Best of the platinum R.E.M. albums

Out of Time, followed by Monster, NAIHF, and Document.

"Automatic For The People" remains the best thing they've ever done, and I doubt they will ever be able to top it.

I really love New Adventures -- I usually don't care about someone's summing-up album, but for me this one worked.

my top 3's Automatic - New - Document, but i voted for New

Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Document, Monster, Green, New Adventures in Hi-Fi

but really I love the first five about equally, and loathe New Adventures.

up and reveal and the other latter-day albums sold less than document and green? ouch.

Yeah, Document and Green both had big singles.

i've always bought into the out of time/indie cult band become mtv darlings narrative but i guess it wasn't quite that sudden or drastic a change

Document and Green both had big singles.

Weren't "Daysleeper" and "Imitation Of Life" rather big? Kind of?

compared to "The One I Love" and "Stand"? not really.

Weren't "Daysleeper" and "Imitation Of Life" rather big? Kind of?

Not in the US; I don't know if anyone who isn't an ILX poster ever heard them.

Difficult poll. I voted "Document" but could have gone with "Automatic" or "Hi Fi." For some reason "Out of Time" never grabbed me, maybe over-exposure. "Green" seems the weakest of the bunch, "Monster" the most under-rated (now, not when it was released).

Document. Green has some amazing highs (Stand, Orange Crush), but lower lows. Out of Time is better than it gets credit for, though Shiny Happy People still offendeth mine eye. Automatic is the critic's darling and objectively impressive, but it just doesn't move me much. Plus Everybody Hurts exceeds Shiny Happy in sheer loathesomeness.

Yeah, you're actually wrong on both counts there.

I get that a lot

green, without hesitation

Automatic For The People is their best record.

Document, easily. Followed closely by AFTP. Those two are rated just about right, I'd say. I do agree that "Everybody Hurts" did not age very well, though. But that could just be b/c I'm old and bitter now. FWIW, I think Up is better than all of these.

I'm a lurker and voting Automatic. I imagine it will win and people will blame the lurkers.

Automatic and you can blame me for that.

Automatic for the People > Document > Out of Time > New Adventures in Hi-Fi >
Monster > Green

i think automatic probably is the best of these, but something about its self-confidence makes me doubt it a little. like, they knew exactly what they were doing when they made it, and they nailed it and hit their big commercial peak, but the relative absence of the weird half-baked-experiment stuff that you can find on most of their albums makes it seem a little too neat. i'm tempted to vote document, which has lots of half-bakedness, but i think i'll go green because apparently too many people hate it.

Monster.

Oh, Green. It remains among my 2 or 3 favourite REM albums, rather unfashionably. I pretty much can't listen to any of the other listed albums, although they all have high points. I'll listen to Green all day.

the toplessness in the "pop song '89" video was a controversy for about a week. mostly now i just notice stipe had all that hair...

hahah tipsy before i even clicked on that first youtube i was all i bet it's "Get up".. i still love it 19 years (?wtF?!) later. hate to say it ('cause it's hella played) but i'm afraid one of their biggest sins post-Fables is stipe's vocals being pushed up in the mix.

i fucking accidentily clicked on "out of time" when i meant "automatic for the people", but didnt notice until i had already clicked "vote". AFTP is by far their best album in general, and one of the best rock records of the 90s.

when out of time came out, i thought it sort of took green's ideas and built on them. now i think it took green's ideas and contracted them. i still like it -- can't fuck with "losing my religion," "low," "country feedback," the unjustly maligned "shiny happy people" -- but green seems bigger and more intimate at the same time.

Since the poll isn't "platinum REM albums with my favorite songs on them" and Lifes Rich Pageant didn't go platinum, this has to be Automatic For The People. It's not my favorite REM record, but it's their best post-Murmur.

Yes, it's tremendously assured, but if this is their "cocky" play it's awfully weird and dark. Where tipsy mothra hears shrewd and canny, I hear a band at the peak of their powers. And what we're both hearing is an extraordinary control.

Maintaining that melancholy beauty across an entire album's worth of material is no mean feat, and the extraordinary consistency that makes some of the stuff that might have counted in the oddball column on earlier records fit right in.

It's also what makes everything that they've done since more or less irrelevant. There's a lot of great material since, but nothing left to prove or say.

i guess automatic is in that nevermind zone for me, where it's hard to actually hear the record. i know it's great and respect it and just am not drawn to it anymore. still needs more distance, maybe. where green or monster can still seem sort of fresh if i go awhile without listening to them.

(nb: rogermexico and i have been debating r.e.m. albums since we used to listen to reckoning in my bedroom in like 1984 or something.)

weird. dark. beautiful.

i guess automatic is in that nevermind zone for me, where it's hard to actually hear the record.

doesn't the legend now have it that automatic was the last record K-Cobe played?

I had no idea Green was so hated. It's my favourite here by a million miles. I Remember California is possibly my 2nd or 3rd favourite REM song.

document or automatic. i loved green the week it came out (out of time too) but the love didn't last.

i think automatic probably is the best of these, but something about its self-confidence makes me doubt it a little. like, they knew exactly what they were doing when they made it, and they nailed it and hit their big commercial peak, but the relative absence of the weird half-baked-experiment stuff that you can find on most of their albums makes it seem a little too neat.

This was exactly my reaction to Out of Time, so much so that I kind of slept on Automatic for a few years.

"Shiny Happy People" and "Country Feedback" are weird half-baked experiments! They're weird, fully cooked experiments!

make up yor mind!

I've always liked "Pop Song 89," never saw the video before. Leave it to Stipe to be able to render a bunch of topless women 100% non-sexual. Kind of brilliant.

I'm least sick of Document. I remember reading an interview in Spin or Option in late '87 when Peter Buck said they're still hoping to be able to create a classic album as good as their favorites from Patti Smith, Wire, Television, etc. The irony, is they already did with Murmur. I guess it's hard to admit everything's downhill after your debut.

"Shiny Happy People" and "Country Feedback" are weird half-baked experiments! They're weird, fully cooked experiments!

*are NOT weird half-baked experiments

Thanks for posting the Sugarland cover of "Nightswimming", Tipsy! I'd not seen that. I really like that band; my brother has been sort-of acquaintances of theirs since Jennifer Nettles Band and Billy Pilgrim days, so it's been weird to see them get huge.

I listened to Automatic last night, at 3AM when I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep because the wind is so strong here this weekend. It sounded like my house was fighting back, and I could sympathize. Automatic takes me to a strange place that I won't get into because it's so intensely personal; the record is so much a part of a specific period of my life that was quite dark and new and weird (nobody was telling me what to do, and I wasn't sure that was a good thing). So listening to it is like going home for the holidays, that mix of nostalgia and familiarity with the puzzling foreignness places and people get when you haven't seen them for a long time. I was struck by the organ work (is that Mike Mills or Peter Holsapple?), it's really overwhelming, and gives the record its funereal vibe that critics seem to focus on (yeah, the lyrics too, but they're all over the place).

As a mood piece the record overwhelms me but as a family of songs I still prefer Out of Time. I think I'm the lone person on ILM who absolutely loves "Radio Song", though. The vibe is so technicolor, all those pastels we were wearing in the early 90s, and the mood's of possibility (and love songs!), rather than nostalgia and memory. I usually prefer possibility over nostalgia, as I'm naturally inclined to look back anyway, I don't need help.

I had no idea Green was so hated.

Me neither. It's still my favourite too.

"Out Of Time" was on to something. "Losing My Religion" may be their all time best, "Near Wild Heaven" is wonderful and "Endgame" is way underrated. I even kind of like "Shiny Happy People". But then there's stuff such as "Radio Song" dragging it down. "Automatic" may be the only R.E.M. album that worked perfectly from the beginning to the end. And there are wonderful songs such as "The Man On The Moon", "Drive", "Try Not To Breathe" and "Find The River" - all among their career highlights.

Document and Green = great, wonky arena pomp. POLITICS!!
Automatic For The People and Out Of Time = great, wonky schmaltz. LOVE AND DEATH!!
Monster = great, wonky '90s arena pomp. IRONIC SEX!!
New Adventures In Hi-Fi = A Use Your Illusion style data dump of everything left in the coffers

Schmaltz wins because Love And Death, yo. Out Of Time because its a little more the former. The most gawky and innocent album by a band I associate with the gawky innocence of precocious youth.

"Automatic" may be the only R.E.M. album that worked perfectly from the beginning to the end.
!? One word: Reckoning.

(ar, yes, I realize it's all subjective. I can't listen to Automatic from beginning to end without losing the thread.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

A few months back I listened to Green front to back for the first time in years. Parts of the record sounded really ace, mostly the more acoustic recordings, while some of the more pop rock songs sounded really overcooked.

One thing I kind of liked about New Adventures in HiFi was that it kind of blurred up their sound and got rid of the big sheen. It was a bit more like the early records.

i dunno if it feels like the early albums to me, but HiFi definitely gets a great sound and ambience out of the whole process of it being largely written and pieced together on tour.

It’s hard to express how Monster made R.E.M. feel cool and almost “sinister” when it came out (particularly “Circus Envy,” and the “Bang and Blame” bassline); and how unexpected that was after the mellowness of AFTP).

― This field is required (morrisp), Monday, 27 November 2023 01:59 (fifty-three minutes ago) link

i hadn't listened to it in probably 20 years and my first thought was "oh, they tried to make their version of a sonic youth record." could totally have seen kim singing "crush with eyeliner."

“The Apologist” also has the line “I've skirted all my differences / But now I'm facing up”

“monster” is mentioned TWICE in “circus envy” (“this monster in me makes me retch”)

monster is a great album title, maybe one of the greatest

― ivy., Monday, 27 November 2023 01:36 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd always passively assumed the title was used as a noun, however I think going forward I shall choose to believe it was intended to be read as a verb.

could totally have seen kim singing "crush with eyeliner."

Thurston Moore is already playing and singing on it!

Gonna listen to Monster again brb

i’m straight i’m queer i’m bi

xxp xp well that's one for the "things you were shockingly old when you learned" thread

my intro to Monster, and REM for that matter, was when I was 12 and invited to a birthday party at a mini-golf course by a classmate I'm sure I was trying to impress. Having no money, my mom took whatever suggestion I'd said - my best guess is a coded "A CD by a band because I'd heard this band called The Offspring sing curse words at the playground so that must be cool." So she came back saying she'd asked the person behind the music section at the local K-Mart for any "age appropriate" (i.e. NO SWEARING) and that's what she was recommended.

that classmate could not have been less impressed when he unwrapped it at the birthday party. I swore off the band despite never having heard a note of their music.

"REM? Who invited that kid?"

i've watched the children come and go!

my feelings are fluid, but today

fables of the reconstruction (they may hate it but i dig the joe boyd production on one of the finest set of songs i've ever heard, front to back)
murmur (this is maybe the greatest debut album in english-speaking rock history)
life's rich pageant (this has their best songs)
"chronic town" (if this were an album with another five songs this good it would be their best)
new adventures in hi-fi (rivals the cure's disintegration as an all-time awe-inspiring 'how are they still this awesome this long into it?' album)
green (the first one i heard in real time, too young to have a problem with anything i liked)
out of time (this has some of my favorite songs not on any of the aforementioned)
reckoning (this is still better than most bands' best album)
automatic for the people (the last two songs stick the landing the best in a canon full of amazing album closers)
document (despite it being this low i still love this album -- side 2 continues to grow on me however many years after first feeling disappointed by it)
monster (this is still better than most bands' best album)

the post-bill years remain elusive, but i still think it's me, not them

One of the things I like about the last two albums is that, when they go back to more rock per se, it's not the rooted in the '70s hard rock of Monster/NAiHF. It's something smaller, and while it's not really confined to whatever parameters define garage rock, it's kind of more in that ballpark. And that's what they were originally, too. It's a good use of Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin.

The thing about that "Do it one more time/Show the kids how to do it fine" bit criticized above in "All The Best" is that, when he's singing that, he's singing it over fucking "The One I Love."

"Every Day Is Yours to Win" - last Velvets style jam

listening to dead letter office a lot the last few days. it's kind of a move to cover VU THREE TIMES

but i also wasn't around when it came out, which i think was right around time the VU (1985) album came out, kind of an eara of relative rediscovery of the velvets, maybe? maybe covering them 3 times was more like covering a kind of obscure band?

If you covered them three times, Lou Reed blew you.

xp I think they were covering VU from the beginning(?) Here they are in '84 (I'm sure there are earlier clips):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEEDxQ-xl40

Apparently "There She Goes Again" was the b-side of the IRS version of the "Radio Free Europe" single (which I didn't realize).

kind of an eara of relative rediscovery of the velvets

Definitely. The Polygram reissues of the first three albums came out in '85 as well.

also while relistening to DLO, i've thought more about my assumptions of the pylon cover. "crazy" is one of the greatest songs of all time, i fucking love pylon. i assume that r.e.m. was trying to do pylon a favor by making it track #1 on DLO, but have they ever talked about it?

peter buck's famous anecdote about r.e.m. and pylon releasing records on the same day, so he went out and picked up the pylon album to see what he was up against. paraphrasing: "i was so disappointed that their record was so much better than ours."

lol

I'm pretty sure Buck thought, "....but we're gonna outsell you four to one."

all told, pylon's og is clearly better but rem's take is hardly disrespectful.

Pylon opened for R.E.M. a few times (including a leg of the Green World Tour). Also, when Rolling Stone called R.E.M. "America’s Best Rock and Roll Band" in 1987, Berry apparently insisted that title belongs to Pylon (though I don't see that quote in the archived article; maybe it was a sidebar).

(I have the actual issue in a box somewhere...)

I was on the Natalie Merchant thread and went to YouTube to find this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpIxOPUxIt4

And much to my surprise, found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKlwHbXVBJ8

i gragbbed this still

https://i.imgur.com/8K6Na5G.png

awesome performance! regis looked stunned

ha Peter buys a mandolin in that RS article. I remember reading that one!

“Iwill never, ever, ever, ever play another general-admission show, ever. Ever. And I will never, ever, ever play a place that’s bigger than the place we played tonight, ever.” A pause. “Did I put enough evers in there?” It’s one day later, and Peter Buck isn’t feeling so fine. R.E.M. has just played to 12,000 fans in Williamsburg, Virginia, the only general-admission show of their 1987 tour – and while nobody was hurt, the crush down front was serious, and the band was upset.

“Fables sucked,” says Berry bluntly – though others in the band are somewhat happier with the moody, atmospheric record.

the crush down front was serious

Was it orange, or with eyeliner?

i'm not supposed to be like this

Two bad REM songs that might be ok:

“The Outsiders” - The bit at the end where the drums pause and restart, like “hey we’re hip-hop now!!!!”, is cringe, but the vibe is tender and lovely and the Q-Tip section always moves and surprises me. This might me my favourite song from the REM: the chintzy era

“I’ll take the rain” - David Cavanagh loved this but it’s a career nadir for me and Stipe’s vocal is unusually feeble. And yet… it’s a lovely, strong melody. They should’ve sold it to Lee Ann Womack or something

it's an abysmal attempt at a power ballad, and, no, Lee Ann Womack wrote and commissioned much better songs

Not sure if I'd thought of this before, but Around the Sun sort of reminds me of Bowie's Hours

With almost as shifty a cover

Shitty even!

Hours cover is amaaazing. Albeit only with all the text, that massive viridian O.

Amazing in 1993 during peak Corel Draw.

And those thong sandals

It looks like the Designers Republic's idea of a dentist waiting room and that is one of the only times I will invoke a trip to the dentist in my praise of anything (except, presumably, dentistry).

Around the Sun cover has a similar muzzy morning/chillout CD look to it except it's just kind of boring.

Reminds me of this actually

https://i.discogs.com/l3WeAoIvYqmbKnbQeKUKfQt33Vi7mtVezjUSD52kKfI/rs:fit/g:sm/q:40/h:300/w:300/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQ0MzE3/NS0xNDg2MjE3MjA4/LTI0MTkuanBlZw.jpeg

Re: hours I had the exact same thought!

To an extent, both Around the Sun and ...hours were disappointed attempts to give fans what they (artists and listeners alike) thought they wanted: "why can't they just sit down at the piano or with an acoustic guitar and write us the soulful, melodic songs the way they did in a past decade?" Both are somewhat underrated with a handful of great songs apiece.

both are extremely disappointing

...hours is the worst album he released after Tonight.

Around the Sun is not really any worse compositionally than the other albums from that period (which is to say that it’s excellent, really). A bunch of slow songs, I guess.

There are two outright duds on AtS, in my opinion - The Outsiders and Wanderlust. The rest of the album is slow but generally solid, with one or two truly terrific songs.

As a game with myself, when I listened to all their albums a few weeks back I "rated" every song on a scale of 1-5. My criteria were 5 = truly excellent AND nebulous/subjective personal associations and nostalgia; 4 = truly excellent but lacking that intangible/nostalgic factor; 3 = very good; 2 = just OK/fine; 1 = trash, skip, delete.

And in doing that I only marked seven songs, over the course of their entire recorded output with a 1. (and five of them came on the last three albums). That's a pretty astonishing level of quality.

...hours is the worst album he released after Tonight

absolutely. It has one and a half good songs on it, which is even fewer than Tonight.

What were the two duds from the earlier albums?

I liked AtS fine one I accepted the odd production/mix choices, it’s a formless pastel thing. More inclined to revisit it than Reveal (or hours for that matter)