REM: Classic or dud?

"generic" isn't really a word i would use to describe 90s REM. there were times when they were relatively in step with the times but they never sounded anonymous.

they became shape-shifting genre tourists, veering away from their distinctive jangle-y gothic southern rock sound.

just heard this but i think i prefer it to the album version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgh0y9vTgY

they never struck me as Elvis Costello-style pastiche masters even at their most dilettantish, though. everything still went through a pretty heavy REM filter (or at least Stipe filter).

beginning of the end was the speak-sing stuff

never noticed or was bothered by speak singing much beyond hating E-Bow

oh man, that's way better than the album version.

stipe picks up a guitar and i thought, "does he know how to play any instruments"?

(i actually kind of liked e-bow, but i couldn't tell you why)

i love e-bow

and i'm not afraid to admit it

a track that got lotsa love on our big REM poll here was "Country Feedback", & it's a good song (lots better than "E-Bow", who love here I also don't get), but I think I hear the first version of the annoying speak-sing thing we're talking about on that song.

and yeah, e-bow was speak-singing, but it was the Beginning of the end, see, so it was still R.E.M. near the top of their game

E-Bow made me go back & reconsider why I dug Patti Smith.

e-bow is great!

Though E-Bow, I'll take you over "How The West Was whatever"

that rockville clip reminds me that mid-80s stipe and late-80s slash and anytime-ever howard stern would have made an ideal hair-metal band -- or ramones cover band.

never really a fan, even though they should have been right up my alley. i think i bought one of their WB albums and liked a few songs over the years. so i really have no reaction to this news.

'90s R.E.M. - or at least "Green" and beyond R.E.M. - is full of albums with 1/3 I hate, 1/3 I think are OK, and 1/3 I love. Which always makes listening to things like "Out of Time" a thrill; the dives and dips between high and low keep me on my toes. Like, "Radio Song," boo! "Near Wild Heaven," awesome! "Shiny Happy People," nah. "Country Feedback," yeah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CERhzm6t7I

yeah, Country Feedback still kind of haunts me in this weird way. just the way "IT'S CRAZY WHAT YOU COULD HAVE HAD" begins to turn in on itself or something.

it's taken me a while to realize that new adventures in hi-fi and monster are my favorite r.e.m. records but there you go

"e-bow" is so gorgeous, for a while it was my favorite r.e.m. song.

"E-Bow The Letter" was awful and horrible. Absolutely despise so-called "speak singing" no matter who does it.

I adore Out of Time, which still doesn't get much love because It's The Big One. The marvel for me, as I wrote in my own obit, is how "Losing My Religion" sounded a hundred times more ambiguous with each radio play. I've never gotten tired of it.

"Losing My Religion" is awesome, but as an album, "Out Of Time" is much more uneven than "Automatic For The People", which doesn't contain a single bad track.

monster had its production flaws, but it had a lot of very strong (if somewhat bland, for rem) songs

It does. I have no idea as I have never heard those songs. They are drowned in the production. The vocals are mixed way too low on that album, hardly possible to hear at all.

It does?, I mean

also smh @ the "mike mills is the worst backing vocalist" stuff upthread

i first heard automatic for the people when i was really young and that's necessarily going to alter how i hear it now, but i'm still completely affected by his work in "try not to breathe"

i am under the impression that the vocals are mixed decently high on monster except for "let me in" but whatev

still love how "what's the frequency, kenneth" is this kind of harder but still traditional r.e.m. song and the rest of the record is unhinged glam. one of my favorite red herring singles.

also strange currencies > everybody hurts

So, are they doing the big farewell, or not?

Big Tour, Final Album, Valedictory Glastonbury Ending?

If so, that's gonna take 2 years...

haha losing my religion is a fucking huge benchmark for middlebrow pop pretension. can't stomach that shit. anymore.

'Let Me In' is my favourite on Monster - it manages to feel mysterious and beautiful in a way they've rarely managed before or since. Also the whole sound of the thing - I was so happy when the last Neil Young album came so close to that sound.

I know it's seen as a bit of a death knell, but I really love Out Of Time - I mean, I like a lot of REM, but Out Of Time was kind of my entry point. Shiny Happy People was the first song I heard by the band, so for a while when I was 11 y/o I was under the impression they were this wacky B52s-style pop band.

Out Of Time is so epic and graceful though. I used to listen to it loads on long family trips through France on the way to visit family in the South. I'll forever associate it with blazing sunshine and undulating sunflowers.

Country Feedback, so sweeping and fragile - maybe Stipe's best delivery - "I was central/I had control/I lost my...head/I need this.../I need this...". And on the other side you have Near Wild Heaven, a wonderful Beach Boys homage that gives me goosebumps and makes me wanna jump around like a loon.

I have a lot of time for "Bang & Blame" and "You" off of Monster.

still love how "what's the frequency, kenneth" is this kind of harder but still traditional r.e.m. song and the rest of the record is unhinged glam. one of my favorite red herring singles.

I don't really understand this... How is WTFK? that much different to Bang & Blame? I don't really get the glam thing either.. Unless you mean Stipe's eyeliner fetishism which crept in from time to time on every album onwards...?

"Crush with eyeliner" is a heckofa glam title.

Bang & Blame is kind of the point when Stipe stopped bothering to write songs in favour of the 'Bark. One. Word. One. Note. At. A. Time' vocal style he'd adopt with increasing frequency for the rest of his career.

Actually I might be confusing it with I Took Your Name. I've not listened to that album in years.

Bang & Blame was a fairly big hit. The one that starts "If you could see yourself now baby/It's not my fault/You used to be so in control" (or something along those lines). It's this shivery Johnny Kidd & the Pirates type thing with a big big rockin' chorus.

I hear/understand the glam thing now - I was thinking "Glam" as in Roy Wood, not glam as in the whole of Monster sounds like it's been recorded in an ice-blue dressing room booth, lightbulbs around the mirrors and feather boas hanging on the wall. Weirdly incongruous next to the rugged Americana that is their surface sound.

My problem with latterday REM is not only with the music but also with Stipe's persona. He was always this enigmatic figure who didn't often do interviews (press chores used to be handled mostly by Buck and Mills). Then around Up he seemed to lose most of that mystique and became this media-friendly interviewee. The lyrics got printed on the sleeve for the first time with that album as well. He just seemed to become a more straightforward and less complex person.

I dunno, he always seemed to be a nice bloke.

I had problems with early REM, in a way..

Their first Tube appearance, they sounded so much like the band I was in, it reminded me of "work"...

I find REM's strike rate throughout their career very impressive, considering The Rolling Stones were putting out stuff like 'Voodoo Lounge' around 31 years in their career.

No love for 'World Leader Pretend'? Man, I love that song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKDrhf-OgrA

Rob O'Connor had a good album-by-album farewell yesterday:

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/listoftheday/141512/remthe-final-grades-are-in/

I also always thought Fables was a little underrated. Rob's final grade for "Effort" reminded me of the Kool Moe Dee scorecard that came with that one album; I think he should have also graded them for "Sticking to Themes," "Innovating Rhymes," and "Articulation" (on the first few albums, not so good there).

I love "World Leader Pretend." That's one of the 1/3rd of that album that really gives me a lot of pleasure when I hear it. "World Leader Pretend," "You are the Everything," a few more of the deep cuts. Seem like clear precursors to "Out of Time."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwgKo0D1FyQ

i admired the way they handled success, with about as much grace as is possible in the music industry

yeah an i disagree about them being genre tourists, REM always sounded like REM to me, even with the changes in styles they went through

Stylistic mish-mash was always there. Look at what they covered: Roger Miller, VU, Wire, their roots were always more complicated than they seemed. (Which is probably the real way they were like the Byrds, who they never actually covered afaik.)

Also, these are fun. The first-ever write-ups from the UGA student paper:

http://redandblack.com/2011/09/21/the-first-article-written-about-r-e-m-may-8-1980/

If you go to that old Mike Mills interview I posted last night, he talks about (and essentially brushes off) the Byrds comparisons everyone was making early on.

REM were the first band I remember seriously discussing with friends, and in fact forming friendships because of being into them / music in general. This was around 1991, when I was starting secondary school. I got interested after hearing Losing My Religion on the radio, then I taped Document (which I really really loved) and Green off a guy in my class and bought my own copy of Out of Time (also on cassette).

I bought AFTP the day it came out, I didn't really get it at the time but it's my favourite REM album now. An Irish radio station organised a "listening party" about a week before the release but I wasn't allowed to go - mostly I think cos my mum couldn't understand what the point of that would be, and I couldn't adequately explain it myself.

Bought Monster on CD and went to see them play at Slane Castle in 1995. That was truly memorable. During "Let Me In" everyone in the crowd (maybe 80,000 people) started throwing paper cups in the air, they turned the stage lights onto them all falling like rain and it made a big impression.

Stopped paying attention after that, altho I definitely rate a few of the later singles with their best stuff (Daysleeper, Imitation of Life, Leaving NY, The Great Beyond). No sadness at them breaking up now, I'm sure they're relieved at having fulfilled their contractual obligations. They all seem pretty good at finding creative outlets outside REM so I'm sure that will continue, not anticipating any reunion tours...

tl;dr version: good sometimes great band, very important at certain times in my life, they had a good innings!