REM: Classic or dud?

"Out of Time" definitely boasts the largest discrepancy between highs and lows of any R.E.M. album.

Agree again. "Low" may the single worst song they ever released. I'm not a fan of "Radio Song" or "Endgame," either. But the highs - "Losing My Religion," "Near Wild Heaven," "Belong," and "Half a World Away" - are great.

The live disc on the "Document"-reissue sounds really, really good. Intense, energetic, and great renditions. Well worth checking out.

I saw them on that tour, and it was a pretty great show. But those arena shows were the death of them. The arena slog resulted in a disinterest in playing together that was palpable on everything from Green on. Out Of Time was the end of the line for me (although New Adventures has a decent moment or two).

I remember an Up-era interview where one the band, (Mills possibly) suggested one of the reasons New Adventures didn't sell that well was because casual fans were put off by the idea of an new album partly recorded in soundchecks and dressing rooms. So nothing to do with it's predecessor alienating the many who bought their biggest album and realising a wilfuly obscure, tune-free track as lead single.

those arena shows were the death of them. The arena slog resulted in a disinterest in playing together that was palpable on everything from Green on

I disagree. First of all, they didn't tour behind Out of Time and Automatic, so I think their batteries were recharged when they did tour behind Monster. And they used the Monster tour to do what they used to do in the good old I.R.S. days - i.e., write and road-test the next album while on tour behind the last one, with the result that New Adventures was their last unquestionably great album. I like a lot of what followed after Berry left, and Up is great in its own way, but New Adventures is the great R.E.M. "rock" album that Monster was supposed to be, and the reason it's great is that they wrote it on tour instead of in a rehearsal studio (or in the actual studio).

I remember an Up-era interview where one the band, (Mills possibly) suggested one of the reasons New Adventures didn't sell that well was because casual fans were put off by the idea of an new album partly recorded in soundchecks and dressing rooms

If they were casual fans, how would they have known that New Adventures was recorded in sound checks? It would seem to me that the definition of a casual fan is someone who doesn't keep up with that level of minutiae. Far more likely that, as you note, that "E-Bow" was a challenging first single, although "Losing My Religion" and "Drive" weren't the most obvious first singles from their albums, either. But they could get away with releasing an acoustic dirge as a first single in '92, whereas they could no longer get away with that in '96.

I still maintain that "Bittersweet Me" should have been the lead single from New Adventures.

Yeah. Losing My Religion was an unusual smash hit, but it undoubtedly launched them into bigger leagues, especially internationally. Drive was tuneful enough to release while they were riding high, E-Bow The Letter has no tune to speak of.

I've always felt a kind of weird resentment to that particular song, mainly because was hyped even by friends as some kind of mind-blowing art single despite not being very good. Two years later came Daysleeper.

i love playing armchair a&r about what an album's singles COULD have been but i dunno if there was any magic sequence of singles that would've drastically improved the initial response to New Adventures -- i love "Bittersweet Me" but i dunno if it would've slayed as a lead single. "New Test Leper" might've come off like Automatic Redux and "Wake Up Bomb" might've come off like Monster Redux. if you look at my old commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996 poll, which New Adventures won, i think there's a case to be made that alt-rock as a whole was in a sales freefall that year and there's a good chance neither REM nor any of their contemporaries could possibly be as big in 96 or thereon as they'd been in 91-95.

Then again, I would have said Electrolite.

"E-Bow" def one of their best songs, though. It's a amazingly strange thing. They never made anything like it again ( probably not before either, for that matter. It's pretty singular)

Several xposts

yeah think landscape had changed, i can remember that alot of ppl reading success of alanis, hootie, and in a different way beck at the time as market wanting to move on from altrock, think delayed reaction to monster was a factor and choice of 'e-bow' (which i do love) as first single played a huge role as well.

They never made anything like it again

I think I only played it twice, but 'Blue' struck me as Son Of E-Bow.

On second thought, I actually might not know their post-Berry output well enough to know if they made anything like it again. You may very well be right.

Just listened again, it's not the only old song it's reminiscent of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP3aXrtTzt8
Oh and Patti Smith is on it

Thing with New Adventures I noticed a lot of sniping from journos, esp British.."wait a minute..they're back again? fuck off"

This was bad timing around Britpop's biggest commercial year. Too American, too old (as a band), too much association with the musical landscape pre-1995.

It was reviewed pretty well amongst the usual weeklies/monthlies If I remember. I'm not sure where I got sleeper 'critical' hit...it's kind of a 'sleeper' album in many ways anyway, the cover, the songs, the attitude. To me, it suggested an older band, who'd had been around a while, and were comfortable (enough) with that.

I think the general under the radar status and release of New Adventures has led to some idea that it wasn't well regarded at the time of release or at any point since...when it pretty much has been at every point. The fact it was released in 1996 is key really. But then REM wouldn't have released an album like that before then, so..

iirc it got 4.5 stars in Rolling Stone, made Spin's top 20 of the year. the "sleeper" status is definitely based on its flop sales

I disagree. First of all, they didn't tour behind Out of Time and Automatic, so I think their batteries were recharged when they did tour behind Monster. And they used the Monster tour to do what they used to do in the good old I.R.S. days - i.e., write and road-test the next album while on tour behind the last one, with the result that New Adventures was their last unquestionably great album. I like a lot of what followed after Berry left, and Up is great in its own way, but New Adventures is the great R.E.M. "rock" album that Monster was supposed to be, and the reason it's great is that they wrote it on tour instead of in a rehearsal studio (or in the actual studio).

― Driver 8, Saturday, November 10, 2012 7:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree re: batteries recharged for Monster tour, and the subsequent success of New Adventures (parts of which I love). But one of the things I loved most about them was the quirky drive that Berry provided, and how the other members worked from that. That dynamic diminished and eventually vanished completely as the halls got bigger.

spin kinda trashed it in original review though, there was a definite (albeit slight, esp in comparison to what came post-berry) backlash at the time, dero wrote some slam piece that got attn, the jefferson holt shit went down. it's rep is strong (acclaimed has it #13 for year, #173 for decade, #917 all-time, which is comparable to lifes rich pageant, better than fables or monster) but i think if it had actually been their last album it's rep would be even higher, it's definitely in my top five for them. i do wonder if they'll ever come back into fashion.

xpost tarfumes i think another factor ppl overlook besides move to arenas (and i do wonder if that touring aspect and contract aspect it must be said isn't there what happens differently - do they make another record in the oot/aftp vein? do they spend the post-berry years making weirder records?) is buck moving out of athens post-divorce after aftp.

re: that driver 8 quote i do remember when i first heard and was disappointed by up thinking 'well automatic perfected oot, and new adventures perfected monster so maybe the next rem will be great'. didn't happen. i've come around on up some, when i finally made my up/reveal mix up ended up dominating it. meanwhile the murmur trestle is pretty much definitely coming down soon, what remains of the rem church will be torn down soon after a fire, weaver d's might be closing, and there isn't a radio station you can pick up in athens that plays any rem.

xp Good point about Buck's relocation. I also remember Mills saying something in their "Behind the Music" about how bigger halls required broader gestures. That just confirmed one of the sources of my disappointment with their post-Lifes Rich Pageant (or, depending on my mood, post-Document) records.

Also, Stipe became less interesting to me as a vocalist when he started enunciating on Pageant (at IRS' insistence, rumor had it).

huh, never heard that irs insistence thing though it makes sense - it's a definite stumbling block to mainstream success. there's a pretty huge gap for me personally between chronic town-murmur-reckoning and everything else. not a knock on the later stuff but that early stuff will always always be my fave, and the difference between what they sounded like live those early days vs later is night and day. when i was in high school i used to write 'please make another record with mitch easter' on a postcard and slip it thru the mail slot at their office all the time.

Never forget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CERhzm6t7I

i think if it had actually been their last album it's rep would be even higher

definitely, monster/new adventures would have made a good presence/ittod

huh, never heard that irs insistence thing though it makes sense

I mean, it might be an urban legend, but the difference between Stipe's approach on Fables vs. Pageant is pretty stark.

when i was in high school i used to write 'please make another record with mitch easter' on a postcard and slip it thru the mail slot at their office all the time.

hahaha. That rules.

rem def copped to don gehman giving stipe shit during the recording of pageant, but I never heard IRS did

and even if Gehman didn't give Stipe shit it's musically impossible to mumble through a Gehman production.

I like the idea of Miles Copeland sitting Stipe down with Synchronicity and saying "listen to how well he enunciates every syllable! you can't argue with 8 million sold."

"repeat after me...CAUGHT beTWEEN syCLla AND charbDYIS"

"CAWbuTWEEN"

"CAUGHT beTWEEN"

"CAWbuTWEEN"

loool

My theory is that Stipe changed his vocals after someone gave him a copy of Easter Everywhere.

pleased to see the hate for Out Of Time; such a let down after Green.

New Adventures is kinda their Abbey Road; took 10 years for people to really start raving about it as one of their best yet now it's in so many people's Top 3s and you don't bat an eyelid.

I love OOT -- such a big step after Green.

Green was the first one I owned, and I thought, "Ohhh I hope they don't all sound like this..."

oh c'mon Abbey Road is so not a realistic analogy in any way

for one thing Abbey Road caught the Beatles at the very end but still at the peak of their artistic and commercial power.

Not yet got the Document reissue but will do - looking forward to hearing the live show. I saw them at Hammersmith on that same four-date European tour in 87, and they were blistering.

The REM reissues have been pretty masterfully handled, in fact. Genuinely interesting bonus material all round, though for listening pleasure, I wish Fables and Pageant had been packaged with contemporaneous live shows rather than the demos. That said, the Fables demos showed how much the much maligned Joe Boyd brought to what remains, for me, the best REM record.

"Fables" is the only "classic" REM album I've never been able to crack. No idea why.

My first album was also "Green," purchases the same day as "Eponymous," so I never made much of a distinction between old and new REM - it was all kind of new. But "Monster" was where I got off the boat, I guess. After that, it was always someone else's band, not mine, as much as I liked much of what they released after.

I listened to New Adventures In Hi-Fi again last night, because it had been a while. The thing I love about the album is the way that it ends with 'Electrolite', as the instruments trail off leaving Michael Stipe to sing "I'm outta here". It's a fucking excellent way to end an album, and if R.E.M. had stopped there it would have been the perfect end to their recording career.

I attempted to listen to Monster afterwards, and I just didn't find that it excited me as much as New Adventures In Hi-Fi. The thing is, they HAD to make Monster in order to go on tour to make New Adventures In Hi-Fi, and it kinda shows. Monster sounds like a band trying to remember how to ROCK after Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, and New Adventures In Hi-Fi, with cuts like 'Depature', 'The Wake Up-Bomb', 'So Fast So Numb', sounds like a band in full-on, enthusiastic, excited rock-out mode.

It got me thinking, maybe Monster would have been a far more better record if the band had just went out on a short tour and road-tested it out in front of audiences first, shook the rust off and got back into the 'rock band' type of mindset, before subsequently recording it when the band were more comfortable. But as is, Monster sounds like a document of a band trying to re-learn how to be a rock band, rather than a document of a band confidently BEING a rock band.

The intentions behind making Monster were understandable ('we need a ROCK album, else we can't go on tour!'), but I don't think they were quite ready to make THAT particular album at the stage that they did.

i almost wish the singles had been leave" then "departure" then "electrolite" for a farewell trilogy

i almost wish the singles had been leave" then "departure" then "electrolite" for a farewell trilogy

― da croupier, Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually, that had never occurred to me before... the 'Leave'/'Departure' plus references to being 'Outta here' (Electrolite) etc. If they'd stopped there the band could have easily made a case for 'coded messages' in the same way as they have done for Collapse Into Now, although in this case they would have been incredibly unintentional!

And am I the only one that wants to laugh out loud every time they hear Stipe sing "I want to wash you with my hair" on 'Be Mine'?

he wants to wash you with his pubes

I listened to New Adventures In Hi-Fi again last night, because it had been a while. The thing I love about the album is the way that it ends with 'Electrolite', as the instruments trail off leaving Michael Stipe to sing "I'm outta here". It's a fucking excellent way to end an album, and if R.E.M. had stopped there it would have been the perfect end to their recording career.

I attempted to listen to Monster afterwards, and I just didn't find that it excited me as much as New Adventures In Hi-Fi. The thing is, they HAD to make Monster in order to go on tour to make New Adventures In Hi-Fi, and it kinda shows. Monster sounds like a band trying to remember how to ROCK after Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, and New Adventures In Hi-Fi, with cuts like 'Depature', 'The Wake Up-Bomb', 'So Fast So Numb', sounds like a band in full-on, enthusiastic, excited rock-out mode.

I also listened to New Adventures last night: for my money, the real rock epics are "Undertow," "Leave," and "Low Desert."

It got me thinking, maybe Monster would have been a far more better record if the band had just went out on a short tour and road-tested it out in front of audiences first, shook the rust off and got back into the 'rock band' type of mindset, before subsequently recording it when the band were more comfortable. But as is, Monster sounds like a document of a band trying to re-learn how to be a rock band, rather than a document of a band confidently BEING a rock band.

The intentions behind making Monster were understandable ('we need a ROCK album, else we can't go on tour!'), but I don't think they were quite ready to make THAT particular album at the stage that they did.

Agreed. I said more or less the same thing yesterday, but Monster is the sound of R.E.M. in the studio self-consciously willing themselves to rock, whereas New Adventures is the sound of them on tour, in full rock mode, which produced far more rocking (and all-around better) results.

I thought R.E.M.'s line on Monster was they set out to make Self-Conscious Rock Songs, with Stipe putting quotation marks around the glam posing.

My opinion hasn't changed since '94: I love the thing, despite the occasional strain.

Pretty much every one of the band's post-"Automatic" albums would have sounded better, or at least benefited, if they were just recorded as a band in some big empty room rather than fussed over in the studio. Even something like "New Adventures" doesn't exactly sound like some shambling "Exile" recorded in back rooms on the fly, let alone "Zooropa," recorded much the same way. And everything after "Adventures" sounds coldly, airlessly anchored to a click track, as if no two members of the band were in the same room at the same time, which may very well have been the case. My dream final REM album would have come after "Up," with the three remaining members and no one else recording something with few overdubs in an old church or something. But really they went the complete opposite direction.

I just read a great, simple quote from Mick Jagger about being in a long-established group where things are done as much out of duty and contractual obligation as much as passion and creativity:

“When you’re at the beginning of your career, you’re in the band 24 hours a day. But as you get older you don’t want to be doing that. I think the band is fine being in the band, and the band rather likes not being in the band, too. That’s a good balance.”

quotes like Jagger

My opinion hasn't changed since '94: I love the thing, despite the occasional strain.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My opinion on Monster now is far more warmer now than it was for a good number of years, to be honest. The only track on there that I'd say I out-and-out LOATHE is 'King Of Comedy', which I feel could have potentially been a decent track but doesn't seem suited to the treatment it received on the album.

Interesting to note the change in appearance of Mills & Stipe between Automatic For The People and Monster, too. Up until and including Automatic, Mills had this definite nerdy/geeky appearance, and suddenly with Monster (and definitely onwards ) it seems like he's trying to bury his inherent geekiness and try and look 'cool'...

Stipe, too, suddenly went from hat-wearing smartly-dressed eccentric to bald head, mini-beard, t-shirts and rock star posing.

Stipe's Monster-era image is such a hell of a contrast to any image he'd had up to that point!

I think the artificiality of Monster is one of its strengths. Rock in quotation marks? Perhaps. I kinda see the album as a queer pomo glam album, full of sex and paranoia. The production suits that. Admittedly, songs like Star 69 worked better live, but the likes of Crush With Eyeliner, Tongue and King of Comedy benefit from their inauthenticity. The fast rockers on New Adventures (Wake Up Bomb, Departure) are better as performances, but they're not particularly great songs and next to the weird things on Monster they sound rather too much like ordinary rock.

The great lost song of post-Berry REM is Beat A Drum. The 'demo' version which came as a b-side to Imitation of Life is incredibly beautiful - just Stipe singing a beautiful melody over piano and acoustic guitar. The fussy faux Brian Wilson treatment it got on Reveal ruins the impact of the melody and lyrics, not least in the chorus, where the aching pause between lines is filled with a parping horn motif. That said, I do like some stuff on Reveal, not least The Lifting and the hazy exotica stuff like Beachball. Imitation of Life is ok, but a bit REM jangle pop by numbers. I'll Take The Rain is one of their worst, kinda like if Diane Warren and U2 got together to write a stinky stadium ballad.