REM: Classic or dud?

"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.

'new adventures' is a really good REM album, when it was released and now that they've broken up. for me it was their first 'return to form' album after 'monster' disappointed. sure there have been several false start 'return to form's since. but whatever -- what a great album!

I love "Bittersweet Me" -- the best second R.E.M. single since "Stand."

yeah great song

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

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 9:21 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol i remember this and i remember really liking it (mostly i liked anything r.e.m. and anything spin told me to like but this was 8th grade or freshman year so).

i've been listening to bits of up in the car over the last couple days and man do i hate that "eclectic" "vintage" production/arrangement style. so i'll just keep sad professor on repeat or something.

it depresses me to even think about the string of rem singles since stand.

In retrospect I'd place NAIHF in the same group as Tori Amos' From the Choirgirl Hotel: records that tread commercial waters but are remembered very fondly by their cults. That 1996-1997 interzone is almost as peculiar as the '89-'90 one.

really weird to me that we're dwelling on 'new adventures' and after

For me, there was a positive trajectory for R.E.M. post-New Adventures apart from the Berry issue. Their songwriting started becoming more compact with Reveal and that trajectory culminates, quite positively in my estimation, in the last two albums.

yeah good call on 96-97 alfred. that was a fuckin' great time for mainstream rock.

The Brits can help me here. Am I wrong in thinking that the NME-Select-Q crowd thought NAIHF a huge aesthetic comeback after Monster? That's what I remember.

seven chinese brothers swallowing the ocean
don't need that jazz, don't dig that stuff
michael built a bridge, michael tore it down
i am not the type of dog that could keep you waiting
etc.