This is the Thread Where You Bash REM's Monster

great review Brad, agree with most everything you said, and loved the description of Let Me In drowning in the rain of its own grief. It's definitely the queerness of the album which makes it so compelling.

This album is too good for some of y'all.

Gutted that the Tongue remix doesn't reinstate layers of fuzz guitar

Dolby atmos mix of Murmur or gtfo

Brad, if I could write as well as you, I’d (hope to) be a writer too!

The remixes are ok, but I could do without the “It’s Litt!” drops on every track.

lol

thank you matthew and morrisp <3

With regard to Accelerate’s production, it is worth pointing out that the record was mastered very differently for vinyl and for CD. While the CD release was rather a "loudness wars" disaster, the vinyl release actually has some room to breathe sonically. Consequently, though I do not own a turntable myself, I bought the CD to support the band, and then I downloaded a vinyl rip from a filesharing community, and the vinyl rip is what I actually pay over my stereo when I want to listen to this album.

This album is too good for some of y'all.

The irony of this is that...R.E.M. ruled. They were everything Kurt Cobain said they were always. And surely 90% or more of the ILM R.E.M. crew all have a *cutoff point* - whatever your variant of the "I stopped paying attention after Fables of the Reconstruction formula may happen to be.

Y'all are the haters.

didn't know that about accelerate - huh! i should check out the vinyl version, i like several of the songs on that album but the main thing that keeps me from putting it on is my mental "pre-hearing" of what it sounds like.

xp Tim - any band that releases 15+ albums over 31 years is sure to lose many folks along the way (regardless of whatever Kurt Cobain may have "said they were"); it's not a big deal?

yeah really

enjoyed your write-up, brad. didn't really make me want to rush out and buy the reissue though, lol.

I just bought it (the 2CD version), LOL.

Figured I’d contribute to the Mike Mills Jr. college fund, or whatever.

R.E.M. is actually the name of the scientist, the monster is called R.E.M.'s Monster

Can't decide if I want to spend the money on the whole box, but I'm annoyed that the 2-disc version is just the album and the remix. For the previous reissues the second disc of the smaller version was always either a disc of demos or a live set. The remix doesn't interest me at all.

I'll try to be more blasé. Anyway, I was trying to say that I like Monster.

Monster really isn't any better this time around but thankfully, it isn't worse. For all the talk about this being a nod to glam, I don't hear the musical joy of glam coming through at all. It's mostly just slabs of chords in that regard, and I'll never understand Buck's sudden love for the Les Paul, which doesn't suit his style much.

The new Litt remixes are very much a mixed bag, some songs work a little better and some don't; I found them interesting but rarely (surprisingly!) preferable to the originals. I guess I was hoping for a Don't Tell A Soul transformation, because those remixes are GREAT.

The demos are interesting-ish, but if anything they sort of present a band trying to find a louder vibe that will sound like REM. And they don't, really. The live tracks are ok but the band sounds distanced like they are playing stadiums. Which they were, despite Buck making promises that he'd never play stadiums.

Also, if you listen to all of REMs albums in succession in a reasonably short amount of time (as I recently did), Monster doesn't sound particularly out of place as I'd remembered.

peter buck may have been playing a les paul on monster, that's news to me as of this reissue press cycle, but man he did not get anything close to a classic les paul sound.

i think it sort of works on monster, and also on new adventures (which i like a lot more), but it is not a tone i would ever elect to use.

there's certainly a section of the fanbase that were lost by REM's move to stadiums, despite the many more they picked up along the way.

The arena moves by 1988/89 might have been a little much for some of the old guard but IMO it seemed all of a piece with the end of a prolific decade; a natural progression to the million seller that they had become - finishing off in Atlanta arenas seemed like a cap on everything that they had achieved. I feel like some of those along for the ride going into the 90s were alienated by the move to stadiums by 1994 and dropped off; the intimacy of even 1988/89 was lost.

(Buck was bringing out the Les Paul on the Green tour for 'Turn You Inside Out' and certainly a few others; I dont remember if he employed the LP on prior tours)

Also, if you listen to all of REMs albums in succession in a reasonably short amount of time (as I recently did), Monster doesn't sound particularly out of place as I'd remembered.

it gets a little normalized in retrospect by new adventures imo. but i listened to it for the first time a decade after it came out, after having heard most of the previous and following r.e.m. records, and idk, it still shocked me

it only recently struck me that "tongue" and "how the west was won" kinda take place in the same universe sonically

it gets a little normalized in retrospect by new adventures imo

yes but it's hard not to think of Monster as the turning point where REM no longer mattered. If Monster was their last album, their canon would remain intact. But...

i wasn't talking about them mattering, something i do not really care about

Monster felt like another move into intelligibility but bolstered by Stipe's increasing confidence with performance. I was noticing these things because I discovered Roxy/Bowie the previous year.

Hmm, he was pretty confident even by the Green tour but it also seemed to be him embracing his celebrity significantly more than ever before. Maybe that was hitched to him coming out or his wealth or maybe even just being in his 30s.

Not being a Roxy-phile (although I did also recently listen to the Roxy albums in the order presented on your blog), what's the connection you were making Al?

Seemed like he was just as intelligible or more intelligible on Out of Time/Automatic to me.

Side Two of Green was the "Metal" side and Bill Berry was saying they were getting more metal and it had "Turn You Inside Out," which could totally be a Monster song.

For all the talk about this being a nod to glam, I don't hear the musical joy of glam coming through at all.

Yes, Don otm.

All started with "Toys in the Attic"

i'd say monster is a calculated step back in intelligibility from automatic.

Goes through "Finest Worksong," etc.

ah yes who can forget that very metal r.e.m. song "hairshirt"

It was for "Turn You Inside Out" and "I Remember California" obviously

Just to be clear in case people had the CD or what have you, that's what the label said. Side one was air, two was metal.

I recall their original plan for Green was for one side to be acoustic, and the other electric — and they abandoned that, but kept those designations for each side (even though they were no longer operative).

the shift to les paul guitars is what mills identifies as the source of the change in tone in the new liner notes

anyway needless to say i think "finest worksong" and "turn you inside-out" are great big rock songs but are also v different from what they're doing on monster

and i always thought "air" and "metal" were arbitrary elemental designations for each side so thanks for that morrisp

He may have had it before (as was mentioned above), but I remember some interview from the time where he was saying, "I became a man today" because he had gotten a Marshall.

Curious in what ways you see those songs as different. Obviously, Stipe had changed his way of writing, but I mean musically.

i mean for one they're dronier and less playful and less flexible than anything on monster

the songs on monster are sexy

I think they're only very slightly dronier than "Crush with Eyeliner."

Oh come on

xp

Droney - "I Took Your Name"

tim why don't i just acknowledge that you're right so we can stop pretending you're having a conversation with me

You don't have to involve yourself in the conversation if you have nothing to say. I was genuinely interested in how you heard them as "v different from what they're doing on monster." Does it suit you to think that I wasn't?

just bc it only consists of two tremolo'd out chords doesn't mean i consider it droney. there's a kind of droning tambura effect to the way the guitar works in both "finest worksong" and "turn you inside-out" and that is not present in monster at all except idk maybe in "you"