REM: Classic or dud?

I will also stick up for New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I love that album and the cover is so great.

^otm. so many great songs -- "leave," "be mine," "wake up bomb," "how the west was one," "be mine," etc.

"Be Mine" is so good that R.E.M. included it twice.

New Adventures is my favorite R.E.M. album.

New Adventures is my favorite R.E.M. album.

Every time I turn on the radio and hear that Decemberists song that sounds just like R.E.M., I wonder why they couldn't just play R.E.M. instead.

I've decided I only like about half of New Adventures now. It's got some incredible highs, but it dips into quite boring territory in the last half. (Still like Electrolite - their best piano ballad IMO, even more than Nightswimming.

never want to hear "everybody hurts" again. "man on the moon" is alltime though.

otm

i love New Adventures but "Electrolite" is the one song i just never got. so bland, even compared to the other piano tracks.

The consensus is the album disintegrates in the last third; "Electrolite" aside, even on this thread I haven't read impassioned defenses of the songs after "Be Mine."

"Binky The Doormat" is a fav of mine, though it has a horrible title. The chorus has a top-notch hook, with the interplay of Stipe & Mills vocals.

"leave" is rem's longest song and one of their most affecting dirges. even the BS dr. dre siren effects work

new test leper, you and me, and electrolite are the highpoints. maybe that how the west was won song, too.

> The consensus is the album disintegrates in the last third

What is this consensus you speak of? I could probably do without Binky the Doormat and Zither, but So Fast, So Numb through Electrolite is great. I love that album.

yeah, i love the shit out of "Low Desert" and "So Fast, So Numb." it seems like an album that should be easy to accuse of CD era bloat but there's honestly not a lot i'd cut.

"Binky the Doormat" and "Zither" usually come up as songs to cut.

haha yeah I pretty much hate "Low Desert" & "So Fast So Numb"...that speak-sing voice just drives me up the wall. (actually I could be forgetting what song "Low Desert" is, but I think it's another one of those, or else it's a boring sludgy creeper...though by that description I can see how some people (dudes?) would dig it)

but cut "Binky"? cut the title please! but the song's a good one, one of the few on that album: "Leave", "Undertow", "Binky" are the good ones; "New Test Leper" & "Electrolite" are ok. cut the rest.

no problem with "Zither" -- i like when REM albums have little instrumental breathers

"Binky" would probably seem blander with a less weird title

To me this album doesn't need breathers -- songs like "Departure" are the breathers insofar as they're throwaways that still work. "How The West Was Won..." is a B-side suddenly promoted to opener. That's why I love this record: it's like R.E.M. discovered the wisdom of compiling a dozen iterations of "Fretless."

I'm not sure this makes sense.

I take it back, having just re-listened to it, Binky the Doormat is pretty great. So I guess the only things I'd cut are Zither and the first minute of Leave.

Drive was recorded entirely live; that's news to me.
checkit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsHLOeiy2b4&feature=related

(also check out Weaver D!)

I like the chorus to "Binky The Doormat" too. I can't remember much about "Zither" or "Low Desert" when they're not playing but I basically enjoy everything on this album.

i have a hard time relating to someone hating 'new adventures.' it was REM's last stand, a musical wake in retrospect, their 'tonight's the night,' in light of bill's impending departure. "how the west was won" is a fitting lyrical thematic opener for their only (sprawling) double album. the pedestrian keyboard riff teases at the complexities to follow. and then it's on to "wake-up bomb," the first of many jams superior to the rave-ups on 'monster,' their first studio album stumble. i remember perversely thinking higher of 'monster' given the superior quality of the soundcheck tunes on 'new adventures'

oh man the wake up bomb is as terrible as its name implies.

qualmsley otm, "wake up bomb" is what monster wishes it was

some dude I am loving that my views are pretty much a mirror of yours on this! it's uncanny!

& mostly I am thinking that I need to once again give New Adventures the old college try. sooooooo many times have I gone this way, seeking enlightenment...

I won't accept that "The Wake-Up Bomb" is what Monster wishes it was; for one thing it's about a minute too long. But it belongs on Monster, which is praise enough.

xpost "Drive," as Buck depicts it, wasn't exactly "entirely" live. Just the bass/drums/guitar. But that means all the strings, vox, and other stuff was done later. So, yeah, the basics were tracked live, but "Drive" is hardly the sound of REM live in the studio. Not that that matters; it's a great song.

There was a time, back when you would notice these things, that seemingly half of every used CD store was stocked with copies of "Monster." Testament to its popularity, ironically.

hook on so fast so numb is quality don't front on that shit.

i must be old because i can't decode any of that sentence. you like so fast so numb, i take it?

also i profess total love for binky because 1) i love when stipe really belts out a lyric (see also chorus to sad professor) and 2) mike mills's vocal is just so weird and probably unadvisable overall but it speaks to the lack of editing done on a lot of that record which is ultimately its most endearing quality.

yes i like it!

oh wait, i get it now. i'm distracted because i should be at high holy-day services.

R.E.M. one of the least Jewish bands of all time. All time!

lol

l'shanah tovah.

New Adventures is the best example i can think of, of an album by a major band that was ho-hummed about on release but that has since become considered an absolute canonical classic. even NME this week in their headline story about the end of the band names it as one of their best 4 albums alongside Murmur, AFTP and ..Pageant.

(all time going back to, say, the garden of eden?)

yeah i think new adventures revisionism is really interesting--i guess i have trouble believing that a lot of ppl would like it as much as i do? it rewards deep listening, that's for sure.

If you mean "Ho-hum, another good R.E.M. record," then sure. It got great reviews in the States, but I guess was dismissed as a failure when it didn't match its predecessors' sales.

mostly what i remember was the radio play it got relative to monster--monster got a ton of love from modern rock radio but they didn't seem to have a very good idea of what to do with new adventures, especially (as i think we've already covered) its lead single.

i thought you meant that a lot of r.e.m. fans want to hear something more in NAIHF than is really there.

and i agree with that.

In a general sense, "New Adventures" was like their "Zooropa."

(Not that it's nearly that radical a departure, mind)

yeah New Adventures got decent reviews but the lack of hit singles (combined with them having just signed that huge contract) kind of cast a pall over the whole thing. definitely one of those albums that seemed better with every inferior album that followed (although i loved it right away at the time).

I was in grad school at the time but still listening to college radio and, yeah, it's true: "E-Bow the Letter" got no more than a few desultory plays (I don't remember "Bittersweet Me" or "Electrolite" at all; "Electrolite," as we've discussed, found a second life as a supermarket standard).

I gave it a four- or five-star review in my college paper, and it made my top ten. I've never stopped loving it. Its luster grew even brighter, as some dude argues, when compared against its successors.

bittersweet me actually got a good amount of play iirc (and i never heard anything other than it or ebow)--i always thought it was a really weird single since its super-simple repetitive structure only works to me once you realize that a lot of new adventures is sort of about hypnosis by rock.

Up got good reviews too (it made SPIN's top twenty) but it was obvious then that the wheels had come off.