REM: Classic or dud?

That's what I especially love about the "Carnival of Sorts" clip posted last night--all that great dancing!

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 disagree with this, surely it's just imagined complexity rather than complexity itself? Dunno, in later Stipe interviews he just seems much more comfortable with himself as a person... you can't really fault him for not being the same person as he was 15 years before, or for not wanting to continue to portray that image.

Automatic certainly was a peak, the beginning of the end was Monster.

xp

I agree with Matt. I see Murmur to Automatic as an unimprovably elegant arc, each two albums marking a different phase, with two very different masterpieces bookending it. After that it becomes more difficult and diffuse but people who have problems with Document through Automatic I guess just aren't interested in bands above a certain level, however well they make the transition.

Musical redundancy and occasional clangers also obscure the fact that Stipe continued to write some great lyrics till the end.

every album with Berry was above a certain baseline of quality, and every album without Berry was below a certain baseline of quality, so i'm inclined to give him credit as the x factor and figure that the beginning of the end was him leaving.

you can't really fault him for not being the same person as he was 15 years before, or for not wanting to continue to portray that image

Not trying to fault him at all, just saying that it's a part of what made me lose interest in the band.

In what way was Automatic not a peak?

It was on a major label. For a lot of people, that matters more than the music...

every album with Berry was above a certain baseline of quality

Not "Monster" and "New Adventures", no. Both horrible and the worst they've ever done. At that stage, they might as well have broken up when Berry left, because their then last albums were rubbish with hardly any value at all. A once wonderful melodic pop band trying to play alternative rock. Ugh!

and every album without Berry was below a certain baseline of quality

"Up" and "Reveal" were both great albums. The songs were better om "Murmur" and "Automatic For The People", but the production on those two albums (and "Around The Sun", which still sucked because they songs did) was the best of their entire output. The glossy and sophisticated production fitted them perfectly.

Bringing in Patti Smith was also a bad, bad, bad, bad idea. That woman has never ever made a decent record. She can't sing, she has no sense of tune. No value at all. And Stipe's own Sonic Youth-influenced speak-singing on "E-Bow The Letter" added to the disgrace that was R.E.M's worst ever single.

Wait, who upthread called these guys genre tourists? Everything they did fit pretty comfortably within the world they created, I think, and R.E.M. from one extreme was not terribly different or unrecognizable from R.E.M. at the other extreme. And like the best band, the personalities of the principals never failed to shine through in any context. Which is why there was such a drop off when Berry left.

geir bomb

They have revisited every single one of their genre exercises later in their career, except for their early jangle pop. Which is a shame in the latter case, really.

Bringing in Patti Smith was also a bad, bad, bad, bad idea. That woman has never ever made a decent record.

coulda sworn she'd done some cover you'd be down with

New Adventures is terrific but it feels very much like a band that isn't quite sure where to go next and is almost self-consciously recording a greatest hits full of new songs.

Up is patchy but at least an interesting direction and they manage the transition to synths well without looking like twats, some great songs on there as well - You're In The Air, Parakeet, Falls To Climb, a handful more.

From then on it's mostly awful - Accelerate has its moments but feels like a band on complete autopilot.

Think my favourite REM moment was seeing them play Cuyahoga at Glastonbury 99 and thinking "of course!"

"Acellerate" was a huge step in the right direction after two way-below-par albums. A lot of it sounds like "Automatic For The People", which is not the worst thing to sound like.

They totally revisited jangle pop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pd0Qq_kRU4

But if you meant jangle-pop minus the post-punk jitters, than sure.

Then.

"Acellerate" was a huge step in the right direction after two way-below-par albums. A lot of it sounds like "Automatic For The People", which is not the worst thing to sound like.

Have you actually listened to it? At least the first half of Accelerate is one big slab of New Adventures Style Rock, admittedly with 80s REM songs underneath.

I'm sure Geir would like "Because the Night"...

New Adventures is terrific but it feels very much like a band that isn't quite sure where to go next and is almost self-consciously recording a greatest hits full of new songs.

Yep. I like nearly all the songs on it, but even at the time it felt like REM were sort of losing their grip. It didn't feel like the sort of album "statement" that was Automatic For The People, or even Monster. And yet the quality was VERY high.

Imitation Of Life was the point where I felt they just started to get pretty annoying.
E-Bow The Letter wrote the rulebook for releasing the 'experimental' first single, a la 'Pyramid Song', because the band assumes they just can. The actual music itself is nice enough, but both vocal parts from Stipe & Smith make me cringe. Unbelievably, they attempted an 'E-Bow II' with the closing track of their last album.

I still like Electrolite, At My Most Beautiful, Tongue, Nightswimming etc - they all teeter a little close to the saccharine, but I just ignore that.

I liked "Man on the moon" until I discovered it was basically a list of Andy Kaufman's catchprases.

and "Answers from the great beyond" was more of the same.

"Imitation" was pretty good.

Dunno, did I ever buy an REM record? Lemme.....

I got the 7" book edition of "Reveal" cheap in Fopp back when it opened, not actually felt moved to play it. And a CD single that had a "wonder what that sounds like?" cover version on it.

I've talked about this before, but I came to R.E.M. through a totally different path than most itt seem to have taken. I was too young for the IRS years and completely turned off by the novelty type songs that pop radio latched on to in the latter half of the 80s. I mean, I understand its my fault for not grasping context, but I thought of them as a silly band that did stuff like "Superman", "Stand", and "Shiny Happy People" all the time. Retroactively fell in love with Automatic via a tape stuck in the pizza delivery vehicle I drove the summer of 94. So Monster was the first R.E.M. album that seemed like any kind of event for me and I loved it. I still think its unfairly regarded, I think it was an interesting (if oft-flawed) take on glammed-up grunge and alt-rock radio anthems. New Adventures quickly became, and remains, my favorite R.E.M. album, just love the breadth and chance-taking.

What was the one about pushing an elephant up the stairs? That was a shark-jump moment in my eyes.

Night Swimming puts me in mind of an evening our family had with a friend of my dad's family, drinking and swimming on a very warm evening at their huge place. Totally brilliant evening.

6 months later, the father had died in very mysterious circumstances. The next time I saw them was the funeral, and shortly afterwards the rest of the family went to live in scotland.

Sometime, truth resembles some sort of fiction.

Anyway, back to the jollity...

I used to tape highlights of music TV onto VHS, onr of the last ones I did had REM on TOTP for the first time with "Orange Crush". The presenter fed out of the performance with "Very refreshing on a hot day, that was REM with "Orange Crush"....

Bring back DLT, we all said.

Heres my challopsy ranking:

New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Automatic for the People
Monster
Murmur
Fables
Up
Lifes Rich Pageant
Accelerate
Document
Reckoning
Out of Time
Collapse Into Now
Green
Reveal
Around the Sun

Mine of the albums I've heard:

Out of Time
New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Murmur
Automatic for the People
Monster
Fables
Up
Green

Goes to show, I'm missing a big chunk of essential stuff despite having listened to this band since I was about 14.

I like the development in the lyric writing on the last three albums a lot and don't think there was any drop-off in musical quality. Of course, the very early albums are a different matter and Out of Time/Automatic for the People are very strong pieces of music. As far as the late-IRS records, Green, Monster, New Adventures, Up - I don't see how the more recent albums are not at least on par with any of these.

Really?

Apparently for some, R.E.M. are rock's Obama. ;)

Yeah, very much so. Like I was listening to Accelerate last night and thinking about this thread. As pieces of music, it's a very similar record to Monster. VERY similar. I don't see what the distinction is and, as I said, I like Stipe's more recent lyric writing a lot.

As a teenager in the mid to late 90s, new REM albums were events for me. Monster is great. I always maintain that it's not really a grunge album, but their queer glam rock record. Love the video for Crush With Eyeline - like early Wong War Kei. Much prefer it to New Adventures, where the rockers are stadium built and much less odd as a result. There are a handful of great songs on that album though.
I really like Up - their last really good album. You're In The Air is gorgeous, and I really like Hope and Suspicion. Shame they didn't really continue in that mildly experimental direction. The subsequent tour was great too. They came to my home town of Stirling in Scotland, which is the stuff dreams are made of.
Reveal has some good songs, but they were smothered in over-production: The Lifting, I've Been High, Beachball, and most of all, Beat a Drum, which was ruined on the album but in its demo form is beautiful. However, it also has some of their worst - I'll Take The Rain is dreadful, as if they were trying to do a U2 style arena ballad. Ick.
The first four albums are my favourites, then maybe Automatic, Up, Document, Out of Time, Monster, Green, New Adventures etc
The last two albums are ok, but they make sense as the 'end', a confident, if unadventurous, update of their late 80s sound.
A dignified exit then, for a band that mean a lot to me.

I'm rather fond of the last two - they're enjoyable in an undemanding way. To get this far with only one full-scale dud (Around the Sun) and one bore (Reveal) isn't bad. New Adventures and Up both have a lot to recommend them, and Monster has grown on me.

What was with their titular theme of levitation and dissolving. It's almost as though by their latter days REM wanted to turn into a sort of gas, a jet stream: Up, You're In The Air, Airportman, I've Been High, Accelerate, Around The Sun, The Lifting, Diminished - there are more.

Is this a thing, do you think?

It's fun to see that 1980 review again. I remember the Brains as being pretty good that night too.

It's somewhat lost to history that R.E.M. was originally a dance-oriented band, or what passed for one in Athens in the immediate aftermath of the B-52's. Their early sets were mostly covers ("Shakin' All Over," "Secret Agent Man," and "Stepping Stone," mentioned in the article, were well-worn by the time the band retired them), and they relied heavily on the Berry/Mills rhythm section while Stipe and Buck were figuring things out. Gradually originals took over (the Chronic Town material first), but the shows still involved a lot of uptempo jumping around. Murmur came as a bit of a shock because it was so low-key and all of a moody piece. Mandolin etc. on Reckoning felt like even more of a departure.

I still enjoy all the IRS albums (well, maybe not Dead Letter Office). None of the Warners material did as much for me -- I remember Green and its singles as a big disappointment. I appreciate Automatic and Hi-Fi better now than I did at the time. Monster is fun and underrated compared to the other Warners material. None of the albums made after Berry left seems essential.

From what I've observed, they are all decent guys who continue to do a lot of good things in Athens and elsewhere and who have handled their long career with more taste and style than a lot of their peers.

You were there for that show? Fantastic.

I had the greatest time at school this morning. We started with double-art, so after I got the kids going on their assignment, we ran R.E.M. videos on the LCD for a whole hour. Our ISSP teacher wandered in, and she wanted to see the "Stand" video, which led to the opening credits from "Get a Life," which led to something else, etc., etc. Played the live "Carnival of Sorts" for them too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-7pgeD__qU&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

(It's grade 6, so uh-oh--I'd forgotten about the woman at the end.)

E-Bow is the best REM song

I have loads of challops involving them that I don't feel like getting into, plus some glaring blindspots (need to hear Reckoning) but I def want to speak out against some of the trash talk against "E-Bow" and 90s REM in general.

click on this youtube and you'll hear this song for the rest of the day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syCxUN6Lx0Q

E-Bow is great, the snaking guitar line that runs through it is so so gorgeous, and I like the candence of Stipe's vocal throughout.

Other great road not taken = How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us, which is such an odd song even before you get to the piano solo.

I can only remember E-Bow as a kind of pleasant impressionistic song - not really single material, but not bad all the same. Love How The West Was Won - something really satisfying about it.

I love how that album sounds and feels and WAS largely recorded on the road.

Like, even though a lot of it was recorded close to the time of Monster, it feels so much more open than that album which is very cupboardy, claustrophobic even.

I like how for all his obvious weirdness and years of rumors about assorted excesses, Stipe managed to keep his shit together enough to never be any kind of casualty. Overall I think they did the big-rock-band thing about as sanely as anyone has.

Monster feels really sculpted as far as the SOUND of it goes. Both Accelerate and New Adventures have a much more live sound.

By calling Monster "cupboardy", that's not a diss, it's just how I feel about it. It feels like a, well, like a monster under the stairs. When they rock out and Stipe crows his heart out it sounds like he's been locked in his dressing room and is going out of his mind. By comparison, Out Of Time and Hi Fi sound almost infinitely spacial, like REM are playing in some enormous cornfield. Automatic For The People sounds like it was recorded in an elegant stately home - grand pianos and works of art and infinity pools and stuff... I guess a lot of the album art/video imagery helps to sustain a lot of this, which is strange as I always considered them to be one of the worst bands for album covers in the world.

A fair assessment of the sound. I think that 'cupboardy' or sculpted sound suits the paranoid and perverse mood of Monster though. The open, live sound of NA is refreshing though - it's just that the rockers are lesser songs.
The airiness motif is interesting... a comment on the band's gradual dissolution, or a broader interest in the experience of (post)modernity - all that is solid melts into air... Maybe a bit of both.