R.E.M. news - yay

Best thing since 'Up' for me is the demo of Beat A Drum on the Best Of. Possibly the only great thing from the last 10 years :(

100% agreement with piscesx. Gorgeous song. The chorus gives me shivers. Such a shame they ruined it with that elaborate cod-Brian Wilson arrangement on Reveal. Thing is, Brian Wilson, for all baroque tendencies, knew when to let a song breathe. Rather than let the melody hang in the air, they smother it parping brass fanfares, killing off the emotional impact.

Reveal does have a few good songs, but the production tends to be overdone. The Lifting is really good, even if the middle-eight is a bit rote, and I've Been High is fairly gorgeous, even if the beats are a little ho-hum. Really don't like Imitation of Life. It's catchy, but there's something antiseptic about it. The real dog is I'll Take The Rain. I really wish they wouldn't try and be U2.

I've been revisiting Up this past week though, and think it's largely excellent. A better album that NAIHF, which I've always found patchy. Some really strong melodies and the arrangements are really interesting. Shame the cheap organs, analogue synths and ancient drum machines were replaced with increasingly bland keyboard sounds on subsequent records. You're In The Air is the one that particularly knocked me out, but Hope and Sad Professor are great too.

Monster was my first and then I worked backwards. It was only in college that Murmur really stuck. It's understandable how people who started with the 80s stuff can be turned off by the "new" R.E.M. but we're not talking about a Weezer-level meltdown here, just some weaker songwriting and occasionally strange production decisions.

A couple I like from later LPs I have but barely know: "The Lifting" from Reveal and "Leaving New York" from Around the Sun. Which both happen to be lead tracks--but I really did take the time to play the entire CDs. I also think "Supernatural Superserious" from Accelerate is a good song.

But they're not "Radio Free Europe," are they? Maybe I'm closer to Daniel, Esq. than I thought.

My biggest problem with Accelerate was that it was just presented as a slab of sound, with very little differentiation between each individual song...and that makes it hard to pick out favorites. At least the upcoming album seems to embrace a little bit of variety.

I'm a defender of Reveal... I think it's mostly great with a few bits of filler. It's a sunnier version of Up and I think the two albums make a nice pair. The last two albums, though... I think both have good songs but neither is compelling all the way through. Accelerate is the better of the two, but the production bugs me. From what I've heard of the new one so far it seems to suffer in the same way. I'm willing to give it a chance, as I am with all things REM.

scott otmfm ^^

I'll make my case for liking Around the Sun a lot. The aesthetic is more focused than on the two previous records. It has a handful of eccentric tracks - "Electron Blue," "The Outsiders," "The Ascent of Man" - but I actually like things about all of these. And I think "Leaving New York," "I Wanted to Be Wrong," "Wanderlust," and "Aftermath" make for a core of tracks that feels a little more solid to me than any core of tracks I might think of as ones I especially like on Up or Reveal.

I actually really love "The Ascent of Man" but man, "The Outsiders"... what are you sayin'? what are you playin'? Rap and REM don't mix, no matter how often they try.

Was watching a documentary about Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3. Peter Buck makes an interesting comment -- says he likes how with Robyn, he doesn't know anything about how the song goes beforehand, he shows up, Robyn shows him how the song goes, Buck plays whatever it occurs to him to play, that's the record. Buck says he likes working that way and that working with Robyn is a nice break from working with R.E.M., who (he says) like to plan everything carefully and work it over a lot.

I dislike the weird opening of "It Happened Today," but you know, the big Arcade Fire - New Porno-style finish has won me over! (Specifically, it sounds like the end of "The Bleeding Heart Show.")

And: I had the good fortune (or so I think of it) of getting Murmur and Document at the same time, in 1987. For me, too, they seemed to come to space. But R.E.M. for me was a chain hung between those two albums and so everything from Chronic Town through Out of Time makes a kind of sense to me.

Speaking as a onetime REM-maniac, I think their post-Automatic career has maybe three real keepers -- E-Bow, Kenneth and Electrolite -- and a dozen or so almost-but-not-quite songs (mostly on Up and Monster), but that's about it.

I do have a weakness for "I'm Gonna DJ" though -- the naff lyrics actually make it sound less than usually self-conscious, which works, somehow.

Matt DC: "I really wish he'd give up on that barking. One. Syllable. At. A. Time way of singing." is OTM. The real heartbreak in REM is Stipe's declining voice. Perhaps it's the smokes? He did sound somewhat recovered on that Dublin live record, though.

The guitar at the beginning of "It Happened Today" sounds like they recorded somebody playing a cassette tape of "Out of Time" in an adjoining room.

I think I'd like this song a lot if the first minute and a half were instrumental.

"'ll make my case for liking Around the Sun a lot".

^^^^^ Amen, as lyrically naff and pious Stipe is on this, it all somehow works, even the rap, and it's one hell of a summer pop record, highly underrated. Never got the return to form buzz around Accelerate which was duller than anything that had gone before. In true dad rock style Im looking forward to the new one.

R.E.M., who (he says) like to plan everything carefully and work it over a lot.

No duh, Buck.

I like "Up" a lot. I think it has some of the band's loveliest songs. They've been pretty much aimless ever since (though, ironically, better live than they've been in years).

I made a conscious decision to stop caring about new R.E.M. material after Berry left. Therefore, the last R.E.M. album was NAIHF, and the last words on an R.E.M. album were "I'm not scared... I'm outta here." Which is a perfect way to end a career.

I guess I'm pretending that R.E.M. doesn't make any new music so that they'll fit the narrative that I've constructed for them. As denials of reality go, this one's not especially unhealthy.

The single:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ggQBU8eSXM

Hmm, they've been playing "Discoverer" a lot on the local alt-rock station so I assumed that was the single.

TO THE FINAL FAIL

lol. yeah, it's sad.

i thought the phrase was "my shit smells like roses"

Somewhere Bill Berry's all "Man, glad I got off that train."

meh. just after he left the band, berry did an interview where he said, "oh geez, i leave and they make their best album yet -- up!" tr: bill berry has dick cheney-like credibility.

(ah. maybe in his heart-of-hearts he is glad he got off that train.)

well, he's always seemed like a gentleman, and "hey, they're doing a great job without me!" is what a gentleman would say.

but "mine smell like honey" is some boxcar shit.

yes, you are right. berry does seem like a gentleman. they all seem like gentlemen, to be honest.

i'm just bitter about what's happened to the favorite band of my youth.

yeah, i just watched youtubes of three songs off this album. kind of crushing. i'd successfully avoided the disappointment for years.

Intro to this is pretty funny!

is that also supposed to be 3d?

uhh . . . i've grown to kind of like this single with the terrible, embarrassing title?

still generic and indistinct -- and i've heard some other songs from the album that are just awful -- but i can still appreciate this one song, at least.

There is something of the muse with R.E.M., especially apparent given that a lot of Stipe's lyrics come from dreams. Surely, someone doesn't think to take some of these very same themes (simple encouragement, "the end") and re-work them once again in simple, childlike terms like this?

And then to put it into a three-chord anthem? R.E.M. are amazing.

This is better than the stuff on the previous album, but I seriously hope this one will also contain some great partly acoustic ballads or semi-ballads, in the style of "Wendell Gee", "Losing My Religion", "Drive", "Try Not To Breathe" and "Daysleeper". All among their best moments.

Well, "Uberlin" seems to fit that category:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ragogna/emhuffpost-video-exclusiv_b_812864.html

That's the best of the songs I've heard from this album so far. For whatever that's worth.

"This is, song for song, the best thing we've ever done." Buck
"our best record since Out of Time," Mills
"A lot of people say we did our best work in the early Nineties. But 15 years later, here we are again." Buck again

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/r-e-m-roar-back-with-collapse-into-now-20110207

oh, ILICISCOMK. actually, FFS, i'm SMDH. no, in fact i'm ROTFLMAOWTIME. now i have to GPF that opinion is so appalling. mills and buck must have their HWUA to even suggest that.

____________________________

got this from the CLOAKA btw.

A lot of people say we did our best work in the early Nineties

he's off by a decade.

A lot of people say we did our best work in the early Nineties

he's off by a decade.

bah.

Bassist Mike Mills agrees, calling Collapse Into Now, out March 8th on Warner Bros., "our best record since Out of Time," the group's 1991 hit. "We took the shackles off and wrote whatever sounded good — balls-to-the-wall rockers, slow sad songs, great mid-tempo songs in the tradition of R.E.M. We had quality, top to bottom."

slow, medium, AND fast!

Accelerate is no better than the 2 preceding albums despite all the hype beforehand so i shan't hold my breath this time. glad THEY like it though. that's something.

Isn't it maybe on the journalist, though, to ask questions that might get responses other than the little soundbites we've already heard several times?

"this is our best record in terms of tempo"

When the band itself adopts the hoary "best album since ..." line, I steer clear, because inevitably, doing press for their next album ("the best album they've done in years," natch) they relent and admit all the things wrong about the previous record.

I stick with what I said earlier in the thread: get these guys in a room and have them make a simple, few-overdubs album. Hell, just get T-Bone Burnett (who did a good job capturing that last Mellencamp album, a one-mic in a room deal). Get this band away from anything digital and see what happens.

in fairness, r.e.m. always says their new album is their best, iirc.

Still, that's lame. That's like a band calling their new album a return to form.

Mike Mills should just start calling the new one their best one since "Some Girls" and see if anyone notices.