Mills... and certainly they're mature enough as people to not let "the band" get in the way of their friendships. The difference in preferred methods and lack of communication during the Up, Reveal and Around The Sun sessions must have had an effect, though... it is possible to stay friends while at the same time admitting that maybe the working collaboration isn't working as effectively as it once did.

Turrican, NAIHF got excellent reviews at the time. Before its release there was little hint that it wouls be a commercial disappointment.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 19, 2015 3:24 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, yeah. The critics loved it, and the band themselves considered it to be one of the best records they'd ever made, but at the same time you'd be hard pressed to find fans rating it as highly as they do now.

someone (Noel Murray?) wrote something great about how telling it was they were all toasting each other in separate cities when the breakup press release went out.

I dunno, they'd been living in separate cities for years so I don't think you can read too much into that. We know they've met up regularly enough since then as friends as well as business partners. Granted there were many changes in their working relationship over the years, but I think they dealt with them pretty well all things considered.

If you think about it, R.E.M. managed what The Beatles never did. All four of the original members are still good friends, there's been no lawyers involved and no members suing each other, there was no animosity or bad blood towards Bill Berry for leaving the band in the '90s. Even if the collaboration in a musical sense wound down to its natural conclusion, the business didn't grind them down to the point where it resulted in a nasty break-up.

What I also like about R.E.M.'s break-up is that they felt like they'd achieved all they could, both career-wise and in terms of working together musically, and just stopped. I mean, I love this band, but I certainly haven't missed them putting out new music over the last four years, and I struggle to think of where else they possibly could have gone.

With the exception of Around The Sun, I get the sense that R.E.M. are proud of every record they've made. And rightly so.

I'd say they're still very underrated by some crowds, even though I understand why some people are put off them.

They've also said that they never played with a band they disliked, either supporting another band or being supported by another band at a show. Festivals are a possible and reasonable exception.

I think (not sure) Stipe said he gets final say on all the art direction and wouldn't give it up for anything. I think (also not sure) Buck said he sometimes got hassled at gigs by Warner Bros people with clipboards and just has to tell them to go away.

This was supposed to be the reason they were idolised by American alternative rock bands, that they did everything on their own terms and still got massive.

Their latter-day art director, Chris Bilheimer, lived in Athens about a block north and a block west of Stipe's sometimes-residence; I could imagine them being in regular touch over dinner or drinks or whatever, in a way that Pete Buck wouldn't be.

I like a lot of his stuff - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is great. For me his REM work peaks in the Monster/NAIHF era - has the right mix of evasiveness and blaring in-your-faceness for what I think the band was doing. The trio-era stuff doesn't quite match the way the records sound to me, or start to tilt too much towards the evasive/anonymous end of things in a way that sometimes makes the covers feel like they could basically be for any band. Which is funny, because their IRS-era covers are all pretty guarded and mysterious too, part of their charm really.

its weird to look at the New Adventures cover and then look at the album covers after it.

OK!

So I listened to Up for the first time since the first Bush term. Looking at the CD case I could hum at least five songs w/out help, and it remained the case when I played it.

First thought: "Why are these songs so long?" The album feels longer than NAIHF.

Second thought: "Why are the electronics so tame?" Stipe is front and center, often singing well, but I wanted tension. Most of the time it sits there, forcing you to listen to the lyrics (it's like the mixing decision matched the decision to include the lyric sheet).

Listenable songs: Hope, Sad Professor, Why Not Smile (I read at the time that it was Stipe playing lead guitar), At My Most Beautiful. The rest? I still don't know Parakeet and Diminished after playing them again. Suspicion goes nowhere and it's the third song -- bad sign.

I still treasure the sight of Stipe in a sarong dancing to "Airportman" at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in '98.

"falls to climb" is a gorgeous closer

Albert- I've got to look for that clip.

Does anyone else like "Suspicion" as much as I do? Guys? Pure magic I say.

So sorry!! Alfred not Albert!!

I'm listening to Collapse Into Now for the first time. it's pretty nice! of the last 3 albums, I only heard Accelerate at the time, and it was OK, but this is probably better. maybe I'll get up the nerve to listen to Around The Sun before the poll closes, although I can't think imagine I'll want to vote for anything besides Up, which I think achieved something really interesting and unique in spite of its obvious faults.

don't think i can ever revisit Reveal, though. have never heard a bigger dropoff from track 1 to the rest of an album than "The Lifting" vs. everything after it.

otm

still love "The Lifting." When the guitar solo kicks in it's like the shaft of light heralding a sunrise.

What do you guys think of "The Great Beyond"? I suspect britishes and Europeans will have a different impression. I bought the CD single, sat down, and forced myself to like it for 35 minutes.

pretty pitiful attempt to rewrite "Man On The Moon" i thought

I'm British and don't rate it highly.

lol the review that pushed me to attend a midnight release in May 2001 at the long gone Virgin Megastore, despite reservations:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/reveal-20010501

I'm british, I think it's very good. "Bad Day" was nice enough. I didn't like "Animal" much.

xxpost:

...and I bought the CD single at the time, too! I remember at the time that there were a few non-R.E.M. fans that I knew who were into the song, though. I always saw it as one of their more lesser things.

Sorry to say the last few original songs for the retrospective compilation didn't grab me much.

I like "The Great Beyond," and also bought the (pointless) CD single. I've elsewhere argued that if it is a "Man on the Moon" pastiche, it's legitimately updated to Stipe's 1999-era preoccupations - meditation on death, yes, but now in a kind of fuck-it, fighting way, swinging punches, kinda riding the pointlessness of things. I'm not articulating this well. Maybe it's just the difference between second-person (addressing the dead) and first-person, expressing the joy of creativity in the same breath as the quest for meaning. "Sidewinder" vs. "Hope" is the flipside of this.

I read a U2 interview in a British magazine in fall '01 after 9-11, at the peak of their second renaissance, supporting an album that I still find detestable, and Larry said something like, "We want REM to do well. If they go, we go too. But I loved the last album," etc. Couldn't help thinking it was U2's last triumph over the band they were tied to at the hip since 1991.

I like "The Great Beyond," and also bought the (pointless) CD single. I've elsewhere argued that if it is a "Man on the Moon" pastiche, it's legitimately updated to Stipe's 1999-era preoccupations - meditation on death, yes, but now in a kind of fuck-it, fighting way, swinging punches, kinda riding the pointlessness of things.

is that why it sounds like Grandpa at the mixing board?

Odd to think that PSA dates back to a time long before Stipe was any kind of paparazzi fodder.

Well, R.E.M. have definitely triumphed over U2 by stopping when they knew their time was up, whereas U2 continue to carry on and look silly.

idk i think the last two U2 albums are very good. the previous two were a bit alarmingly paint-by-numbers ('how to dismantle an atomic bomb' was their worst album by some distance imo not counting the live tracks from 'rattle and hum', def their 'around the sun' imo.)

I've a soft spot for "Great Beyond," as it seemed like REM's sweet millennial goodbye song, as good as any from the period. But "Bad Day" really grates for me.

all this has me wanting to revisit Accelerate & Collapse. I tried to like both of 'em at the time & neither worked at the time.

U2s most recent two were unfocused messes. But I definitely feel the band at least was fueled by conviction, whereas REMs low points were largely lifeless and joyless.

i'd disagree, i think 'no line' was messy (albeit good), the new one is vv focused albeit disastrously released. 'ATYCLB' was a-ok, 'giving the fairweather fans what they want' stuff, 'atomic bomb' was kinda 'giving the fans what they want but not what we want'.

has the new one even cracked 100k in the U.S.?

Wrote on "The Great Beyond" a few years ago:

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2010/07/rem-great-beyond-2000.html

Voted up, which is honestly probably my favorite R.E.M. album. Haven't heard the ones after that in full.

I'm listening to Around The Sun for the first time in a while and my god, this album is a mess. There's the makings of a good song in 'Electron Blue', but the production and arrangement really prevents it from being the track it should be.

I would say that U2 are fuelled by this:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2256/2368329234_f3b6a02a74.jpg

Oh my fucking god, that stretch of 'Make It All OK', 'Final Straw' and 'I Wanted To Be Wrong' near-enough sent me to sleep. Then 'Wanderlust' comes on and it's like... eurgh... off.

I don't think Stipe could play guitar to save his life. On the Work tour, he 'played' on Oddfellows Local 151, and youtube, ever helpful, has a fairly complete concert from that tour up:. (These Days rips btw).
http://youtu.be/2Xq2XxmIDHM?list=PLxn-k7OqSA-9gq69L6gLDP0UfCaMCLYOX

He's in one of the Monster documentaries playing guitar on 'I Don't Sleep, I Dream' too.

Up by a mile, though it's overlong and dirgey. A song of the quality of, say, Suspicion or AMMB would be unimaginable from then onwards. I'd actually probably choose Around The Sun as the best of a bad lot from the 00s stuff. There's a songwriting muscle on things like "Boy in the Well", "Aftermath" and "Ascent of Man" that is absent from say Reveal or Accelerate - the latter truly is their nadir, one of the dreariest albums ever.

the very great This Way UP docu (impossible to find, never released on DVD/VHS) is on YouTube FYI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i65t6cqdCM

Great Beyond was a *number 3* hit by the way in the UK! their highest chart entry.

Just watched that documentary, I remember I saw that on tv and taped it, I remembered as soon as I saw Stipe in the party hat. Around the time of Up and Reveal I must have taped 3 or 4 different documentaries about them.

Radiohead and REM seemed a lot more similar back then. The were my two favourite bands for quite a long time. I think my love of REM has lasted a lot longer in retrospect, I'm slightly more picky about what I like across Radiohead's output.

This is either the first one or the last one, with Accelerate a close runner up. And the others are horrible.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

but i like the berry the best

It boggles my mind that anyone could consider Stipe's voice to be at its best over those last few albums. Like I'm fine with the increasingly gravelly nature of his voice itself but his phrasing and enunciation are a big part of why those later records are so underwhelming.

It was at its best on the early Warners albums imo, technically anyway

yeah i'd go with that; The W

(oops) The Wrong Child and You Are The Everything on Green are some kind of high point IMO.

Disturbance At The Heron House for me, that lovely vaulting high vocal melody, kinda telling that he never sang it the same way live.

oh but it was better live! that take on the '91 Unplugged is their best song imo

Have to admit, I never liked that alt vocal melody, I guess I felt kinda cheated, plus conga drums are nagl

I get that. What about Mills' harmonies on that take? they weave together in a way they rarely accomplished otherwise

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

dang

well, that's pretty definitive

whoa

it was pretty obvious from reading this thread that Up would triumph, but the word "shellacking" wouldn't seem out of place here.

the Bill Berry factor

actually laughed out loud at those results, that has to be one of the most lopsided five-way polls ever

who voted for around the sun

For the relative goodwill for the last two they didn't exactly run away with 2nd and 3rd.

Meh, I'll still always prefer Accelerate

It's all relative...I was an Up voter who prrrrrrobably would have gone with Accelerate if Up was out and this was just "the four REM albums with no street cred" or whatever.

Honestly I think Reveal is a great album. I can understand people diminishing it with the post-Berry asterisk but I'm baffled by the opinions that place it at the same depths as Around the Sun.

A problem with Reveal might be - for those still buying REM albums into 00s - the sound, approach and production wasnt what a lot if fans wanted at that point. Berry's gone, Up's not heavy on the guitars, what's going on?

I was actually into the idea of Reveal - okay, they've done this colder-feeling thing, now there's this warmer-feeling thing, and both seemed more 'electronic' and concocted-in-the-studio than their previous records... and I dig some of the recordings on Reveal even, maybe partly under the influence of positive reviews at the time that framed it as this wash of summer haze and production lushness. The thing is it just doesn't have the songs - the ones that are meant to be the anthemic waypoints in the tracklist (especially "I'll Take the Rain") fall totally flat, so lesser songs that might have survived being kinda interesting album tracks (were they next to stronger material) end up seeming underwritten and superfluous to the catalog. I basically think it wasn't a fertile period for the band in terms of songwriting - or maybe, that they really didn't know how to write songs together without being a band, in a room, with a drummer.

Accelerate > Monster. Come on now.

ILM 90s mindset I see u

They’re all bad, but —

Up > Around the Sun > Collapse > Reveal > Accelerate (it’s unlistenable)

How long must we try to correct each others wrong REM rankings? Just go back and see my ranking.

Monster is listenable to the extent that I’m not inherently put off by what sounds like ‘90s major label alternative band demos.

don’t point your finger

lotta wrong opinions in this thread bump

Euler not addressed to anyone in particular but I think speculation about constructs for our perceptions in general can be fair game.

You know that's not my thing

The reason I feel like this particular matter might involve constructs just comes from listening to Accelerate and thinking that there's just no way that those songs are inherently inferior

They seem to accomplish the same exact things, nothing is missing

I can't picture how any of the songs sound like if I look at the tracklisting of accelerate. I registered to the discography like a month ago

I hammer at my own constructs all the time - I know we all do

I'm primarily into early REM. I consider monster to be a bit later in the discography for my liking and dont hold it in hugely high regard.i vastly prefer it to all of the post berry albums

Mr. Richards and Supernatural Superserious are both as good as What's the Frequency, Kenneth

i like accelerate and know that isn’t true

nothing on accelerate as good as “crush with eyeliner,” like at all

In what possible sense?

Up >>>>>>>> Accelerate >>> honestly whomst even cares

idk there’s a looseness and charm to “crush” that’s all gone by accelerate. if you don’t like “crush” that’s fine but imo monster is just a great glam rock record with amazing guitar tones

Up > Around the Sun > Collapse > Reveal > Accelerate (it’s unlistenable)

An R.E.M. ranking I nearly agree with for once, though I'd swap the last two (it's very listenable).

The only album here that is out-and-out bad is Around the Sun, all the rest are good to very good records.

Accelerate > Monster. Come on now.

― timellison, Saturday, March 9, 2019 7:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like Monster more now than I ever did in the '90s, but this is indeed true. I'd rank Collapse Into Now higher than Monster, too.

nothing on accelerate as good as “crush with eyeliner,” like at all

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Sunday, March 10, 2019 12:29 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is bullshit. Sorry.

Anyway, my only issue with the results here is that Up took it in a landslide. IMO, the votes should have been more spread out with Around the Sun a distant last.

you’re not sorry

"Up" is like a different band fronted by Michael Stipe - one I wouldn't mind hearing more from. The rest of these albums are clearly sub-prime REM that I'll never bother going back to.

There are great songs on every REM album. I love "Mr Richards" and "Supernatural Superserious" and "Accelerate". But I like Monster more. I have a big soft spot for Monster which I've probably said elsewhere in this thread. It's sort of an alien within their discography but it's cohesive unto itself and I really dig a lot of those songs--Crush, King of Comedy, You, Kenneth, etc.

I feel like they experimented with a new sound for "rock mode" REM on that album, which they then carried over to New Adventures ("Wake Up Bomb" sounds like it could be on Monster without a blink, for instance). But for the most part they ironed out some of the quirks on New Adventures (ie turned off the tremelo effect on Buck's guitar). Accelerate and Collapse, insofar as they "return to rock", sound to me like they were trying to reclaim what they were doing on New Adventures more than any other past REM album.

And I think the thing that nags at me about those last two albums is that they feel like the only two albums in the entire REM discography that saw them looking backwards more than forwards. That's one reason I'd never say Accelerate is better than Monster. For whatever faults you can assign to Monster, REM were being ambitious when they made it, trying to break out of the box they were being put in by the mainstream and also trying to make a rock record that didn't sound like one of their older more rock-oriented.

That's fair, but there's something brilliantly transcendent about the looking-back-as-farewell on Collapse Into Now. That record is magic.

For whatever faults you can assign to Monster, REM were being ambitious when they made it

This is where I disagree a little. I don't know as that I ascribe significant ambition to the change in direction with Monster or with Up. I don't know as that I feel that the approach to the last two albums involved less ambition overall just because it wasn't totally new.

Live “Let Me In” is the only thing I’d save from the Monster era.

The post-Berry albums are so boring, ppl don’t even want to discuss them in their own thread 😂

There are 245 posts!

But we do go over the album hierarchy every year or so, in the various REM threads. I'm sure I've said what I have to say about Up many times, I love it forever, and I will defend Reveal quite a bit (the atmosphere and humid sunny blaze still impresses me) even though I understand the idea that it feels like the start of a stagnation

pgwp- those are good points.

I really like about half of the individual tracks on Reveal, but the whole thing is too soporific to listen to in one go

It's the nooks and crannies of the career that poke at you on Collapse Into Now, ending with "Country Feedback" in a big Radio Ethiopia mess with Lenny Kaye.

Ha, I'm listening to it now - forgot the "Finest Worksong" reprise at the end

still can't stand collapse but i do like your enthusiasm for it tim. maybe one day

however i could mount a defense of about half the tracks on around the sun so

This is where I disagree a little. I don't know as that I ascribe significant ambition to the change in direction with Monster or with Up. I don't know as that I feel that the approach to the last two albums involved less ambition overall just because it wasn't totally new.

Someone who knows more about the band’s history than I could answer this better than me, but what I get from every R.E.M. album from Chronic Town to Reveal is a band that was constantly anxious about falling into a comfort zone. Every album or pair of albums seems like a purposeful move away from the previous pair—an approach that got harder and harder to maintain the deeper into their career they got, as I truly feel they didn’t ever want to repeat themselves. Whether you like specific albums or not, I think this is true.

Maybe that can be said all the way up to the last pair of albums too. But from what little I’ve read about that period, they had really stopped writing songs together—Stipe came in and just reacted to things the other two created and then he wrote lyrics. And it’s no accident that the minute they fulfilled their extraordinary contractual obligations, they stopped. If Reveal or Around the Sun could have been their last record I think they would have been. That’s what I mean when I say that the last few albums—even though they contain great songs!—lack an ambition that imbues the rest of their catalog.

Thought Up etc. tunes came from Buck or Mills demos, too, Stipe adding parts after. Not sure how the process changed.

Yup. And on New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and on Monster, and on Automatic for the People, and on Out of Time, and on Green etc. etc.

I kind of wonder if I tried to make a best-of with tracks from this era if I could get to 12 tracks.

i find that baffling but i am an Up stan. the challenge is more in sequencing, to make the couple of tracks from the last couple albums feel of a piece with the chamber-pop of Up and Reveal.

Off the cuff I can get 4 from Up, 1 each from Revea1, ATS and Accelerate and 4 from Collapse.
so maybe not as bad as I thought. Collapse is the one I listen to the most of this era.

a best-of with tracks from this era already exists, it's called up

the cover of Reveal makes me angry

every time this thread gets bumped i re-marvel at how bad the around the sun cover is

the up cover is also awful. maybe bill berry was secretly the graphic designer of the ban because after he left things went waaaaay downhill

Accelerate would be a much better album with less brickwalled production/mixing. Some of the songs are decent, but the OTT attempt at a "live" "in-your-face" sound doesn't play to their strengths at all

are you saying you know more about producing then the legendary jackknife lee???

lmao

Catfish and The Bottlemen - The Balance (2019)
Sneaks – Highway Hypnosis (2019)
The Killers – "Land of the Free" (2019)
Catfish and The Bottlemen - Longshot (2019)
Jacknife Lee – Space Is The Plaice / Pussyfoot (2018)
Sneaks – Hong Kong To Amsterdam (2018)
Bob Moses – Battle Lines (2018)
The Beaches – Facscination (2018)
The Killers – Revamp: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin (2018)
Snow Patrol – Wildness (2018)
The Beaches –Late Show (2017)
U2 – Songs of Experience (2017)
U2 – "You're the Best Thing About Me" (2017)
Alex Cameron – Forced Witness (2017)
The Killers – Wonderful Wonderful (2017)
Beth Ditto – Fake Sugar (2017)
Michelle Branch – Hopeless Romantic (2017)
Neil Diamond – Acoustic Christmas (2016)
Two Door Cinema Club – Gameshow (2016)
Twin Atlantic – GLA (2016)
Bat for Lashes – The Bride (2016)
Jake Bugg – On My One (2016)
Raury – All We Need (2015)
Yacht – I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler (2015)
Silversun Pickups – Better Nature (2015)
Saint Raymond – Young Blood (2015)
Elle King – Love Stuff (2015)
Kodaline – Coming Up for Air (2015)
Conway – Shut Up (2014)
Neil Diamond – Melody Road (2014)
Vacationer – The Wild Life (2014)
Snow Patrol – Divergent: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2014)
Twin Atlantic – Great Divide (2014)
Silversun Pickups – Cannibal (2014)
Silversun Pickups – Let It Decay (2013)
One Direction – Something Great (2013)
Bonnie McKee – "American Girl" (2013)
Lissie – Back to Forever (2013)
Tired Pony – The Ghost of the Mountain (2013)
Snow Patrol – Greatest Hits (2013)
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (2012)
Taylor Swift – Red (2012)
Robbie Williams – Take the Crown (2012)
Two Door Cinema Club – Beacon (2012)
Silversun Pickups – Neck of the Woods (2012)
LostAlone – I'm a UFO in This City (2012)
R.E.M. – Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011 (2011)
Snow Patrol – Fallen Empires (2011)
The Drums – Portamento (2011)
All Time Low – Dirty Work (2011)
The Black Keys – "Tighten Up (Radio Mix)" (2011)
The Wombats – This Modern Glitch (2011)
The Cars – Move Like This (2011)
The Walkmen – Juveniles (2011)
Crystal Castles – "Not in Love" (feat. Robert Smith) (2011)
R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now (2011)
Blur : Video Game – Blur : Video Game (2010)
Snow Patrol – "Just Say Yes" (2010)
Biffy Clyro – Many of Horror (2010)
Melee – The Masquerade (2010)
Tired Pony – The Place We Ran From (2010)
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (2010)
Snow Patrol – Up to Now (2009)
R.E.M. – Live at the Olympia (2009)
AFI – Crash Love (2009)
Regina Spektor – Far (2009)
U2 – Medium, Rare & Remastered (2009)
Weezer – Raditude (2009)
Amanda Blank – Shame on Me (2009)
Bloc Party – "One More Chance" (2009)
Marmaduke Duke – Duke Pandemonium (2009)
Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns (2008)
Bloc Party – Intimacy (2008)
Weezer – The Red Album (2008)
Hadouken! – Music for an Accelerated Culture (2008)
R.E.M. – Accelerate (2008)
PlayRadioPlay! – Texas (2008)
The Hives – The Black and White Album (2007)
Nicole Scherzinger – Just Say Yes (2007)
Snow Patrol – "Signal Fire" (2007)
Green Day & U2 – "The Saints Are Coming" (2007)
Editors – An End Has a Start (2007)
Bloc Party – A Weekend in the City (2007)
Editors – "Bullets" (2006)
Juliet – Ride the Pain (2005)
Bono, The Edge, Andrea Corr and T-Bone Burnett – Don't Come Knocking (2005)
Snow Patrol – Eyes Open (2006)
The Freelance Hellraiser – Waiting for Clearance (2006)
Vaux – Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice (2006)
Vega4 – You and Others (2006)
U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
Kasabian – Reason Is Treason (2004)
Aqualung – Still Life (2004)
Snow Patrol – Final Straw (2003)
28 Days Later OST Enhanced – Ave Maria (2003)
Sack – Butterfly Effect (1997)

he blows

Silversun Pickups – Cannibal (2014)

great song

also responsible for a weekend in the city the most frustrating album i love

He did a good job with that Bat for Lashes album.

that snow patrol album sure got him a lot of work forever

Tbh A Weekend in the City would probably have been superior without his influence

wait did the killers actually release an elton john / bernie taupin tribute record or did you just slip that in there to fuck with us

i wish i would have, but that's just c&p'd from wikipedia

OK I looked it up and it's a John/Taupin tribute record with ONE SONG by the Killers, which makes more sense

Sack – Butterfly Effect (1997)
he blows

― but i'm there are fuckups (Karl Malone), Saturday, March 16, 2019 2:46 AM

!, I have this album. It was a band Morrissey put on a compilation, a good song but I didn't like that album much. Yet another singer Morrissey loves because he's borrowing heavily from his own voice.

the cover of Reveal makes me angry

― but i'm there are fuckups (Karl Malone), Saturday, March 16, 2019 1:35 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I remember thinking at the time that the Reveal sleeve felt lazily put together.

What's wrong with it? I think it represents the album quite well.

I remember Stipe saying he was deeply involved with album art and wouldn't give it up for anything.

It looks like it was thrown together in ten minutes, pretty much. I'd say that of all the post-New Adventures in Hi-Fi sleeves, Accelerate is probably the best. For me, at least.

What's wrong with embracing a rougher sleeve aesthetic, as they do on Accelerate? The Hib-Tone 45 sleeve was rough.

IMO, their taste in non-musical indicia (album titles, cover art, general aesthetics) did fall apart after Monster.

There's nothing wrong with the idea of embracing a rougher sleeve aesthetic. In the case of Reveal, the main photograph on the sleeve is actually pretty great - it's what's been vomited all over it that's the problem.

(It's a shame, because I like Reveal more than most.)

I'm not saying I'm totally crazy for the later sleeves - I like the covers on the early albums best - but I'm certainly not crazy for the Monster sleeve either.

Oh, I love that one! Murmur, Green, Automatic for the People, Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi are my favourite sleeves of theirs.

I think mine are Fables, Pageant, Document - beautiful

Stipe's present visual art doesn't seem to be in that vein at all, so perhaps it's not wrong to say that his current aesthetic has more to do with the late period band sleeves.

I do take him seriously as an artist.

The Monster cover has taken on a certain baggage after decades of clogging dollar bins, but the new approach did seem cool & different at the time (and I do still like it).

Post-Around the Sun it's difficult for me to think of anything to do with Monster having "baggage" ...

I bought that on vinyl when it came out. Looks like there were more pictures in the CD booklet? Like the ones with the fake song titles and the furniture - I like those.

I thought those were all actual songs (or at least sketches of songs) from when they were making the album. Were any of those actually released? I lost track of the reissue program...

I would totally listen to 2 CDs of Monster outtakes; just those guys f’ing around with that cavernous gtr reverb

Looks like all the bonus tracks on CD and vinyl singles from that time were live tracks except for 808 State remixes of "King of Comedy."

What's wrong with it? I think it represents the album quite well.

I remember Stipe saying he was deeply involved with album art and wouldn't give it up for anything.

by no means am i font/typography design nerd, but the three different fonts on the cover are all awful (especially the "REVEAL", and especially especialy the track titles), the circles on the M in R.E.M. make no sense, the drop shadows all go in different directions, the spacing around the track titles are weird and unpleasing, and the combo of the awful font and awful drop shadows on the track titles combine to make some of the very worst track titles i have ever seen, literally worse than just about anyone could do with even a copy of microsoft word from microsoft XP days. unforgivably bad. the tones/colors on the photo aren't so hot either, but compared to the crap that was laid over the top 20 minutes before the file was due (and if it was put on there any earlier, and any significant amount of thought was put into it, that adds to the things that cannot be forgiven) it somehow comes out to the best part about the cover

The list of titles in the Monster CD booklet are a mix of titles, working titles and ideas for titles. For example: 'Yes, I am Fucking With You' was the working title for 'King of Comedy' - I suspect it's the contents of their "ideas wall" that they would have had in the studio.

I would guess 'Violent Green' was the working title for 'What's the Frequency, Kenneth?', 'You Give Good Head' was the working title for 'I Don't Sleep, I Dream', 'There's a Certain Feeling'/'Certain Feeling' was the working title for 'Circus Envy', various permutations of 'Revolution' are mentioned ...

I'm speculating now, but 'Pattern Shirt' looks to me like it could have been an early version of 'Bittersweet Me', and I'd be totally unsurprised if 'Soul Song' turned out to be 'Tongue' ...

I could swear that Buck or another one of the guys said at the time that there was a bunch of unreleased stuff in the can, but maybe I’m wrong.

Unreleased stuff from Monster? I suspect if there were any leftover ideas worth using, they used 'em on New Adventures in Hi-Fi. They were already performing 'Undertow', 'Binky the Doormat' and 'The Wake Up Bomb' on the tour, as well as 'Revolution' ...

I just skimmed thru this old interview; there’s some interesting stuff in it:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/r-e-m-monster-madness-42635/

“I think we’ve got a few more records in us,” Buck continues. “If I said three records — that sounds kind of reasonable to me right now. Now we could break up before that or we could make 10 more records. At the rate we work, three records is a long time — it’s six, seven years. Of course, if we get to the point where we’re not popular anymore, then we could do whatever we want to! Some days I think it could last forever, and some days I think it won’t last very long.”

Oh right, I recognise this interview because of Kiedis at the beginning... it's in a book I have of R.E.M. articles/interviews from the beginning up to the Monster era...

Rolling Stone's crash-your-browser web site is something else.

a best-of with tracks from this era already exists, it's called up

look who bought the myth.
Hope, Sad Professor, Why Not Smile, Daysleeper, chunk the rest.

'Sad Professor' is one of my least favourite things R.E.M. ever did.

I like Up (I like all their albums), but it’s certainly not their most immediate set of songs.

xxxp Reveal sleeve heavily influenced by the David Carson / Ray Gun show-the-seams end-of-print aesthetic

I dunno, I just don't think it's aged particularly well, and their inability to advance its better moments makes those achievements seem like a bit of a fluke.

"Suspicion" is probably my favorite. And since it's my favorite REM album, I think its one of their best songs ever.

"sad professor" is v good imo. up is prob objectively too long but i can't argue for excluding any track, everything builds on its singular sleepwalking mood and imo the length actually adds to that. also how lovely is "you're in the air"???

their inability to advance its better moments makes those achievements seem like a bit of a fluke

I think it was a similar mode of songwriting to New Adventures even with the different instrumental approach - longer form, fictional, narrative. I remember being happy thinking that they were tightening the song structures up again with Reveal, enabling things like "The Lifting" and "Imitation of Life."

I had to look back at an old fanzine review I did of Reveal. I wrote, "One thing these lyrics do is to reduce the character sketch approach from storytelling back into more of a poetic form."

Listening now, I'm not so sure! I think the structures tighten up more with Around the Sun (and stay that way from there on out, ending with songs under three minutes on Collapse).

Reveal is a potentially great album marred by Stipe sounding so halfhearted, they sound like quickly recorded guide vocals half the time. Usually he's one of my favourote singers so what was going on in summer 2000? was he ill or just not into it?

"Beat a Drum" is fantastic.

Classic R.E.M.

“I’ve Been High” has great singing. Really that’s all I need from Reveal. Maybe “Beat a Drum”.

"Beat A Drum" is my pick too, amazing song. Several of the others felt a little too anonymous to me at the time, like any band could have done "She Just Wants To Be" or "I'll Take the Rain." I should give it a relisten though.

"Imitation of Life," though. Like another Out of Time hit. That one was rad live.

absolutely, that and pilgrimage were the highlights when we saw them in '05

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YlaOH_ovVg

reveal was... a little overcooked imo, as i think this superior demo proves

xp yeah the Unplugged version of “I’ve Been High” from the Reveal era may reveal charms to the resistant

er not xp!

I suppose a big reason for the change in studio approach after Berry left was that Berry and Buck tended to like to get things down onto tape quickly, whereas Mills and Stipe liked to labour over things a little more. When Berry left the band, the balance tipped in favour of Mills and Stipe, who were heavily into the details of the production, sometimes working on perfecting a couple of bars of music for hours. Up, Reveal and Around the Sun were all recorded with this type of approach, until they all agreed to go back to a more organic way of working. Stipe probably laboured over the vocals to those albums far more than their other records - which is probably why they may sound "half-hearted" to some.

But how do these albums make you *feel*? "Up" does what it says on the tin, despite some of the somber moments, overall it makes me feel positive and hopeful.

That's one of REM's secrets - their music often taps into your emotional core, making you feel *something*. As opposed to the later albums, which just don't make me feel much at all aside from a track here and there. Listening to any of their IRS-era material, the albums positively soar at times. That faded away for me after "New Adventures" and "Up".

This is nice. "Bad Day" b-side, 2003, Magnapop cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-g4cdSjvo

Same disc, Mills, Three Dog Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvttMIOPiT0

My other conclusion listening to the second Complete Rarities today - they remained a good surf band ("Tricycle," "Surfing the Ganges," "165 Hillcrest").

man i'm listening to reveal r/n and it's less good than i remembered. :( "beat a drum" is still fantastic" and "imitation of life" lands like someone just jabbed the album with a syringe full of energy. but after "the lifting," side A is just a prettily-produced wash of songs that are too basic to sustain the nth repetition of "all the way to reno... you're gonna be a star!" or "she just wants to be somewhere she just wants to be" (get it). i really don't like where stipe's good-advice/adult-wisdom songwriting mode ended up here and i agree that his singing is not great.

"she just wants to be" is def one of my least favorite rem songs

wow just looking at the tracklisting i'm like "this is a very uneven album that i listened to constantly in high school for some reason?" i used to love "i'll take the rain" but now recognize it as the palest xerox of a rem ballad

i love "i've been high" and "disappear" (which sounds like it's broadcasting the second side of accelerate early) though

all of Around The Sun sounds like the part of a concert where your favorite band plays newer material and all the energy drains from the room.

'She Just Wants To Be' sounded much better live. Around the Sun starts off well ('Leaving New York', 'Electron Blue') and then it goes south.

most of these songs sounded much better live. the around the sun tracks especially

around the sun songs i'll go to bat for:

electron blue
the outsiders before q-tip appears
i wanted to be wrong
boy in the well
aftermath
ascent of man

"high speed train" is also great i think but it covers very little ground that "boy in the well" doesn't

I'm surprised DC didn't note "I've Been High" as one of the good ones! the electronics threaten to swallow the singing but if you don't like his singing here then that's a good thing. I think his singing on it is gorgeous and as I said even better on the Unplugged from 2001, where the sequence is "Disappear" -> "Beat A Drum" -> "I've Been High".

yeah idk with that one, it just kinda bores me. the lyrics don't land with me, i hear them as generic deep-thought stuff, the images and word choices aren't very unique. i don't fall in love with songs because they have unique words mind you - just trying to articulate what it is that's present in many other r.e.m. songs that's missing here.

i've made this point before but around the sun kind of "works" as a document of post-9/11 exhaustion. it came out a month before the 2004 election but it's so depressed i feel like it actually predicted four more years of dubya

there are still too many aimless ballads stacked on top of each other

also re: reveal: the tempo is all very samey on a lot of songs here, and it's a few bpm too slow imo. feels like he gets an idea out, takes a swig of water, deep breath, step away from the lectern, come back to deliver the next line.... everything's kind of contented, no urgency to anything.

'Summer Turns To High' is an underrated one from Reveal, IMO.

I like the lyric "The light, sometimes it washes over me", it's evocative of a feeling of passivity, and I've always had an ear for Stipe's lyrics suggestive of being a bottom (cf "Bang and Blame") though probably that's just me.

man "i'll take the rain" just goes on and on. it's 5:51! when it comes back to the strumming around 3:40 i have a momentary terror that "she just wants to be" is about to start again.

'I'll Take the Rain' is my least favourite track on that LP, because it's totally unsuccessful at what it's trying to achieve. It aims to be this anthemic tear-jerker and it doesn't make me feel a thing.

"beach ball" goes down smoothly enough. always reminded me a lot of "emphysema," the b-side to "daysleeper." or i mean it would go on up fine, swap for "parakeet," just part of the texture.

imho apart from "the lifting," "imitation of life" and "beat a drum," every track on reveal is at the level of the couple of tracks i would cut from up, or worse. feels very much of a piece with around the sun from what i can remember of that album. it's cool that other people like this album more than i do but it's really head-scratching to me to remember that it was well-reviewed and well-received at the time. i remember someone making the argument that this had to do with british music journos having a thing for brian wilson around this time, or something, but that doesn't seem like much to go on.

i am almost 100 percent certain the lyric is actually "but life sometimes it washes over me" euler

"The Lifting" and "I've Been High," after which I realize, after thirty minutes, that I've been snoring.

I actually like Reveal a lot, undoubtedly moreso now than I did at the time of its release. Especially now that I understand the type of record they were trying to make - this hazy, summery kind of record both thematically and sonically. The laid-back vocals and tempos are quite evocative of hot days where you just want to take things slow. Also, Stipe's voice sounds beautiful on it and I don't think the vocals are half-hearted at all - they suit the material.

Even on something otherwise gorgeous like 'I wanted to be wrong' it feels like they can't leave well enough alone, like when the slapback guitar comes in on the instrumental break.

That song rules. Maybe my favorite of any of their political songs.

i remember someone making the argument that this had to do with british music journos having a thing for brian wilson around this time, or something

Also late '60s Glenn Campbell/Jimmy Webb was buzzy then.

i don't enjoy "REM does beach boys"

Not sure I do either and yet "Summer Turns to High" is probably one of the best songs on Reveal. At least I maybe have a sense of what they were going for with the arrangement there, as opposed to, say, "Disappear" (thought I get what Brad was saying about that song presaging Accelerate - wish it was arranged like it would have been on Accelerate).

Could similarly take "Chorus and the Ring" more if it had been arranged like one of the more abstract, eccentric songs on Green.

Stipe's voice sounds beautiful on it and I don't think the vocals are half-hearted at all - they suit the material.

The contrast between it and hearing, say, "Make It All Okay" on the next album, though - I feel like I'm hearing him really sing again.

I remember disliking 'Beachball' with a passion in 2001. Love it now, though.

Re-listening to Reveal and 'Saturn Return' only improves with age. Stipe's voice sounds gorgeous on it.

That's fair, but there's something brilliantly transcendent about the looking-back-as-farewell on Collapse Into Now. That record is magic.

man,'Discoverer' popped up on shuffle this am and I am fully on board with this.

I only listened to all of these albums for the first time in the last year or so and collapse into now is definitely the one I've gone back to the most often

There are indeed some moments on "Reveal" where one admires Stipe being in fine vocal form and able to hit the high notes. And then you put on "Accelerate" where his singing has degenerated to a hoarse bark, and you wonder what exactly happened in his life in those 7 years to destroy his voice.

Their tours were fucking massive. But actually I don't know how they'd compare to other bands who did tours like that, but it must take its toll playing to huge audiences who mostly (?) want to hear radio hits.

Reveal has grown for me too. I agree "Saturn Return" is great and that "She Just Wants To Be" should have been cut.

We might have been over this before but were all the tracks recorded in acoustic? Because Buck said they had considered the idea of a whole acoustic album since some of the acoustic versions were so good.

I thought I had every R.E.M. album ever, but I guess I missed Collapse. I don't know--I must have been at least aware of it at the time. I've been reading John Giorno's autobiography, which led me to "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" (missed that too), which led me to Collapse, and a nearby store had a cheap copy in.

I've played it twice in the car. Most of the songs barely register--not awful, just nothing. "Überlin" feels like something.

I do like "We All Go Back to Where We Belong," especially the two videos, so I'll take that as a much better farewell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gdyd8PX7Oc

Don't seem to have Accelerate, either--that's the last one I need. (I mean, not really "need.")

Up deserved to win but Reveal deserved close second place, not distant second place.

I have the ten with Berry and Up, but I generally put on a homemade comp when I listen to this era:

1 Lotus 04:31
2 At My Most Beautiful [radio mix] 03:33
3 Daysleeper [single edit] 03:31
4 The Great Beyond 05:07
5 I've Been High 03:26
6 All The Way To Reno (You're Gonna Be A Star) 04:43
7 Imitation Of Life 03:56
8 All The Right Friends 02:48
9 Bad Day 04:07
10 Leaving New York 04:49
11 Electron Blue 04:12
12 Living Well Is The Best Revenge 03:11
13 Man-Sized Wreath 02:33
14 Supernatural Superserious 03:23
15 Hollow Man 02:39
16 Houston 02:05
17 Discoverer 03:31
18 Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter 02:45
19 Überlin 04:14
20 Oh My Heart 03:20
21 It Happened Today 03:48
22 We All Go Back To Where We Belong 03:35

I love "The Great Beyond" so much--I think it's very overlooked.

I probably would have simply because it's a soundtrack number, but fortunately it was on the first WB "best of" (and IIRC in a better sounding mix too - I think the soundtrack had a much narrower spread when I later compared the two).

I take that to mean you would have left it off...I was surprised there was no ILM thread for Collapse--I guess (understandably) nobody much cared at that point. Seemed to do okay on the Billboard album chart, #5, though not as well as the previous studio album. They must get approached constantly about getting back together for something.

Oh no, I think the song is great, but soundtrack-only items can slip through the cracks pretty easily unless they're a sizable hit or collected elsewhere.

Collapse is not their worst but it is their least impressionable. I like Discoverer a lot but I’m struggling to remember any of their other songs.

At some point a long long time ago (I guess before Collapse came out) I made an imaginary REM album that sequenced roughly 5 songs each from Around the Sun and Accelerate, and it wasn’t so bad. There are some great songs tucked into each album.

I think whatever discussion there was about Collapse was probably relegated to some general REM thread.

I recently noticed that they are pulling over 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify, so perhaps in addition to reunion offers, I can imagine how hotly sought after their publishing catalog is.

I didn't pay close attention to Collapse until later, but at the time of its release, what stood out was the videos - they made a ton of them and contacted a wide variety of high profile names to make them. The only one I really remember was made by Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan: it was for "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" and they made it out of footage that had been shot by Maysles for Meet Marlon Brando (a pretty great film in its own right).

I posted in some other thread when I first heard "Oh My Heart" last year thanks to The Bear, but it really was the first time I heard a late-period REM song that blew me away: the arrangement, the lyrics, the whole thing.

Yeah, that was an easy one to include on my comp (which I burned a while ago, well before The Bear). I regret not seeing them when they were still together - it was pretty foolish in retrospect to lose any interest in seeing them just because Berry wasn't there.

I've probably mentioned this: saw them in a club soon after Murmur for $5...Not explicit in the lyrics, but they must have had Neil Young in mind when they came up with "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I."

"The Great Beyond" is terrific as a song, but -- here's a complaint I don't often lodge -- the production's thin on the ground.

sorry to fill sna with rem threads but i’m here to declare reveal their worst album

otm

the singles are awesome but the kitchen-sink production deprives the whole thing of oxygen. what if we layered every synth preset ever on top of every single track

around the sun, however tired, at least breathes (ventilator-assisted). actually think it would be much more fondly received/remembered had approx 15-20 minutes of it been cut

Damn, Up cleaned up

also damn, mares didn't even give it a full minute.

(Up was the last album of theirs I heard in full.)

ivy- i will also defend around the sun as their "not worst" album. it has highlights, but i also like its soft rock anonymity. def too long tho. and whatever, i like the one with q-tip.

Reveal sucks really hard, the songs just plod along. It's such a drag.

I love Reveal.

There is definitely some good stuff in Around the Sun though its imperfections definitely hobble it.

I like Accelerate and Collapse but they both feel kinda generic to me.