Best of the platinum R.E.M. albums

joey waronker also played drums on "Perfect"!

He was taking 'em down from the inside!!!

i just listened the bit on the up reissue bonus disc where stipe briefly does "disarm" (it's after "i'm not over you"). he talks about how he'd written his first ever song on acoustic guitar and showed it to corgan backstage at the tibet house benefit concert in 1997 (where they'd performed together, doing "e-bow the letter" with patti smith), who pointed out that the chords were just disarm (which stipe briefly covers there), and stipe said he took it as a challenge to write a better melody than "disarm", which he then performs wordlessly - i guess he never turned that idea into a full song? it's just stipe telling a funny story about how he accidentally ripped off corgan when writing a song. they're friends, it doesn't seem mean-spirited at all.

He (unconsciously) ripped off "Disarm," and then happened to play the song for Corgan? What a weird story

new adventures/murmur
monster
green
reckoning
up
lifes rich pageant
automatic for the people
document
fables of the reconstruction
out of time
around the sun
collapse into now
accelerate
reveal

idk seems right. feel like i'm doing out of time and fables dirty so i'll just say "me in honey," "kohoutek," and "green grow the rushes" are prob all in my r.e.m. top 20

i used to hate collapse into now, find the lyrics on it a little radioactive like fgti does green's, but i had a pretty pleasant time revisiting it yesterday, "blue" is a cool mashup of "country feedback" and "e-bow the letter"

"green grow the rushes"...top 20

*heavy otm*

i used to hate collapse into now, find the lyrics on it a little radioactive like fgti does green's

Yeah is that the one where he goes "Death is pretty final / I'm collecting vinyl"? Do not like, ha ha

That one’s on Accelerate and is def one of their worst songs

“And the weblogs that get tangled
As you willie and you wangle”

My list:

LRP
OTT
Automatic
Murmur
Monster
Reckoning
NAIH
Document
Fables
The rest
Green

something like this, keeping in mind that i haven't listened to a bunch of these in ages

lifes rich pageant
chronic town
murmur
reckoning
fables of the reconstruction
new adventures in hifi
automatic for the people
out of time
up
document
green
monster
accelerate
collapse into now
reveal
around the sun

Xpost ha, I love the “hey steady steady / in my mind” part of that song, I’m Gonna DJ. It’s a fun chorus despite the cringe vinyl line.

Relatedly I always wish there was a better song attached to the chorus of “Diminished”. The section of that song with the slide guitar and “sing along…” gets close to the beauty of the early 90s records, but the rest of the song has no idea what it’s doing.

LRP: the consensus greatest album of all time

xp

agree that diminished is a beautiful song in search of a core

FotR/RotF
Murmur
LRP
CT
OoT (the highs are just so so high)
AftP
Reckoning (a bit too consistent)
Document (I should like this more…)
Monster (maybe a tie with Docu)
NAiHF (good stuff but simply too long)
Green
(Post Berry stuff)

the entirety of “diminished” is gorgeous

Automatic
Green
Up
Out of Time
Document
Hi-Fi
LRP
Monster
Reckoning
Murmur
Reveal
Fables
Accelerate
Collapse Into Now
Around the Sun

This is fun! Alfo I’m glad I’m not alone re my Green feelings, it’s not easy hating Green

I’m gonna relisten to Monster today. Crush With Eyeliner is so fun. It does feel like Buck is having a “new guitar pedals” album— not a criticism so much as it just demonstrates how inventive and essential his guitar playing is to this band’s transcendence. I can’t think of a rock guitarist I admire more, this morning, tbh

I can’t wait to get to Hi-Fi. It’s always been in my Top 5 (along w Murmur, Reckoning, LRP and AftP)

I think too I wanna give Fables another shot, I don’t think it’s fair to assess it between its adjacents. The mix is so comparatively guitar-forward (the rhythm section buried) that it is jarring in this listening context

In a more just world, “Strange Currencies” would be the go-to 3rd act teen movie montage sync, instead of “Everybody Hurts”. It is weird to hear such a beautiful song and yet feel that it’s the product of pressure-for-another-hit.

“Bang And Blame” is annoying! Otherwise Monster is real good. “I Don’t Sleep” is so lovely, the way Stipe changes the timbre of his voice to suddenly become Green Gartside on the choruses is shiver-inducing

"Let Me In" and "Circus Envy" and "You" -- damn.

Yeah no kidding. The album ends so well. It feels too that Stipe is at the zenith of his Patti Smith fandom, he channels her here

Also I thought of a better title for “E-Bow The Letter”, and it’s “Bono The Rapper”

it's not as corny as that

Crush With Eyeliner

She's a sad tomato

People really rate “E-Bow”! I don’t like it. Oh well.

My feeling with Hi-Fi was similar to Reckoning— my long-time adoration for these albums was inspired by listening to the first half of both over and over as a teen. Hi-Fi is long! And mostly great. It’s a triumph of production, it’s stylistically diverse but always sounds of-a-piece. But I honestly can’t remember even listening to “Low Desert” before, I think I always tuned out by that point or something; this, after singing along to the a-side word for word. Man, I love “New Test Leper”. I think maybe people underrate this album because of all the goofy song titles, maybe

"Let Me In" and "Circus Envy" and "You" -- damn.

― stuffing your suit pockets with cold, stale chicken tende (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 18 November 2023 11:08 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Circus Envy" is a weak link for so many and I get why but I love it - sounds halfway between Radio Friendly Unit Shifter and the Manics' My Guernica. Basically its a three song album finale to rival Automatic's

My mum stopped buying R.E.M.'s CDs after Monster - like a lot of people, true, but with her I've never quite understood why because she always described them as one of her favourite bands for years yet, yet I doubt she'd have remembered anything post-Kenneth anyway. It's not like with U2 where she was the genuine real-life example of 'got off at The Fly and got back on again at Beautiful Day'. But it meant that for years, until I bought the post-Monster years for myself, they were sort of my "uncle's band" in my head. I got to know what Hi-Fi, Up and Reveal looked like - i.e. the full artwork, disc designs, booklets - years before I heard any of them.

There used to be footage of the Monster CD-ROM on YouTube and I'm heartbroken that it's gone.

the chorus of "e-bow" is quite nice but stipe's spoken word thing just isn't particularly compelling (better than bono's rapping, worse than the edge's!). new adventures is definitely too long but i'd still rather listen to it than anything else post-lrp

“New Test Leper” is an unbelievable song, I get caught in its narrative and dragged into its emotional turmoil every time.

Put pepper in my coffee,
I forgot to bark
... Uncle Band

New Test Leper, E-Bow and Leave are my favourites on Hi-Fi. If we catch each other at the right moment I find them all devastating.

gave Green a fresh listen last night, and I'm not as down on it as fgti, but it's always been near the bottom for me and i don't think that'll ever change. some lovely songs in there, and a couple of great rockin' performances in desperate need of more developed lyrics. but a lot of it feels underwritten and overproduced to me. like whatever it is that people don't like about Fables, that's how this album plays for me.

How the West Was Won is a bridge to Up. Not intentionally - that song came together quickly and was a breeze to work on, compared to Up's laborious, detail-intensive creation - but they share the same open-ended, downtempo coffee table feel. Definitely one of the two best free jazz piano breaks from a rock single around this time too (with The Heart's Filthy Lesson).

The only song I don't straight up love on Green quite as much as the others is the untitled one, which ig isn't part of the core body anyway, but that gets by almost entirely on spirit and feel - the sound of a group discovering a new way of doing things in real time.

Yeah! I thought that about “How The West”, it was obviously not Garson but it was inspired by him. What a great production that song is. Also AAAAAAAAAA.

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Siri wouldn’t play “Up”, it kept putting on Ariana Grande instead, so I asked it to play “Reveal”. I don’t like this. It sounds like Robbie Williams demos. Stipe is clearly doing the work tho, the songs are nice.

I'm one of this board's lone Reveal defenders. I really love how of its time it sounds - in the sense that most of it embodies this sunshine pop feel that is *very* much my version of 2001 (liminal early childhood sounds) bcuz of its similarities to Gregg Alexander's genuinely great hits with Ronan Keating and Texas, or something like Travis' Sing which has this lite-psych production with lots of sonic details dancing warmly over the music.

hate the hot takes in this thread, “e-bow” is so shudderingly beautiful, my favorite rem song for a while (still???). these corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet

the mellotron!

i guess on the surface it is a super weird and ungainly thing to release as a single but the titular e-bow and patti smith’s vocal just glow

god knows why anytime stipe does a spoken word thing i am like banging my hands on a table and hooting and hollering

All the boys and all the girls
Sweet-toothed
Each and every one a little scary
I said your name

Yeah, "E-Bow" was the last R.E.M. song I loved (or even really liked, I guess).

I was on a boring camping holiday and travelled two hours to buy “E-Bow” on cassingle, the day it came out, at Norwich Our Price. The glamour!!!

I love it but the end section where Patti sings “tastes like fear” always pulls me out a bit, because it’s a bit silly, and I always sing “tastes like feet”. Otherwise it’s fantastic. It’s one of those classic REM songs that doesn’t sound like anything else.

“Reveal” (and “Around The Sun”) had me hyper-aware of Stipe’s confidence-growth as a songwriter, there is a moment toward the end of “Saturn Return” (on Reveal) where he’s just so exposed and confident and it felt like the total inversion of the early IRS records, where he was the appealingly shy guy in front of a taut and extroverted backing band

The last song on Reveal, “Beachball”, is kinda lovely, but the real faceplant is “I’ll Take The Rain” right before it, it’s almost a heart warmer but something about it just trips and falls. I don’t think I noticed before that “Imitation Of Life” is somewhat of a clips episode, lyric-wise, lots of little nods to previous songs, what a great song

Oh and that second song? “I’ve Been High”? Wow. What a series of bad production decisions. Jaw-dropping!

Around The Sun is really specific in its failure, the entire production/songwriting has shifted away from “every part is essential” to being this kinda mealy fruit salad of “things”. It’s very under-mixed compared to the other albums, lots of room, and I kept wondering what it’d be like if it was as punchy and compressed as, say, Out Of Time, but truth is none of the instrumental components are/were worth bringing to the forefront. Could be a casualty of early-ProTools creative tendencies? Either way, like Reveal, Stipe sounds just as committed as ever. It’s nice to hear this band in its “falling off” stage and know it’s not because the songs themselves are weak.

I'm one of this board's lone Reveal defenders. I really love how of its time it sounds - in the sense that most of it embodies this sunshine pop feel that is *very* much my version of 2001 (liminal early childhood sounds) bcuz of its similarities to Gregg Alexander's genuinely great hits with Ronan Keating and Texas, or something like Travis' Sing which has this lite-psych production with lots of sonic details dancing warmly over the music.

Opening song “The Lifting” definitely did this for me, yeah, but the rest of it was pretty floppy

drawing patterns with a cork on the tablecloth
promising volcanic change of plot

a nice thing i'll say about reveal is that i adore buck's guitar playing on it, like "saturn return" is a hard song for me to enjoy but his guitar work is full of these clear yet desperately bent notes clawing out of this noisy mass and it's imo the the peak of the kind of composition and tone he'd been working toward since monster