R.E.M. news - yay

Accelerate certainly didn't sound like an album on Siltbreeze or something, but I think there was definitely an element of allowing a sense of decay into the production. I thought it suited their aesthetic pretty nicely and it seems like I'm hearing that again on the new one with, for example, the reverb on the lead vocal.

The way he's mixed on this song, Stipe has to really project and I think he nails it. It works.

I like the opening guitars but this sounds VERY laboured, a lot of that is Stipe's fault. He seems to be trying very hard to work a melody out of this without getting there. I really wish he'd give up on that barking. One. Syllable. At. A. Time way of singing, ditto the lurch upwards at the end of the chorus. They strike me as stock devices he uses these days and they just aren't very good.

One more new song is out there: "It Happened Today" w/ Eddie Vedder (although he seems barely audible)

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2010/12/20/rem-it-happened-today-stream/

Not quite as enthused by this one as I was the other one.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb3-9kgXU3U

this trailer is depressing me.

generic and unmemorable.

yeah, i gotta unbookmark this and move on, the dream is over (11 years ago?)

yeah, that's about right. really sad. this band meant so much to me. and now everything they do further tarnishes my memories, and diminishes them in my mind's eye.

You guys are nuts. This sounds excellent to me.

really?

xpost - really?

really what?

the dream is over (11 years ago?)

wouldn't say 11 -- clown me all you want but i think Reveal had some fucking great tunes on it ("Saturn Return" anyone?)

horrible.

also, it isn't whether the band has a good -- even great -- song or two on a new disc.

they're not special/unique anymore. that's what is so sad.

I dunno, I still get a chill when they do the "R.E.M." thing right, and I hear a lot of right in that youtube video.

that's kind of what i mean. i'm guessing you're much younger than me, and that your vision of doing the "r.e.m. thing right" is radically different from mine.

I'm 36 and I came to know them around the time of Document (although I think I'd heard "Fall on Me" prior to that). I don't like either one of the biggest albums (Out of Time and Automatic For the People) and don't ever ever listen to Reveal or Around the Sun, but think Accelerate was a passable return to form if a little aimless. This album seems to have aim.

ah! yeah, i'm 42. i grew up with them around the time of their full-length debut. to me, r.e.m. is chronic town; murmur; reckoning; fables; and to a lesser extent, life's rich pagent. document is a killer, albeit conventional, rock record, and automatic for the people was an exciting reinvention of the band's aesthetic, but those two -- plus a few songs on hi-fi -- aside, it's been a long, sad slide.

to me, r.e.m. is chronic town; murmur; reckoning; fables; and to a lesser extent, life's rich pagent.

I love all these albums retroactively, but yeah...I was still listening to Top 40 and contempo xtian music when they were all current. Once I did sink my teeth into R.E.M. around 1987, I fell hard for Reckoning.

I'm 49, saw them in a club in '83. Loved them right through to Document, lost some interest for a while, loved a few songs on Automatic, settled into liking one or two songs per album after that. (The songs tend to find me, rather than the other way around.) I sort of split the difference between the two of you; I always think I have zero interest in what they're doing, and I'm always surprised by how much I'll like the occasional song.

When did Andrew Sullivan start singing for them?

i'm 25... the first REM album i heard was Up soph year of high school. didn't think much of it. then I heard Green during a memorable overnight/drunken party of some sort, freshman year of college, went to bed w/ a stranger intending to yknow, do what college kids do after parties, but we just stayed up for a couple hours listening to Green. better than sex at the time, i swear... so, over the next couple years i picked up everything from Murmur through Up.

my all time favorite's New Adventures in Hi Fi, possibly my #1 album ever. played that sucker at least 100 times. so good.

I have such a weird love/hate relationship with NAIHF. Love the straight rock numbers like Binky the Doormat, but other stuff like Electrolite is emblematic of the shit-REM they were headed toward. LOVE 'Green'.

Green's def my favorite.

Up until about 'Up' their career arc makes complete sense, it's only from 2000 onwards that they've really felt like they're dragging their career out far longer than anyone needs them to. Although I thought Accelerate was pretty good, production aside.

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.