REM: Classic or dud?

No, the chore of Up is a combination of overall length, slow-to-mid tempo tracks and everything is buffed to perfection and slicker than usual.

Like, Up was undoubtedly their slickest production to date - Berry and Buck liked to bang things down quick and went more for feel, Mills was more interested in slaving over things. Mills and Stipe were in the drivers seat for Up, Reveal and Around the Sun. Buck reasserted himself on the last two.

I get that but I don't think the "buffed" production is a drawback - I like Up and Reveal a lot. My challenge with Up is that I agree it's too long, but if I go track by track it's not obvious to me what should go. They're all good songs even if the album doesn't take off. Just a theory that maybe if you chopped those two outliers at the beginning (and maybe resequenced?), the feel of the album would change dramatically. I haven't tried it - just a thought occurring to me now.

I liked Reveal and Around the Sun a lot at the time because they seemed to involve a new interest in compositional concision. Neither is amongst my favorite R.E.M. albums overall but I think those charms still resonate and Around the Sun, in particular, is underrated. I like it more than Reveal.

I know I probably said that like ten times on here a decade ago!

I recommend the recently-ish released Unplugged two disk set, second disk, for good revisitations of Up and Reveal songs. and a killer Cuyahoga too

I concur on the Unplugged set. "Sad Professor" is better live. Probably "Lotus" is too.

"You're in the Air" seems a bit flabby to me in my memory but it's possible that if I listened to it today I would discover something essential.

Sounds obvious/corny to say it this way but: Up is not a record from the same band as made Fables. I like both bands but they're different bands (like Joy Div/New Order different, not Stones/Beatles different).

Circling backward it occurs to me that I probably like "Imitation of Life" because it reminds me of "Electrolite."

"You're in the Air" seems a bit flabby to me in my memory but it's possible that if I listened to it today I would discover something essential.

I've written this before but Reveal is an example of time rot: too much money to buy studio time, so much fuss over so little. These meticulously programmed and hysterically arranged sounds in search of tunes and often confusing overstatement for tunes. Even so, "The Lifting" is one of their strongest openers, and I like "All the Way to Reno" despite the lookit-the-synths-mom approach to programming.

"Reno"s a great tune

Stipe is in such great form on Up.

no one will stan for around the sun, accelerate, or collapse into now :(

I did a few hours ago!

A couple of people really liked the latter two. Around The Sun is a bit of a mess but has some great moments and probably better than half the albums being praised by rock magazines at the time.

"Leaving New York" was really nice

I'll usually stan for Around the Sun at the slightest provocation, just give me a sec. Easily my fave of the 00s albums.

So, i've given "Hi-Fi" a couple listens and while can say i understand its appeal, i doubt i'll coming back to it 20 years down the road.

I really, really love Accelerate - I'm really glad that they managed to get that one out of them before they disbanded.

I listened to "HIFI" a little more and there are some songs that may grow on me. It seems a bit too long though and I'm not too fond of their more rocker side so I might edit it at some point...

There's something I was wondering about that band : I remember they got a huge record deal, like the biggest ever, in the mid90s.
But I think that contract was signed AFTER their biggest hits (after Automatic, iirc). I don't know about their sales after that but I suppose the record company lost a lot with them, didn't it ?

Their sales nosedived in the US, but in the UK other parts of the world they remained as big as ever.

but was it enough to make that record deal worthwhile ?

I remember seeing a ton of unsold copies of New Adventures in HiFi at my local Camelot Music the week that album came out. They couldn't give them away.

My recollection is that HiFi was the first album under the new $80 million Warners contract, which didn't seem totally outrageous at the time, but yeah, they never sold (or toured, at least not in the US) at the Monster level again.

"Stand," "Losing My Religion" strike me as their high water mark in terms of sales and FM airplay.

So it seems likely that deal was not a great deal for Warners when viewed in isolation. Maybe Warners thought they were buying another ten hits like "Shiny Happy People," but would have settled for five more "Orange Crush"es or "One I Love"s.

But karmically speaking I tend to think of it as the universe retroactively paying the band _back_ for having made stuff like Murmur and generally laboring admirably in the trenches of college rock.

And I'm sure the Warners execs still had pretty nice houses anyway, even if REM did not necessarily earn out every advance. Surely they just exploited some different murky indie band and made out fine.

Their world tours were fucking massive. Don't know how they did it. For some reason they did two Scottish dates on the same tour, they were supposed to be months apart but due to someone getting ill, they ended up being the same week, unfortunately.

It was a bit after Around The Sun.

Yeah, in looking it up just now, I see that they still played arenas in the US in the '00s. They were definitely selling more tickets than records here.

Lotus is a canary in the coal mine for the later records, where they quickly appeared to lose whatever critical ear they had for their own material.

yeah but the touring income wasn't part of the deal, was it ?
their back catalogue wasn't included either.
it was just advances etc for the next 5 records.
clearly, it seems like a shipwreck of a deal but I agree that the band may have deserve it (and obviously, no one is crying for the execs who did it).

ahah :
https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2016/may/23/adele-90m-record-deal-sony-megadeals-labels

Tarfumes, exactly: more tickets than records. This is common, I think, in bands with a long "tail" of oeuvre. People with enough money for an arena concert ticket in 2005 included a wide range of people who had followed one several paths into the band's music. Very few were coming because they'd only heard "The Great Beyond."

If you went to see them in the years 1990-2010, you were sharing an arena with some people who were just waiting to hear "End of the World," some who only knew Green, and some old-timers who had seen them in Athens and were hoping for a relative rarity like "Camera." Add all those up and it's a big audience.

True about the "tail."

And reading the terms of their contract (http://articles.latimes.com/1996-08-25/news/mn-37596_1_warner-bros), I wonder if their royalties from HiFi through Accelerate ever caught up with/paid back their advances (though I'm sure the label would say they hadn't even if they had).

When I saw them I got a strong impression that a lot of people will pay a lot to hear a few 90s hit singles. I can't read their minds but I'd bet on it. Maybe they're just the friends/family who're driving actuals fans home?

Who cares. I'd rather a good band has a big audience than one that only consists of "actual fans."

monster is probably the only return-to-our-roots record i can think of where the idea went so wrong that it opened up a new space in their music

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Monday, June 19, 2017 1:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tbf the band talked / "talked" about making a "roots rock / back to basics" album since after Out of Time, it was a big joke to my friends at the time. Then Monster came, which wasn't that at all. Was it hyped as such at the time? I was in college and didn't read any press at the time.

Who cares. I'd rather a good band has a big audience than one that only consists of "actual fans."

― rogan josh hashana (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 20 June 2017 14:40

I don't mind if some people come to hear a few hit songs, just don't like people who act obnoxious to everyone else until a hit single they know comes on.

I remember it was marketed as a "going heavy rock/grunge" album. not too sure about "going back to our roots", though.

I've always thought it was to their credit that, setting aside some of the hype around Accelerate, and single choices like "Daysleeper," "Imitation of Life," and "Bad Day," they generally steered clear of ever trying to make a new record aping their critical- and commercial-peak sounds. I think I said something like this on the "Monster vs. Achtung Baby" thread, that U2 post-Pop seemed much less interesting trying to make "U2 records" than REM was, floundering around with whatever they actually wanted to do at the time... even if in the case of Around the Sun that was about as far from what anybody wanted from them as you could imagine.

regarding their various influences in the mid90s, I may have noticed little hints of... oasis on "HiFi" !
I need to listen to the album more carefully but I remember thinking M. Stipes had some Liam-esque inflections ...(I suppose REM fans will want to kill me for writing that !).

They were definitely selling more tickets than records here.

More karmic balancing. They were always better live than on record

When I profiled them a few months ago, I included more songs recorded after 1994 than I thought.

That's a nice piece, Alfred.

thanks!

I remember it was marketed as a "going heavy rock/grunge" album. not too sure about "going back to our roots", though.

― AlXTC from Paris, Tuesday, June 20, 2017 6:52 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess my impression of it is as a "we're putting our mandolins back in the closet and we're gonna rock again" record, so "roots" isn't exactly correct, true, but it also doesn't really strike "heavy rock/grunge." it's a glam rock record with '90s production made by r.e.m., and it sounds very singular and strange bc of that particular convergence

Yes, the only punch they pull is Strange Currencies

i'll also defend around the sun to a point. "ascent of man" is one of the best r.e.m. songs imo (i feel like i've made this point on more than one r.e.m. thread)

I don't know if I have it in me to revisit Monster !

Monster is pretty good — in the grand scheme of R.E.M.'s career, it's not a masterpiece, but it's not the failure some people seem to think it is. I think the only song I really disliked at the time was "Bang and Blame." And maybe "Strange Currencies."

I love it and will cut anyone who doesn't.

hum. I'll see if I'm still in an REM mood after HiFi to revisit Monster...

Alfred your top REM list is super jangly :)