Taking Sides: ACHTUNG BABY by U2 VS. MONSTER by R.E.M

Peter Buck says he likes it in the sense that he loves listening to crazy Neil Young genre albums, wondering what the heck they were thinking. I'm guessing they're prouder of some of the songcraft on New Adventures, which does have some specific individual songs that top anything here, but the whole is really bloated compared to Monster.

Monster is sure as hell better than Pop as far as big regrets though. And frankly REM should regret not breaking up in 1997 more than anything else.

xpost
New Adventures [...] is really bloated compared to Monster.

Oh God. Please do not get me started again.

Achtung is an all-time great album, while Monster is merely a neat experiment.

this is easily the most anyone's gotten out of selling back a copy of monster.

Hrmmm. Certainly not musically over the top. Seems to be just an upade of the old Edge with a rhythm (ie. a funkier bassist than U2 ever had and a turn-down-the-snare-and-kick, turn-up-that-tamborine percussion). Maybe lyrically, if you think emoting in lyrics is over the top. I mean, those words are pretty heavy, very nicely written and delivered nicely. Interestingly, "So Cruel" does the same thing with a nice little piano riff immediately after to also to great effect.

xpost:
In a way, it reminds of Reveal by REM.

Ha! I feel the same way to an apparently 180 degree opposite conclusion.

Chuck Eddy to thread! (though i'll run like its a grenade when that happens)

And yes, "The Fly" was played in clubs, IIRC.

Stodgy old stadium rockers Styx going techno on "Mr Roboto" was 982734 times more radical than stodgy old stadium rockers U2 going techno on Achtung Baby 8 YEARS LATER.

Seriously, even to my middle school ears, Achtung Baby didn't seem radical at all. It just seemed that Jesus Jones/EMF was the 'next big thing' at the time (maybe even stuff like PWEI and NIN or Beastie Boys even) and U2 was adapting to it, preserving major elements of their sound (even ripping off "With or Without You"!) and setting it to a more modern beat. U2 wasn't rock in the sense of Bon Jovi and GnR either. They were more comparable to, say, the Cure who used dance beats all the time in the 80s. Or Peter Gabriel may be a better comparison.

But I don't get the 'credit' thing. IIRC U2 was totally feted by the press for this album, weren't they? And Radiohead got much more mixed reception - a couple Rolling Stone critics even said that they should have learned from U2 who remembered to keep the songs in when they got weird or somesuch. (Which seems a crucial point to me. U2 was playing fairly straight songs even if, like Def Leppard did on Hysteria, they were experimenting with the production and arrangements. Radiohead were experimenting with songform itself. If "Treefingers" doesn't cut it, like, what would they have had to do to be more radical than Achtung Baby?)

Sure Sundar, you and me and some of our middle and high school friends were listening to PWEI and NIN, but the other 99.9% of the school was listening to GnR and telling you that DM was pussy music because they weren't using real drums. U2 took Apollo 440 remixes to *those* people.
(xpost)

U2, *as huge as they were*, did an abrupt about-face from what they had been for the previous 12 years. Radiohead, OTOH, hopped on the electronica bandwagon 3+ years after it had been hailed as the "next big thing".
(xpost)

the hell?

U2 sold dance music to a lot of rock fans who weren't expecting it (or expecting to like it).

M'Lord, better save that for the eff-orribleness that is Reveal.

Oh well. I still love about a third of the songs off A-Baby - and about a half of Monster.
But Baby has over the years lost some of its luster for me, whereas Monster at the same time has come to appear *a bit* more solid record that it initially did.

It still kind of seems that most of what you've said of U2 could be applied to Radiohead. Surely the number of people who were already listening to Boards of Canada or Autechre or even DJ Shadow was much smaller, whatever the press coverage of that stuff. (Ditto for Paul Lansky, though he was the darling of the electronic art music world too!) Even Portishead and Bjork and Massive Attack weren't doing what Kid A did. I guess maybe NIN did throw an ambient instrumental on to Downward Spiral but still. Certainly the people who were listening to The Bends along with Oasis (and frankly, Soul Asylum and The Tragically Hip . . . and U2) weren't listening to all that stuff. And most people I know offline did go off Radiohead when they went electronic.

Best Album Since Blood On The Tracks

-Bands that became popular in the 1980s

-Bands consisting only of white men

-Bands whose names lack lowercase letters

-Bands whose newest record is consistently "hailed as their best since the last one mattered"

-Bands whose entire discography is owned by my dad

-Bands who I listened to a lot in junior high

-Bands whose music features guitars and drums and a bass and vocals, either in concert or separately

-Bands who have been on the cover of Time magazine

totally off-topic, but i remeber seeing a feelies/rem show at the Felt Forum (lol, what a great name for a concert venue, amirite?) circa 1987. feelies didn't make much of an impression, rem were pretty good, but i had started to lose interest at that point (the Superman album) and then stipe did an ultra-diva pose late in the concert when some teens up front were pushing close to the stage - they walked off and never came back!! i guess they thought it was too dangerous/possibility of someone being crushed or something, but it easily could have been handled by security. that really ended the rem phase of my youth

Always seems important to register dissent re. this position. : D

I wouldn't say Depeche Mode were approaching this sound by "Violator". "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" was very obviously an attempt to sound like "Achtung Baby" era U2, but "Violator" is more of a classic "dark" electropop album, which has also been the case with all of their post SOFAD-efforts.

monster for me is listenable, but fairly forgettable. it doesn't have a great deal of consistency or even a particular standout track (ok, maybe 'crush with eyeliner') to make me reflect on it when it's not playing. i've tried to revisit it a couple of times, but never seem to get more than a minimal kick out of it.

achtung baby is a strange record for me. it really does seem to be built around a few very good songs ('mysterious ways', 'one', 'acrobat', 'the fly') while the rest are either interesting ('love is blindness') or completely expendable ('so cruel', 'trying to throw your arms around the world'). the whole thing sounds great, and when the better tracks merge with the slick production, the record truly shines. really, a bizarre instance of an album where i treasure the highlights and tend to overlook the impact of the weaker tracks, perhaps because they're largely inoffensive and unmemorable. somehow it remains relatively untarnished and a landmark of early 90s rock.

This is OTM in every way. Add "Imitation Of Life" to "Bad Day", though. One of the great "eighties" R.E.M. songs.

(Ha, Just noticed the coincidence with the titles: "Beautiful Day" and "Bad Day" both being attempted -- and successful -- returns to form.)

And - and this is important - the last two U2 records are not returns to their 80s style. The U2 of the 80s were a mainly riff-based rock band, with The Edge's guitar playing the obvious centrepiece of everything, while the U2 of the oughties is more of a melodic pop band, heavily influenced by the classic songwriting style of the Britpop bands.
I obviously prefer the latter, which is why the last two U2 albums have been my favourite albums by then ever.

I'm a Zooropa guy. Though I believe gear (obv. not Geir) will occasionally post in defense of Pop.

Geir, I agree that the last two records are not "returns to form," and I even think They've got some of Teh Edge's coolest playing, but what you're overlooking is that they're also boring and irrelevant. They're like the greatest Remy Zero records ever.

http://cache.kotaku.com/gaming/bono_takes_two.jpg

"...and y'know, I also think we need to sort out the environment because people are affected by that too and...what's this?... Alright, then, Geir has told me that I'm not supposed to talk about the environment. Just stick to poverty, yeah."

"By the way, did anyone buy that song we did with Green Day?... You did? Fookin' suckers!"

"in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, for which their music was often used as an inspirational backdrop."

while the U2 of the oughties is more of a melodic pop band, heavily influenced by the classic songwriting style of the Britpop bands "Acrobat" by U2

I'm still waiting for R.E.M. to go through a "let's go to Berlin and record" phase.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, October 30, 2006 10:24 AM (5 years ago)

It happened!

This kind of leads in the direction of ultimately giving REM more long-term credit, insofar as, even though their albums have gotten less and less consistent, they've steadfastly refused to do a "they've returned to their classic sound!" record - even going so far as to release "Bad Day" just to prove that they could still do it if they wanted to

(Ha, Just noticed the coincidence with the titles: "Beautiful Day" and "Bad Day" both being attempted -- and successful -- returns to form.)

"Bad Day" wasn't a return to form, it WAS their old form, an outtake from Lifes Rich Pageant.

> they've steadfastly refused to do a "they've returned to their classic sound!" record

Every album after New Adventures was marketed as a "return to form"

"Star 69" just came on. This would have been a much better single than "Bang and Blame."

I can't check to see if it was an official single but it did get a lot of airplay.

it was a promotional single w/ no video but it was maybe the 3rd or 4th biggest radio hit off the album.