XTC vs. REM

In the meantime, here's Andy Partridge's thoughts on REM's 'E-Bow The Letter' from an interview circa 1997:

"I thought it was appalling, very crap indeed. I would be embarrassed to put out a song like that and considering I was breaking some musical barrier. It was like some 4th form poetry, smacked of pretention!"

welp, guess I'm voting for REM out of spite then

what's XTC's fucked up experimental dub album tho? is that the Dukes of Stratosphear thing everybody keeps alluding to itt?

nope, partridge remixed a load of go 2 and drums & wires tracks, and released them as EPs

You'd be thinking of Go+, the EP that came with their second album, Go 2!

The Dukes Of Stratosphear is their psixties psychedelic alter-ego!

What Jupiter said. I can totally appreciate the mystery of early REM and certainly the first three albums are quite magical, but they changed as a band and as people, and I don't think they could have, or should have, kept making the same kind of records. One of the reasons those early albums are so perfect is the fact that they didn't devalue them with diminishing pastiches.
As a Brit discovering them in the early 90s I found Automatic and OOT plenty mysterious. Songs about death, the south, lost youth... plus the videos added to that aesthetic. I mean, for a huge band to make as arty videos as they did was a really cool thing. Add to that the portal aspect - through REM i got into Patti Smith, Television, Mission of Burma, Replacements, Husker Du, The Byrds, Richard Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Howard Finster, Man Ray etc etc...
I can understand why people got off the REM bus at Document cos that's actually one of my least favourite REM albums. But what came after is better IMO. I much prefer OOT, Automatic, Monster and even New Adventures. Of all their albums Document and Green have the most dated sound and while both have some great songs, they've also got some ho-hum stuff. The Wire cover on Document is probably the weakest track they'd put on an album to that point, turning the nervy energy of the original into straight up bar-band chug.
Aaaanyway, I bloody love XTC as well, but having only got into them in the past 5 years, they inevitably don't mean as much to me as REM.
Both fucking great bands, why should we fight.

Stew otm, I def dislike Document and for the most part tend to prefer REMs 90s stuff to their 80s

btw, confidential to D.A.M.: it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the Dukes of Stratosphear 'side project' was a career highlight and deserves to be heard even by non-fans

Add to that the portal aspect - through REM i got into Patti Smith, Television, Mission of Burma, Replacements, Husker Du, The Byrds, Richard Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Howard Finster, Man Ray etc etc...

There is no wrong or right

btw, confidential to D.A.M.: it cannot be too strongly emphasized that the Dukes of Stratosphear 'side project' was a career highlight and deserves to be heard even by non-fans

― He revs the language like a hypersonic superbike. (bernard snowy), Monday, September 17, 2012 12:19 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Confidential to D.A.M. it may be, but still no less OTM.

http://rlv.zcache.com/confidential_shhh_dont_let_the_secret_out_stickers-p217730143322412774bah05_400.jpg

Hahahaha!!

Yeah, great point about portal stuff - if not for REM I'd never have heard of Pylon.

REM for me, though I love quite a bit of XTC's output. REM meant a lot to me as a young kid just getting into music, and my mom's fandom also meant that I was saturated with their music growing up (I was born in '80). They're part of my lizard brain. And, if I'm truly honest with myself, Andy Partridge is just fucking annoying sometimes! Grating in his presentation and vocal affectations. Does anyone else feel this way?

The XTC "dub" stuff (far more removed from the original tracks than most dub, and far more experimental) is best heard on XTC's "Explode Together: The Dub Experiments 78-80" CD, which combines XTC's "Go+" EP with the "Mr Partridge" album "Takeaway / The Lure Of Salvage." It's all derived from XTC stuff. It's funny and weird - not great, though. But every now and then I listen to it and recognize some piece from a specific XTC tune. It's very radically reworked stuff. The liner notes to the Mr Partridge album say "This used to be some XTC records. It is now a collection of tracks that have been electronically processed/shattered and layered with other songs or lyrical pieces."

my friend texted me a few days ago talking about how much he like Drums and Wires, almost more than Q: Are We Not Men? I am listening to D&W on Spotify, and it's jaunty but like not even close...? But I'll give it more of a chance; I do like Primus's version of Nigel way more than XTC though

Not a huge fan of REM but there's a handful of stuff they've done that I really love, whereas the only XTC song that's stuck with me is Mayor of Simpleton

xp that sounds great crustacean, thanks for the headsup!

"...how much he likes Drums and Wires..."

I don't like either of these bands but REM have a couple of jams I like OK, so them

top dub picks:

- i sit in the snow
- new broom (this gave me nightmares once)
- we kill the beast
- a dictionary of modern marriage (particularly lol)
- the forgotten language of light
- the rotary

I suppose part of my connection to those 90s albums are that they were the ones I heard first and were contemporary. So inevitably I have a personal, sentimental connection to them. I'm not particularly fond of Everybody Hurts now, but I can't deny it worked for me as an angsty teenager. But I get the feeling people dismiss their 90s output based on big anthems while overlooking the darker, weirder album tracks (although I'll gladly rep for the big songs like Man on The Moon and Losing My Religion). That's not to say they were doing amazing far out stuff, but the lyrical themes of stuff like Try Not To Breath, Sweetness Follows, I Don't Sleep I Dream etc are pretty fucked up and the music is gorgeous and quite unusual in its own way. I don't see songs like that fitting in with the idea of REM as a preachy liberal arena rock band. Perhaps they had a bit of that going on during the Green tour, but they quickly pulled back from that by making baroque pop, dark acoustic albums and paranoid queer glam. The weird thing is they somehow ended up being huge despite it all, thanks to a couple of huge songs. Looking at their albums as a linear progression is perhaps not quite right. In many ways, Automatic is much closer in spirit to Fables than it is to Green or Document: it's dark, gothic, wistful and very much about the American South. I see Nightswimming as a companion piece to the B52s Deadbeat Club: both songs about people in their 30s looking back at their bohemian Georgia youth with a mixture of melancholy, loss and tender joy.

Re the portal thing: I love Pylon too, but getting hold of their records in central Scotland in the 90s wasn't exactly easy, so it wasn't until the 00s and the internet that I got the hear em. But it was cool to know about all these interesting bands. In Retromania Simon Reynolds distinguishes between portal and curator bands. The latter collect cool reference points without absorbing or remaking them. But with REM you knew these bands and artists were influences and inspirations and their boosterism came from a place of genuine fandom and love, rather than a self-serving display of cultural capital.

The sad, but also quite interesting, thing about latter day REM is that they'd reached a certain point and weren't entirely comfortable with it, but also wanted to stay there, which is quite clear from the lyrics as well as the music. They were always an ambitious band and in many ways they dealt with their fame in a very mature and decent way. But once the whole grunge/alt rock explosion died on its arse they had no real place in the superstar mainstream any more, while being too big to go back into the indie world. That tension between being big and being interesting could result in some good, if flawed records, but it was clear that once Berry left they lost direction. Attempts to keep up with U2 in the 00s were a waste of time. Try as they might, they lack Bono and co's shameless calculation and knack for delivering what people expect of them. I really like Up, for all its flaws, and think Reveal had some great songs ruined by fussy overproduction. We shall not speak of Around the Sun. The last two albums are clearly a lap of honour: a return to rock then a kind of summing up, with a few really nice songs for the fans, but nothing to convert newbies. They delivered a certain idea of what REM was, without making any truly great songs.

XTC were lucky in that they were able to settle more comfortably into their cult status. Listening to Apple Venus it's clear how much Partridge is enjoying himself. No expectations, no commercial considerations.

I like the XTC/Costello comparison upthread. I'd not really thought of that before, but it makes a lot of sense. XTC over EC any day.

Clarification: Try Not To Breathe isn't fucked up - it's a beautiful song about coming to terms with death. Dark, but not fucked up. But the others I mention there are pretty weird and fucked up for sure.

Just a thought: XTC's treatment of old weird Albion on English Settlement could be compared to REM's treatment of the South on Murmur/Fables etc.

Drums and Wires actually reminds me more of Joe Jackson than Elvis Costello

but that might have been the my favorite post about REM ever, Stew, so kudos.

REM i got into Patti Smith, Television, Mission of Burma, Replacements, Husker Du, The Byrds, Richard Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Howard Finster, Man Ray etc etc...

This sort of thing is always kind of difficult. I mean, for the most part, those are all phenomenally well-known artists for anyone who digs a little beneath the surface. So REM happened to be one's introduction to these artists, which is great - as evidenced by the list above, REM members had fairly good taste. But that's not much credit to the band per se. If REM had never existed and you had investigated pop culture to any meaningful extent, you would have discovered them all anyhow! (Ditto bands like Pylon, mentioned above.) I don't know what the definition of a "cult" artists is anymore (I've lost any feel for what's mainstream pop knowledge), but at least half of those artists were / are *the* leaders in their corner of the arts . . .

The Byrds - folk rock
Jack Kerouac - Beatnik-era authors
Howard Finster - modern naive art
Man Ray - modernist art
Richard Thompson - UK folk revival

. . . and the rest may be a little tougher to categorize quite as succinctly, but none of them are slouches or unknowns - I was in my mid-teens when "Chronic Town" came out, and I knew all of them - and had already corresponded with Finster and Herbert Huncke (fictionalized in "On The Road") and had records by all those groups - except Thompson, whom I reckoned was more boring than a hippie - I've since come around - and Husker Du, whom I never rated. I couldn't and still can't afford an original Man Ray!)

Which is not to say that I can't name a band similarly overrated to whom I ascribe my affections for "x" or "y" or "z." It's how one finds out about stuff.

But nostalgia aside, I don't know that it says much about the band's quality, or lack thereof.

What Jupiter said. I can totally appreciate the mystery of early REM and certainly the first three albums are quite magical, but they changed as a band and as people, and I don't think they could have, or should have, kept making the same kind of records. One of the reasons those early albums are so perfect is the fact that they didn't devalue them with diminishing pastiches.

This is a good comment, and I especially like thinking about it in light of the fact that you're British, since I would imagine that changes some perceptions a lot - REM were quintessentially American in many ways, and a lot of the tropes into which they descended were probably more novel outside America.

I'd never suggest that they keep making the same records, but even with "Reckoning," the original mystery was largely gone. That's okay - replace it with some NEW mystery. Instead, they did offer "diminishing pastiches" - just not of their own creation. They fell prey to a lot of common traps - the country tune, the stadium rocker(s), the sittin'-on-the-front-porch-singin-a-folk-tune thing, the horrific rewrite of Reunion's "Life Is A Rock (And The Radio Rolled Me" and a lot more. None of them original, and most of them diminishing a formerly unique sense of personality into something rather humdrum. The songs that weren't as easy to label were increasingly unfocused. There's a point on "Reckoning" where I see it as nothing more than a reasonably interesting Long Ryders album. That's a pretty quick slide!

This happens to a lot of bands. Even today, I cannot reconcile the impact of the Psychedelic Furs powerful debut album with all the stuff (good or bad) that came after it. It's like they recorded on a space transport and at some precise point, someone let the creativity and originality get sucked out of an airlock.

But it doesn't have to happen - Vic Godard, for instance, continues to make fantastic music infused with personality and creativity (now in his fourth decade as an artist) without every becoming pastiche artist (except in a postmodern sense - you can hear "Sansend," his "hiphop" album and still love it no matter how much you hate the genre, or be the world's least-discriminating hiphop fan and still hate it. Which is to say, the genre he works in at any given time never overtakes his powerful persona and style.) You could say the same for many artists - you can retain the mystery and still change.

Even if it was just "Life Begins at the Hop" vs. REM through Fables, I'd pick XTC.

ah yes, I had the lasagna

Re the portal thing: I love Pylon too, but getting hold of their records in central Scotland in the 90s wasn't exactly easy, so it wasn't until the 00s and the internet that I got the hear em.

The funny thing about that is that for years after the punk explosion, the UK had a much more evolved indie distribution system than the US. And so, for many American fans like myself, the easiest way to get a Pylon record was actually as a UK import from Armageddon Records! Armageddon released quite a lot of southern American "new wave" groups in 1980 / 81 or so - Pylon, the Swimming Pool Q's, the Method Actors - plus a lot of British stuff, of course. It was a couple of years before you could easily find the domestic DB Records originals (or subsequent releases), unless you were from Athens, GA.

I would imagine by the 90s, with Armageddon defunct for a decade or more, the opposite would have been true.

Pylon seemed on the verge of becoming a bigger band, but their second album took a long time to come out and when it did, it contained a lot of previously-released single sides. The new stuff was inferior, the album got weak reviews and by then the landscape was littered with bands who managed much stronger repertoires. Bad timing on their part, and probably not enough songwriting effort.

I don't see songs like that fitting in with the idea of REM as a preachy liberal arena rock band.

otm

They fell prey to a lot of common traps - the country tune, the stadium rocker(s), the sittin'-on-the-front-porch-singin-a-folk-tune thing, the horrific rewrite of Reunion's "Life Is A Rock (And The Radio Rolled Me" and a lot more. None of them original, and most of them diminishing a formerly unique sense of personality into something rather humdrum. The songs that weren't as easy to label were increasingly unfocused.

This is kind of wild criticism. "The country tune" was what, "Rockville?" I don't know what the stadium rockers were. If it was "What's the Frequency Kenneth," I'd say it sounded like an R.E.M. single, and not contrived genre posturing. In any case, I don't think the criticism is really applicable much more than a very small fraction of their catalog.

Focus is another issue and people will have their opinions about the last ten albums or so. Saying that the songs that are "not easy to label" on an album like AfTP (all of them?) is not something I agree with.

Sorry.

Saying that the songs that are "not easy to label" on an album like AfTP (all of them?) ARE UNFOCUSED is not something I agree with.

Thanks, very kind of you. My thinking on the latter years owes a bit to Steven Hyden's Onion AV club series, which is well worth reading: http://www.avclub.com/features/perfect-circle-an-rem-story/

One of the things I like about Monster is that it's clearly an attempt, of sorts, to make a big loud rock album to play in stadiums, and also a response to the ironised rock of Zooropa and the grunge era... but it doesn't quite succeed in that. Kenneth aside there are no big catchy radio smashes, and darkly sexual songs like I Don't Sleep I Dream and Bang and Blame are hardly going to attract people looking for another Everybody Hurts. It makes for a really interesting album, but you can see why it was a relative flop and lines cut out bins to this day. Does cult status await it? Probably not, but it's well worth rediscovering.

I think E-Bow The Letter is great and I remember being really excited when it came out. I guess it was the first REM album I was able to anticipate as a fan and having such an abstract, moody song as the lead off single was clearly a deliberate move to show REM were still inventive, still relevant. But it was a bad move commercially. I admire that about them, the fact that they didn't do the obvious thing and, unlike the perennially shameless U2, were quite bad at playing the game. Ultimately, that made their early 00s era pretty sad. You wondered what the point of REM was when their mainstream audience had dissipated and the alternative crowd and old fans were put off by their bland new music. Last two albums represent a dignified bowing out though. Wouldn't want to overstate the 'REM as uncomfortable superstars' idea though. Although I didn't see them on their last tour, watching their energetic and experetly-judged Glastonbury set on TV reminded me that they were bloody great at being a big headline band when they wanted to. But that's a different thing to putting out interesting new records.

"REM i got into Patti Smith, Television, Mission of Burma, Replacements, Husker Du, The Byrds, Richard Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Howard Finster, Man Ray etc etc...

This sort of thing is always kind of difficult. I mean, for the most part, those are all phenomenally well-known artists for anyone who digs a little beneath the surface. So REM happened to be one's introduction to these artists, which is great - as evidenced by the list above, REM members had fairly good taste. But that's not much credit to the band per se. If REM had never existed and you had investigated pop culture to any meaningful extent, you would have discovered them all anyhow!"

Well, sure, but credit's due where credit's due. They provided the initial spark and fueled my teenage imagination and that means a lot. And pre-internet, in a town with no good record stores and with no friends or relatives into this stuff it was harder to hear these things than you might think. My local library helped with Patti and the Byrds but Pylon or Love Tractor? No chance!

I wasn't trying to say that these references make REM a better band than XTC - after all, if you follow the trails with XTC you'd discover all sorts of interesting stuff too - just that it helps explain the personal connection I have to them. Reynolds is very good on this idea of bands-as-fans in Retromania. It is true that it's something that doesn't really exist in the internet age, and that has good and bad aspects. When everyone's a curator with access to vast amounts of knowledge then it's hard for bands to have that portal aspect.

At the same time I was getting into REM I was also getting into Nirvana, and they had a similar effect. Stuff like the Melvins and Scratch Acid was a bit heavy for me at the time, but I glad I was aware of all that stuff. I do miss that sense of discovery that comes with making your first steps into music, the idea that there are all these worlds of possibilities out there and it all seems so exotic and exciting.

REM's country song, Don't Go Back To Rockville, was one of their earliest tunes, predating much of the material on Reckoning. It's a great song, loads of fun. Don't really see it as a trap. Loads of post-punk acts were dabbling in country at the time, with fantastic results: Meat Puppets for example.

It's interesting to me to read British people talk about REM because it's still weird to me that they broke internationally. I'm from Georgia & REM are local boys done good. That their music could speak overseas is strange to me (Monty), because they were writing & playing about local things through Automatic, by which point they'd peaked. Maybe it's like hearing Americans talk about Blur.

XTC's nineties are soooooooo much worse than R.E.M.'s.

The Church, waaaaaaay over both of them.

XTC's nineties are soooooooo much worse than R.E.M.'s.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, September 16, 2012 10:35 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

seems unfair to compare one band spending most of the decade in label limbo to another that got to pump out platinum albums every two years

yeah wtf? xtc's nineties = nonsuch + apple venus

I'd never suggest that they keep making the same records, but even with "Reckoning," the original mystery was largely gone. That's okay - replace it with some NEW mystery. Instead, they did offer "diminishing pastiches" - just not of their own creation. They fell prey to a lot of common traps - the country tune, the stadium rocker(s), the sittin'-on-the-front-porch-singin-a-folk-tune thing, the horrific rewrite of Reunion's "Life Is A Rock (And The Radio Rolled Me" and a lot more. None of them original, and most of them diminishing a formerly unique sense of personality into something rather humdrum. The songs that weren't as easy to label were increasingly unfocused. There's a point on "Reckoning" where I see it as nothing more than a reasonably interesting Long Ryders album. That's a pretty quick slide!

This is otm, but I'd disagree about Reckoning. I never heard it as a Long Ryders-esque (or Del Fuegos-esque or whomever) record because none of those bands had Bill Berry -- his sense of propulsion was never, for lack of a better term, roots-rock based. He didn't look to Doug Clifford, he looked to Peter Prescott and Scott Krauss. And this was the record where the joy in the danger of playing live really came out, like the Byrds on speed. My main problem with Out Of Time and most everything that followed is that they just sound defeated as a musical unit.

The increased rootsiness of Reckoning was just gravy imo. More depth and nothing lost in progressing from the Chronic Town tunes to things like "So. Central Rain."

And, if I'm truly honest with myself, Andy Partridge is just fucking annoying sometimes! Grating in his presentation and vocal affectations. Does anyone else feel this way?

― Clarke B., Sunday, September 16, 2012 5:36 PM (5 hours ago)

I second that emotion. XTC were interesting for about 5 minutes in the early 80s. They haven't troubled my consciousness since then.

that's shit

E-bow shite.

EMOTIONS

grrrrrr...

i'm not reading this thread but voted REM by a gajillion squillion light years

REM appeal has faded so dramatically since my teenage years I pretty much never want to listen to them ever. XTC's catalog only grows richer as a I get older, so them.

I think REM came on stronger out of the gate (although I like the first three XTC albums fine.) But from Black Sea onwards XTC scale heights for me that REM never approached.

The Church, waaaaaaay over both of them.

― mr.raffles, Sunday, September 16, 2012 9:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

for 80s + 90s output together that continues to be listenable (and enjoyable and low on countable cringe moments/emotional outburst inducing qualities) in 2012 yeah, definitely
at least for me (but i like all three bands for different reasons so i'm not sure they're even comparable in my mind at all)

XTC, because, as crustaceanrebel stated eloquently upthread, the span from Drums + Wires to English Settlement hits such dizzying heights. XTC, for me, were never quite as great again once they lost that slashing rhythmic edge to the guitars, but the later paintbox pastoralist stuff had its share of wonderful moments even if only Skylarking sustainsa feature-length listen.

REM, by comparison, start out full of treasure, make real magic for about four years, then produce 20 odd years of mawk which I never want to hear again.

Andy and Stipe tied for potential to be annoying twits, in radically different ways, of course.

For one last bit of REM magic you can squeeze from their stone, seek the fan club singles - brilliant covers, oddities and live bits. Hope they riessue those properly!

dave gregory has gone full prog, covering genesis and everything, in tin spirits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTLhdnbDQeA
and peter buck is touring minor league baseball stadiums. i wonder if we'll ever hear much again from any of the rest of these guys

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

While XTC hasn't been wearing well for me at all over the last decade (due almost solo to Andy Partridge's vocals), they loomed pretty large for me at certain points in the past, and I still love a handful of their songs more than anything from REM. I was never particularly into REM, except for briefly listening very heavily to Green around the time it came out. (I got to like some songs from that, and a few other songs, while drunker than I've ever been, at a work-related party.)

But "Ten Feet Tall" alone, for instance, thrills me more than everything I've heard by REM put together.