This is the Thread Where You Bash REM's Monster

I think the surprising thing is how many of the songs on Monster I love, given the "different" nature of the album.

"Kenneth" has to be a classic. It's so straight-ahead, so rock-n-roll, but it's not plain. And that groove! Mike Mills rocks the melodic bass. And it's a song where Berry's work proves that drummers can be artists.

And another thing: ever notice how every single one of R.E.M.'s albums is both widely hated and widely loved? Seriously, for every Fables lover or Up apologist or OOT devotee, there is another person saying it's crap. Same for Monster. Is it like that for other artists whom I don't follow as closely?

Dude, he proved that on Murmur! (and so did Ringo, in 1963)

And another thing: ever notice how every single one of R.E.M.'s albums is both widely hated and widely loved? Seriously, for every Fables lover or Up apologist or OOT devotee, there is another person saying it's crap. Same for Monster.

R.E.M. are overrated and underrated. Their last few albums would force the haters to claim the former.

Well, I said it's *a* song. Not *the* song.

R.E.M. are overrated and underrated.

Is there another band comparable to R.E.M.'s under/overratedness?

Or is that a too-broad and dumb question? I can never tell on here.

http://product.ebay.com/Monster_UPC_093624574026_W0QQfvcsZ1226QQsoprZ3162438QQssPageNameZFavMerch_SO:BACK

Even though it's officially tied with Out of Time and Automatic for the People as R.E.M.'s best-selling U.S. title.

they've gone to shit lately, tho.

This is the part of the thread where Tim will try to convince us of the greatness of Around the Sun.

From what I understand, there were just a ton of these pressed and it didn't end up selling that well.
Even though it's officially tied with Out of Time and Automatic for the People as R.E.M.'s best-selling U.S. title.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, June 15, 2006 10:52 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Not to mention the fact that it's a far better album than either of those two.
― Si.C@rter (SiC@rter), Thursday, June 15, 2006 11:06 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

It's definitely their best 90's album.. I agree that it's aged well.

I pretty sure this album did continue to sell over the course of the following year, as there were at least 6 MTV videos / radio singles pulled.. record companies don't usually do this unless there's good sales momentum to begin with. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the order was Kenneth, Bang And Blame, Star 69, Crush With Eyeliner, Strange Currencies.. and I'm almost positive Tongue was a single, but I'm not sure when it would have been released.. Strange Currencies was promoted over summer 95 which was nearly a year after Monster's release date)

I think it's one of the biggest used bin fillers of all time in part because it did sell pretty well, people just didn't like it much once they bought it for the most part.

Also I'd say this is at most their 3rd or 4th best 90's album, and I don't even hate it.

i liked it a lot at the time, and still like it now, but 4th best is about right. Star 69 wasn't a single. i bought all the singles from this album for some reason. i think this was maybe the album where all of the b-sides were designed to be put together to form a live album? REM were always a shitty band for b-sides.

I remember laughing out loud, literally, when I read the title of this album for the first time (it was in a British weekly). It just seemed like so goofy, totally out of character.

REM were always a shitty band for b-sides.

i dunno, Dead Letter Office is one of their best, I think

"Star 69" didn't have a physical single but it was a fairly big hit on U.S. rock radio.

xpost

yeah a crap b sides band. but then a lot of american bands generally are. talking heads for example *simply never did them* and i think it's fair to say the same of steely dan.

i remember being disappointed by monster, but then i saw them live in 99 and all the monster tunes suddenly made sense in that context

Let Me In is still amazing.

Found myself listening to this a few times over the summer. It's stood the test of time well. I don't think the "return to rock" campaign did them any favours. It misrepresented the album. At the time it was talked up as their grunge album. But it's nothing of the sort. Much of the album remakes REM as a ironic queer glam rockers. And there are all the oddball non-rock tracks like Tongue and King Of Comedy, both of which I love. KOC is a far more successful stab at industrial disco rock than anything U2 attempted. Unlike Bongo, Stipe actually has a sense of humour, and his sly, sleazy persona is quite a bold one for a mainstream rock artist to adopt, particularly one often, if erroneously, characterised as painfully sincere.
I Don't Sleep I Dream is a really gorgeous, even sexy, song. And Buck's guitar sounds on Circus Envy are utterly filthly, the sound of fuzz pedals running low on batteries. You is really strong.
I agree that it's better than Hi-Fi, even though I didn't think so at the time. While Hi-Fi has some great songs, it's also got an awful lot of filler and is much more earnest than Monster. Indeed, one of the mistakes REM have made since Monster is to be overly earnest. The new album is a prime example of that. Maybe the irony of Monster doesn't suit these times, but I miss the goofy, kitschy artwork and photos of the Monster era. It was like REM were doing a major label, LA take on the underground styles of the time. And they did it pretty well. It's far preferable to the po-faced serious rock band pose of today.

But it's nothing of the sort. Much of the album remakes REM as a ironic queer glam rockers.

Yeah, this, which is why the tour sucked: it turned the songs into non-ironic hetero arena thumpers ("Crush With Eyeliner" sounded like STP's "Sex Type Thing").

True dat. I was 14 at the time and got caught up in the excitement of the whole thing, but when I saw the concert film a year later...oh dear.
What was even more criminal was making a beautiful song like Try Not To Breath sound like Pearl Jam trying to be the Waterboys. Grim.
It's the only stadium gig I've ever been to. It was a weird experience, and not one I'm likely to repeat. REM were much better on the Up tour. Stirling Castle, a beautiful sunset, and airings of Pilgrimage, Cuyahoga and Pretty Persuasion. Plus Stereolab as a support act. Some guy in a Gun t-shirt in front of me: "This is fuckin' pish!".

"Circus Envy" is so great: the guitar tone, that riff, Stipe's exhausted vocal. It's worth buying the album in a cut-out bin for that song alone.

I agree on "yay irony"; the album sags heavily at "Strange Currencies" which sounded like "Everybody Hurts Part 2". And "I Took Your Name" is totally unnecessary on an album with "King Of Comedy" and "Crush With Eyeliner". It would have been a better b-side than the ones we got.

Heh at Gun guy xp. I lost interest in REM just before Monster, and it's a pleasure rediscovering them slowly. I still always admired them for being so prolific at a time when other big bands would release two albums a decade and tour them into the ground. This thread reads almost like they should've done that instead

re: b-sides, I think they were much better in the IRS era, or maybe there just hasn't been an affordable/available/convenient b-sides collection since Dead Letter Office. Certainly this has to do with the CD-single as a format and the pressure to fill the things out with more than one additional track - all the live cuts are a bit off-putting though. I bet this period, properly cherry-picked, has some decent material.

The guitars are generally mixed too high, and with the same exaggerated overdrive level that would later be a problem about Oasis' sound. This means that the vocals are getting far too low in the sound, and unlike Liam Gallagher, Michael Stipe doesn't have the kind of voice to get through that either.

However, "What's The Frequency Kenneth" is a great song that might have been one of the best R.E.M. singles ever had Michael Stipe been more in the front of the mix.

yeah, I'd love them to do a new Dead Letter Office, or even just collect all the b-sides, live cuts and all. For instance, I think the acoustic version of "Pop Song 89" on---I think it's on the "Pop Song 89" single?---tops the original version. It would be great to give that a wider release.

The problem is that most of the latter day original b-sides are instrumentals, and R.E.M.'s instrumentals all sound like something they didn't bother finishing because it wasn't good enough.