R.E.M. trio albums POLL

I like "The Great Beyond," and also bought the (pointless) CD single. I've elsewhere argued that if it is a "Man on the Moon" pastiche, it's legitimately updated to Stipe's 1999-era preoccupations - meditation on death, yes, but now in a kind of fuck-it, fighting way, swinging punches, kinda riding the pointlessness of things. I'm not articulating this well. Maybe it's just the difference between second-person (addressing the dead) and first-person, expressing the joy of creativity in the same breath as the quest for meaning. "Sidewinder" vs. "Hope" is the flipside of this.

I read a U2 interview in a British magazine in fall '01 after 9-11, at the peak of their second renaissance, supporting an album that I still find detestable, and Larry said something like, "We want REM to do well. If they go, we go too. But I loved the last album," etc. Couldn't help thinking it was U2's last triumph over the band they were tied to at the hip since 1991.

I like "The Great Beyond," and also bought the (pointless) CD single. I've elsewhere argued that if it is a "Man on the Moon" pastiche, it's legitimately updated to Stipe's 1999-era preoccupations - meditation on death, yes, but now in a kind of fuck-it, fighting way, swinging punches, kinda riding the pointlessness of things.

is that why it sounds like Grandpa at the mixing board?

Odd to think that PSA dates back to a time long before Stipe was any kind of paparazzi fodder.

Well, R.E.M. have definitely triumphed over U2 by stopping when they knew their time was up, whereas U2 continue to carry on and look silly.

idk i think the last two U2 albums are very good. the previous two were a bit alarmingly paint-by-numbers ('how to dismantle an atomic bomb' was their worst album by some distance imo not counting the live tracks from 'rattle and hum', def their 'around the sun' imo.)

I've a soft spot for "Great Beyond," as it seemed like REM's sweet millennial goodbye song, as good as any from the period. But "Bad Day" really grates for me.

all this has me wanting to revisit Accelerate & Collapse. I tried to like both of 'em at the time & neither worked at the time.

U2s most recent two were unfocused messes. But I definitely feel the band at least was fueled by conviction, whereas REMs low points were largely lifeless and joyless.

i'd disagree, i think 'no line' was messy (albeit good), the new one is vv focused albeit disastrously released. 'ATYCLB' was a-ok, 'giving the fairweather fans what they want' stuff, 'atomic bomb' was kinda 'giving the fans what they want but not what we want'.

has the new one even cracked 100k in the U.S.?

Wrote on "The Great Beyond" a few years ago:

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2010/07/rem-great-beyond-2000.html

Voted up, which is honestly probably my favorite R.E.M. album. Haven't heard the ones after that in full.

I'm listening to Around The Sun for the first time in a while and my god, this album is a mess. There's the makings of a good song in 'Electron Blue', but the production and arrangement really prevents it from being the track it should be.

I would say that U2 are fuelled by this:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2256/2368329234_f3b6a02a74.jpg

Oh my fucking god, that stretch of 'Make It All OK', 'Final Straw' and 'I Wanted To Be Wrong' near-enough sent me to sleep. Then 'Wanderlust' comes on and it's like... eurgh... off.

I don't think Stipe could play guitar to save his life. On the Work tour, he 'played' on Oddfellows Local 151, and youtube, ever helpful, has a fairly complete concert from that tour up:. (These Days rips btw).
http://youtu.be/2Xq2XxmIDHM?list=PLxn-k7OqSA-9gq69L6gLDP0UfCaMCLYOX

He's in one of the Monster documentaries playing guitar on 'I Don't Sleep, I Dream' too.

Up by a mile, though it's overlong and dirgey. A song of the quality of, say, Suspicion or AMMB would be unimaginable from then onwards. I'd actually probably choose Around The Sun as the best of a bad lot from the 00s stuff. There's a songwriting muscle on things like "Boy in the Well", "Aftermath" and "Ascent of Man" that is absent from say Reveal or Accelerate - the latter truly is their nadir, one of the dreariest albums ever.

the very great This Way UP docu (impossible to find, never released on DVD/VHS) is on YouTube FYI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i65t6cqdCM

Great Beyond was a *number 3* hit by the way in the UK! their highest chart entry.

Just watched that documentary, I remember I saw that on tv and taped it, I remembered as soon as I saw Stipe in the party hat. Around the time of Up and Reveal I must have taped 3 or 4 different documentaries about them.

Radiohead and REM seemed a lot more similar back then. The were my two favourite bands for quite a long time. I think my love of REM has lasted a lot longer in retrospect, I'm slightly more picky about what I like across Radiohead's output.

This is either the first one or the last one, with Accelerate a close runner up. And the others are horrible.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

but i like the berry the best

It boggles my mind that anyone could consider Stipe's voice to be at its best over those last few albums. Like I'm fine with the increasingly gravelly nature of his voice itself but his phrasing and enunciation are a big part of why those later records are so underwhelming.

It was at its best on the early Warners albums imo, technically anyway

yeah i'd go with that; The W

(oops) The Wrong Child and You Are The Everything on Green are some kind of high point IMO.

Disturbance At The Heron House for me, that lovely vaulting high vocal melody, kinda telling that he never sang it the same way live.

oh but it was better live! that take on the '91 Unplugged is their best song imo

Have to admit, I never liked that alt vocal melody, I guess I felt kinda cheated, plus conga drums are nagl

I get that. What about Mills' harmonies on that take? they weave together in a way they rarely accomplished otherwise

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

dang

well, that's pretty definitive

whoa

it was pretty obvious from reading this thread that Up would triumph, but the word "shellacking" wouldn't seem out of place here.

the Bill Berry factor

actually laughed out loud at those results, that has to be one of the most lopsided five-way polls ever

who voted for around the sun

For the relative goodwill for the last two they didn't exactly run away with 2nd and 3rd.

Meh, I'll still always prefer Accelerate

It's all relative...I was an Up voter who prrrrrrobably would have gone with Accelerate if Up was out and this was just "the four REM albums with no street cred" or whatever.

Honestly I think Reveal is a great album. I can understand people diminishing it with the post-Berry asterisk but I'm baffled by the opinions that place it at the same depths as Around the Sun.

A problem with Reveal might be - for those still buying REM albums into 00s - the sound, approach and production wasnt what a lot if fans wanted at that point. Berry's gone, Up's not heavy on the guitars, what's going on?

I was actually into the idea of Reveal - okay, they've done this colder-feeling thing, now there's this warmer-feeling thing, and both seemed more 'electronic' and concocted-in-the-studio than their previous records... and I dig some of the recordings on Reveal even, maybe partly under the influence of positive reviews at the time that framed it as this wash of summer haze and production lushness. The thing is it just doesn't have the songs - the ones that are meant to be the anthemic waypoints in the tracklist (especially "I'll Take the Rain") fall totally flat, so lesser songs that might have survived being kinda interesting album tracks (were they next to stronger material) end up seeming underwritten and superfluous to the catalog. I basically think it wasn't a fertile period for the band in terms of songwriting - or maybe, that they really didn't know how to write songs together without being a band, in a room, with a drummer.

Accelerate > Monster. Come on now.

ILM 90s mindset I see u

They’re all bad, but —

Up > Around the Sun > Collapse > Reveal > Accelerate (it’s unlistenable)

How long must we try to correct each others wrong REM rankings? Just go back and see my ranking.

Monster is listenable to the extent that I’m not inherently put off by what sounds like ‘90s major label alternative band demos.