REM: Classic or dud?

enjoyed this video too. and the song! sounds like an r.e.m. song anyway. after all my trolling, i'm actually listening to the newest one. via youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHcg7m68x20&feature=relmfu

Uberlin is rather a good song I must say. As is Walk It Back. I'll need to give Collapse Into Now a proper chance.

They've got some interesting film makers in for this. Albert Maysles! A worthwhile project. Reminds me of the non-single videos they made for Out of Time which gave me a nice early teenage introduction to the look of art films.

Sam Taylor Wood's video for Uberlin is lovely. Nice to see someone dancing around familiar East London locations. And the Horse Piss video is great! She looks so joyous dancing away.

http://remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1322

The All The Best vid is by James Herbert. Presumably not the horror writer...

That song with Peaces isn't very good, but the video has nice colours and modernist architecture. Enjoying Stipe's deadpan expression in these - quite the opposite of his earnest expression and goatee of empathy in the Everybody Hurts promo, say.

Did we ever poll Berry Buck Mills Stipe?

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V4rHwHfzNR8/SodyZ2zZMMI/AAAAAAAACU0/G6thqwaqnjE/michael-stipe-rem.jpg

what is the horse piss video? first one i've seen from the new one is "uberlin" just above scott posted (which is pretty great)

Figures:

"R.E.M. Caps Career With First-Ever Definitive Greatest Hits Album." It was a marketing gimmick!

Huh, I listened to Automatic for the first time in forever, probably at least a decade. I might actually like it more than some of the early stuff!

Lot of nice touches in the arrangements/production: mandolin, strings, accordion, pretty noise on "Sweetness Follows".

I'd totally forgotten how much I liked "Try Not to Breathe".

I even like "Ignoreland" these days.

oh, c'mon.

C'mon, what took me so long, or c'mon, the song still sucks?

(b)

It's definitely a weak spot, but after years of simply skipping it I really don't mind it anymore. Maybe it took a couple of albums of almost entirely weak spots to put it into perspective?

The track list for the new greatest hits thing is pretty silly -- basically pretending that it makes sense to give equal weight to pre-Automatic and Automatic-->forward. Two tracks from Fables and LRP? C'mon now.

is the term "bandwagon" still applicable when a group dissolves in some way or another? i find myself listening to more r.e.m. since their break-up than i ever have in my life ... gotta be another word for it, no?

For me, "Ignoreland" is crucial to Automatic for the People. The album is such a piece and somehow that track works within the overall feel of the album even though it's its own stylistic entity. Same thing with "Drive" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight."

The unified feel is a big part of the album's aesthetic triumph, but the eclecticism working within that framework is also big.

The track list for the new greatest hits thing is pretty silly -- basically pretending that it makes sense to give equal weight to pre-Automatic and Automatic-->forward. Two tracks from Fables and LRP? C'mon now.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Monday, September 26, 2011 8:04 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

bands of their statures always end up with several best-ofs -- period specific ones, ones that are "just the hits," multi-disc collections that are evenly spread across their entire career. it makes sense for them to do the latter right now. disc 1 covers the first 10 years and disc 2 covers the last 20 years, so it's still pretty well weighted toward the early years, and it's not like Eponymous and And I Feel Fine don't already exist to give the IRS years their due.

that said it is kind of a funky selection with a few fairly notable singles not included.

For me, "Ignoreland" is crucial to Automatic for the People. The album is such a piece and somehow that track works within the overall feel of the album even though it's its own stylistic entity. Same thing with "Drive" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight."

for me it was an awkward, cringe-inducing moodkiller.

not that AFTP couldn't use some up-tempo songs -- it certainly could -- just not this one.

gotta be another word for it, no?

newstalgia?

fonky REM will never not be awesome and hilarious to me -- "Ignoreland" was my favorite song on the album when it came out and i thought REM were kind of old and square compared to the newer alt-rock bands i was into, and even now i like it a lot

chall ops

::shrug:: i know i don't have the 'typical REM fan' pov and i don't present myself as such

I like the shrillness of Ignoreland as sort of a final blow against Reaganism at the dawn of the Clinton era.

Plus obv not like it ever stopped being relevant. I don't mind an old-fashioned anthem in the middle of Automatic's slackerism.

as anti-Reaganism it was incoherent -- I just liked the sound of Stipe distorted; he was like a second guitar.

Was it an official single or an airplay hit? On my college station it got massive play, as much as "Drive" and far more than "The Sidewinder..." or "Man on the Moon."

apparently it went top 5 on the mainstream and modern rock charts! i knew i'd heard it on the radio but i didn't realize it was that big.

Chorus is gorgeous.

^^^^ rhyme

we should do a Best Track That's Not On The New Best Of poll. no Drive, nor Daysleeper or Near Wild Heaven for example and yet New Test Leper gets on there!?

no Radio Song!

i really like the production on ignoreland.

actually i listened to aftp straight through the other day and i really like the production on the whole thing.

Never messed with AFTP until right now, skipped that one and Monster was the end for me. Thanks for the tip.

yeah, that's not a bad album! i had an old girlfriend who made me listen to it. and i remember not hating it. i'm still surprised by those new videos/songs i watched the other day. they weren't horrible! i mean, they seemed to be trying really hard to sound like, uh, themselves. of old. and not doing it too badly.

Which was the video in the past several years of a bunch of people dancing at a pool party all at different heights?

except for the fact that you probably don't ever need to hear everybody hurts and man on the moon ever again. as far as aftp goes.

"Man on the Moon" sounded so good when I heard it at the mall the other day!

i think you mean 2001's "Imitation of Life," james

So I do. Time flies.

Now that they've finally broken up I can peruse that lost decade of their catalog in safety.

I'm feeling sentimental or something; I listened to "All The Way to Reno" a little while ago and was moved, specifically by the "You know where you are" bit with that two-note guitar lick.

I was less moved by the electronic swirls.

There's some lovely stuff on "Reveal." It just comes off a bit half-baked (or maybe more of the same) after "Up," like it and "Around the Sun" just didn't have enough inspiration to support their inadequacies.

heh, the first line of Christgau's "Reveal" review: "Not as bad as it first sounds, but also not as good as they thought when they released it, or they wouldn't have, I hope." That about sums it up.

"Man on the Moon" sounded so good when I heard it at the mall the other day!

― timellison, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 10:54 PM (16 minutes ago)

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah"

My friend did an hour-long set of Berry-era R.E.M. on his public radio show today. The next to last song was "Leave", which I'd never heard before and enjoyed very much.

Just popping in to say: "SHAAAAAAAAKIIIINNG THROOOOUGGGH/OPPOOORRRRTUUUNNNE"

Texarkana came on the other day - never previously rated it, but I really liked it.

"Man on the Moon": "Mott the Hoople and the game of Life" is one of my favourite opening lines ever, and the video's up near the top too.

"Man on the Moon" I would like a lot more had the movie never existed. I chalk it up as not the band's fault.

I was really thrilled when I bought the songbook of AFTP and found that it had all the lyrics in it. They made a huge difference to my appreciation of the songs. Plus, it felt like they were almost clandestine, like we weren't really supposed to read them, since they weren't printed on the record sleeve. Even though it was an official songbook of course.

never want to hear "everybody hurts" again. "man on the moon" is alltime though.