You Wore Your ExPOLLtations Like An Armored Suit: REM's "Monster"

WTFK delivers killer guitar tone and trem

Strange Currencies is beautiful

And Zooropa is fantastic, you ingrates.

Voted "What's The Frequency Kenneth" because, in spite of the horrible production, it is actually a great song.

Voted for King Of Comedy. Maybe not my absolute favourite, but I love it for being pretty unique in their canon and a far better attempt at ironic electro-rock (horrible term, I know) than anything U2 could muster.
Other faves:
Circus Envy
Tongue
Let Me In
You
I Don't Sleep I Dream
Kenneth
Crush

Kenneth, but Strange Currencies would be up there.

Bumped to compete with bootleg, indie-label Murmur poll. I'm increasingly thinking I should have voted for "Circus Envy."

you can vote for it now, since a week has passed (yeah yeah cheating etc)

Whoever mentioned this album's length should note that New Adventures is much longer, with only two more tracks.

Wait...you can DO that? How did I miss this? I'm going to resist the temptation in any case.

vote twice, I mean, not bring up the length of New Adventures.

wtfk. this is my fav rem.

i like bang and blame best, closely followed by "you"

I probably complained about the length of this album, and I would complain more about New Adventures' length. But I won't, because it's pretty dumb of me to complain since I can just program out or skip those songs.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I think "I Took Your Name" is the only song so far to get no explicit reference on this thread - I think it's pretty good though! Weird little revenge song. I like "I pushed the button and erased your master taaaape..."

"Bang and Blame" is sounding really great to me right now but I just can never quite love it...there's a kind of exhaustion in it which fits the lyric quite well (and makes the clearest bridge from Automatic to this record) but I feel like it also extends to the creative effort - this is one of Stipe's least interesting lyrics to me. Or maybe I just think "Bang and Blame" is a crappy title...

"Tongue" is still the best-sounding thing on here to me. A little muffled but a great track and a very different sound for them - there's that plinky piano from "Nightswimming," "Electrolite" and "At My Most Beautiful" but it's playing well off the organ, the little trembles of guitar, and Stipe's falsetto...it's a very pretty sound for a pretty dirty song!

God bless Mike Mills on "Bang and Blame" though! "BANG!"

...and man, I forgot about the pointless instrumental between "Bang and Blame" and "I Took Your Name." If anything makes the album too long, it's that.

yeah, that instrumental does kinda suck! "Bang and Blame" has such a tender vocal, and it's reminding me tonight a little of "Let It Bleed", in the bit about "rub on me", "jump on me", "let go on me": "you can come all over me". Both tunes have pretty exhausted vibes.

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

Incredibly RONG on the results, guys.

Yeah, but thanks for participating, everybody! I'm just always glad to see oddball album tracks performing so high. Next poll up shortly.

pretty close to right, i think

"Star 69" got no votes and it's the shortest song!

Deeply enhanced by the misreading on "Kiss This Guy" way back in the day: "I know RuPaul, I know RuPaul..."

Correct order, best to worst:

Let Me In
Tongue
I Don't Sleep, I Dream
You
What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
Circus Envy
King of Comedy
Strange Currencies
Crush With Eyeliner
Bang and Blame
Star 69
I Took Your Name

i disagree but i also just remembered that i do kinda love "I Don't Sleep" and sort of wish i voted for it instead of "Strange Currencies"

Top 2 are right, to my surprise. But I should have voted for the unjustly neglected "Star 69" instead of wasting my vote on Kenneth.

i never thought i'd give this another listen..

used to love "let me in" but the guitar sounds really bad now to my ears.

i still like "what's the frequency," "i don't sleep," and "circus envy," i can leave the rest though...

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2019/09/03/rem-monster-reissue-box-set/

That is cool news, but I’m not sure about this(?):

on this alternative version the guitars are pulled back and the vocals pushed forward to create a more open sound and showcase often-revealing lyrics

I’ve never listened to that album and thought — “This needs less Buck, more Stipe”

Listened to the remixed “what’s the frequency Kenneth,” why would you take out the tremolo bit in the chorus? clearly someone needs to re-remix it to add even more tremolo.

The guitar on this record sounds terrible

The new remaster sounds nice.

The remixed "What's The Frequency, Kenneth", yeah, who was asking for this? What a waste.

The guitar on this record sounds terrible

― calstars, Wednesday, September 4, 2019 10:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the guitar tone is one of the five best things about this record

yeah was gonna say

I love "Bang and Blame" so much, just rises in my estimation year after year. maybe their only psychosexual drama? plus the chorus just pops, maybe even more than before with the new remaster, or else I just had it on fucking loud

listening to "Circus Envy" now, my god the guitars

brad otm about the guitar tone

I love how “crush with eyeliner” is just being constantly sliced open by that ultra distorted hard tremelo-d guitar

I did an A/B listen of the two versions of "WTF,K?" – and while the new one sounds fine, yeah, I don't see the point.

It sounds slower somehow

This new anti-canonic Kenneth remix kinda defeats the purpose.

listening to "Circus Envy" now, my god the guitars

R.E.M. were such a tight band.

I mean, the Bill Berry R.E.M.

Listened to the remixed “what’s the frequency Kenneth,” why would you take out the tremolo bit in the chorus? clearly someone needs to re-remix it to add even more tremolo.

― JoeStork, Thursday, 5 September 2019 07:24 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The new remixed version is 20s shorter, weird, song has a cold end too so there must be a few bars missing somewhere.

Mine is even shorter but it leaves out all the non-essential bits.

Wasn’t there a reissue of Music from Big Pink recently where they included a completely new remix for no apparent reason? What a weird trend for reissues

I’m no rem stan but the guitar tones in their early jangly stuff or mid point like in “one I love” and “orange crush” for example are so much more crisp, exciting, nuanced, treble happy than the midrange middle aged bloat of Wtf, K

The fuzz and tremolo on this album are the noise equivalent of the jangle in the early work, c'mon

Pearl Jam remixed Ten by taking off the post-production effects (digital reverb etc.).

this "Kenneth" remix is like idk okay for the verses, but losing the tremolo is nuts (make it sound like a demo, no call-and-response to the chorus takes away a major hook!). at no point does it sound like an object from 1994. why do that? pretty pointless exercise IMO.

Oh wow wtf I do not want to hear that. I don't even really know what the point is of doing a digital remix/remaster of an album that was released in the CD era. I love the guitar tones on this album; they are my favourite aspect (certainly more than Stipe's weird scansion). I didn't think of it as an attempt at 'heavy' at all; closer to their take on shoegaze, maybe. Although it's in some ways v different from the early sound, it was a return of sorts in terms of burying the text a little more.

wow, i love that shoegaze connection. so if anything what would be cool is a remix that tries to make it sound more like loveless... further bury stipe's vocals (turning down the volume and/or adding chorused layers to them), maybe try to muffle the drums... could be amazing

Can't wait for the Exile on Main Street remix where they boost the vocals and take out all the horns.

― pplains, Friday, September 6, 2019 6:51 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^the 2010 remaster added some overdubs(?)

― #YABASIC (morrisp), Friday, September 6, 2019 8:19 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

They only overdubbed the 'new' songs (which they did again on the Some Girls reissue), going so far as to bring in Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman for recording new parts.

Jagger did say he had to resist the urge to remix and clean-up the original album.

wow, i love that shoegaze connection. so if anything what would be cool is a remix that tries to make it sound more like loveless... further bury stipe's vocals (turning down the volume and/or adding chorused layers to them), maybe try to muffle the drums... could be amazing

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Friday, September 6, 2019 10:21 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

in other words, make everything sound like "Let Me In"...yeah, i could dig that (and honestly a lot of the rest of the album is already at least halfway there).

wow what a pointless remix

there's like extra stereo separation going on, they've added some kind of dumbass booming reverb to the drums, idgi

i put on the original right after and thought "wow what a fantastic-sounding song"

Accelerate is the sound of a band that no longer gaf what their guitars sounded like.

I don't think so - that's just...AC30 raunch or whatever it is. Not my favorite R.E.M. record sonically, but neither is Monster! If you guys are objecting to "heavy" as the description of what Buck was doing on Monster, OK, I didn't mean Tony Iommi, but he was definitely using a Marshall and playing with louder, overdriven amp sound.

i like this album but every song feels too long - i always enjoy the openings but eventually i’m ready for them to end and surprised to see like still 2 minutes to go

Always and forever will love Monster. Whenever I think about how I’d rank REM albums (seems to be an annual activity), I always surprise myself with the realization that Monster is a personal Top 5, maybe Top 3.

morrisp otm re: the 'artificial' sounds, it was them forefronting guitars-as-rock-showbiz, is how I always read it

putting stipes vocals upfront doesnt make them any clearer bc its not the mix that makes them difficult to understand, its always his weird cadences and delivery. I get that they need to find/create new content to sell the reissue but that remix is such a strange idea.

the flaming lips released a version of clouds taste metallic at one point that was just ronald jones' isolated guitar tracks, they shouldve done something like that

putting stipes vocals upfront doesnt make them any clearer bc its not the mix that makes them difficult to understand, its always his weird cadences and delivery.

Yeah, what I was trying to allude to re his weird scansion. I had no idea he was singing "Richard said 'withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy'" until I read it, not because of the mix but because the lexical stress was so odd. Similarly, I think he accents the first syllable in "expectations" in the line this poll was named after.

(Obv, the fact that the lyrics are stuff like "what's the frequency, Kenneth? Is your benzedrine? Uh-huh" doesn't help with ease of comprehension.)

Always and forever will love Monster. Whenever I think about how I’d rank REM albums (seems to be an annual activity), I always surprise myself with the realization that Monster is a personal Top 5, maybe Top 3.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Friday, September 6, 2019 12:26 PM

Not quite that high for me, but, yes, and their sexiest album.

i like this album but every song feels too long - i always enjoy the openings but eventually i’m ready for them to end and surprised to see like still 2 minutes to go

― Screamin' Jay Gould (The Yellow Kid), Friday, September 6, 2019 11:13 AM bookmarkflaglink

This was a fun album to use the "preview" button with.

And the promo video at the link, how many different ways do you think skinny white dudes grabbed the mic stand at the "Michael Stipe" audition?

The remix does sound more "contemporary" and less nineties, though. Which may have been what they were looking for with this lame thing they delivered.

I suppose the remix for "Crush with eyeliner" will be 4 minutes of silence.

i know it's not but i always heard it as "your Benson dream"

their sexiest album

And I think it was the first time they ever sang directly about sex? Some of the results were a little, er, dorky ("I've got my telescope head in the haystack"); but it worked overall.

"fuck me, kitten" and all that key-lock stuff wasn't about sex?

No. About kittens, duh

I've got my telescope head in the haystack
I'm getting tired of your dodgeball circus act
Put pepper in my coffee, I forgot to bark on command

I never thought of this as a direct song about sex at all?

(Admittedly, I also never knew what most of those words were until now. Always thought of it as a hate/jealousy song, though, and that still mostly seems to work, looking over them.)

yeah i'm with sund4r there... "telescope head in the haystack" like being on paranoid lookout, alert to everything, but also sifting through irrelevant info (needle in a haystack), or... something

lol, I always thought it was a cringey sex metaphor, but maybe that’s on me

(Also, mea culpa on “Star Me Kitten” – forgot about that one)