R.E.M. trio albums POLL

Well, there's a lot of songs on Up that I like and I enjoy in isolation. However, as a start-to-finish experience I find it a bit overlong (there's one or two tracks which could have been cut, IMO), there's not as much variation in tempo compared to, say, New Adventures In Hi-Fi which is of similar length (and feels shorter as a result). There's a slickness to the production this record that I like, but only in small doses as I think it gets a bit sickening after an hour or so of it.

Accelerate I can listen to from beginning to end, is less slick, has more energy and I like every song on it (yes, even the goofy 'I'm Gonna DJ'), hence why it gets my vote.

Which is worse, Reveal or Around The Sun?

You won't immediately turn off Reveal.

Around The Sun is the worst album R.E.M. ever put their name to, I think even they'd say that themselves.

After the release of their following album, Accelerate, guitarist Peter Buck said that for him Around the Sun "... just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore."

as crap as "Around the Sun" is, at least they're kinda/sorta trying to do something. the last 2 are those dreadful "returns-to-form" beloved by Mojo, hardcore fans and no one else

― col, Saturday, January 17, 2015 12:19 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What, like fall asleep? 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge' and 'Horse To Water' alone wipes the floor with anything on Around The Sun. I don't rate Collapse Into Now as highly as Accelerate, but it has 'All The Best' on it, which again is better than the whole of Around The Sun combined IMO.

I definitely think R.E.M. splitting up was the best thing they could have done at the time when they did it, though. It's hard to say where else they could have taken it.

look, I agree Around the Sun is an utterly shit record. But I find the last 2 are just dispiriting: a band trying to recapture what it thinks its fans want.

The contract w/Warners was a devil's bargain--they had to keep grinding these records out when they should've broken up around 2000. I just wish they'd done some weird thing like Up every 4 years rather than trying to pull a U2.

I mean, yeah, on paper it's easy to point to Accelerate and say "yeah, this band are deliberately, and cynically, trying to go back to their '80s sound", but when I listen to it I don't get the sense that the band are just going through the motions for the sake of pandering to their fanbase even if that may have been the case. If anything they seem to be into it, committed to it and there's a sense that they're having fun (particularly Peter Buck, who if you read between the lines of various interviews preferred to make records this way compared to how they approached the three before), which is something that is definitely absent from Around The Sun. If the band weren't into it, you'd be able to tell on the final product. You can definitely tell on Around The Sun!

I think most people would say that they should have split when Berry left, to be honest. I'm kinda glad they didn't, though.

I still think Up is the best album they ever did. I think they should have split after Reveal.

I have to agree about Around The Sun being better than the next two albums. I think it had more good material and some lovely moments even if it isn't executed as well as it could have been. Really wished I agreed with Turrican.

Up is kind of impressive as a post-Berry left turn, but it's not a fun record. Reveal is a decent summertime album. The other three I've heard once and don't need to hear again (I never made it all the way through Around the Sun).

fp'd omar for starting this poll

I'm basically with Turrican: I don't think Accelerate is *great* all the way through, but its kinda daddish rock moves feel like they're sincere, like it's literally a bunch of dads who play in a bar band and are pretty stoked about these riffs and how loud they get and stuff. It sounds more like New Adventures, or the way they sounded on tour by the mid-00s, than it does their 'classic' records, especially if you compare to 'Bad Day' or even 'Imitation of Life.'

The strongest links back are Mills's backing vocals (pointing to the 80s stuff) and Stipe's sentiments and vocal style (very much their 90s stuff on). It's a different combo of elements, they hadn't really done something that sounds *quite* like ''Supernatural Superserious'' before.

I really like the last two records. It's like listening to REM without any baggage at all. At that point in their careers I was kind of over hoping that they would make something that meant as much to me as Up or Automatic, or really most of those earlier albums. After Around The Sun there was no where to go but up. Those last two records let me listen to REM songs that aren't super familiar and carry zero emotional baggage whle still sounding like REM so I get those residual good vibes from the hundreds of hours spent listening to earlier "better" records. And looking at the track list of Collapse it's all pretty solid, maybe no huge standouts, but no huge duds leap out at me. And that part where Blue goes back into Discoverer always kinda gives me goosebumps.

I still think Up is the best album they ever did.
I still think Up is the best album they ever did.
I still think Up is the best album they ever did.

I was a regular on a big REM fansite and I can definitely say that 'giving the fans what they want re. 'classic' REM was a HUGE deal on the forums after the release of Reveal and Around The Sun - many, many arguments.

Alfred- I'll take that as enthusiastic agreement.

I can totally appreciate why people would prefer Murmur, Reckoning, Out Of Time, Automatic and New Adventures but Up is just so beautiful in places. I suppose on a track by track basis Murmur would seem the best but I still prefer Up.

fp'd robert adam gilmour for being young

Is "fp" face palm? I'm really bad at that stuff. It taken me a bloody year to figure out "otm"

"open thy mouth"

landslide. UP is amazing, literally as good as anything they did, for at least half of it.

as a live band they still could take the roof off. that run of Dublin shows (for a week?) in 2007 looked amazing from the YouTubes.

Also becoming convinced that "Suspicion" is a contender for their best song. So fucking good.

as a live band they still could take the roof off. that run of Dublin shows (for a week?) in 2007 looked amazing from the YouTubes.

― piscesx, Saturday, January 17, 2015 2:39 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is another reason why I love Accelerate so much.

My ultimate favourite R.E.M. album, though, if I must choose one and only one, would definitely be New Adventures In Hi-Fi.

Up >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Accelerate >>>>>>>> reveal >> around the Sun > collapse into now

Up >>> Monster >> Accelerate > Collapse Into Now >> Reveal >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Around the Sun

But New Adventures towers over all of these.

Collapse Into Now is my favorite. Around the Sun (which has "Leaving New York" and "I Wanted to Be Wrong" and "Aftermath") is my 2nd favorite.

And this is the period of R.E.M. that I relate to most.

guitarist Peter Buck said that for him Around the Sun "... just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore."

Yeah, but having probably read numerous interviews with him about this, I think he was talking about becoming bored with the material because he didn't like the laborious process.

are there any decent songs on Collapse.. i never bothered to check.

I cant believe I'm actually considering listening to Up again. Why did I open this fucking thread? !

I know why; I thought we were polling the REM albums in threes, and I wanted to see if I could vote for Automatic-Monster-Hi Fi

I'd rather listen to Up than New Adventures. but not more than any of the other earlier albums. and I've nothing much positive to say about the albums after up except that the "I've Been High" on the recent Unplugged second disk is terrific.

Leaving New York is actually a pretty good song. Doesn't sound like really anything in their pre-trio catalogue.

killer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo0jga73ruA

Up is by miles the best of this, Reveal has a couple of moments that are mainly down to production choices rather than songwriting. Of the albums that followed, only Accelerate is worth the time of day, they can do that sort of stuff standing on their head but at least they sound like they mean it on that one.

The way the song titles are broken up on the back cover of Up conveniently divides the album into thirds, iirc, which is a great way to approach it.

http://www.doohan-covers.com/Audio/REM_Up_back.jpg

Up, while overlong and inconsistent, has some fine songs and the sense of the band forced into trying something different.
Reveal's production ruins some lovely songs, not least Beat A Drum. Compare the piano demo to the cluttered sub-Brian Wilson confection on the album. Wilson always left space in his arrangements/productions, something REM and the useless Pat McCarthy (worst producer they could have had at this point and major reason Reveal and ATS sound so lifeless). The switch to digital synths really didn't help either. I'm not in anyway an analogue purist, but they made some poor decisions with keyboard sounds around this period - glassy, rinky dink melody lines and bland pads.
Accelerate certainly has a confidence they'd been lacking on record for years, but it does get a bit REM by numbers at times. It was a necessary exercise in getting back to basics, or at least as back to basics as a massive corporate operation can get. Collapse Into Now might seem just as calculated, but it's a pretty nice exercise in late style, and does some quite interesting things with various REM tropes. The glam rock track is poor, but the likes of Uberlin and Oh My Heart are very well crafted bits of folk-rock. The final non-album single, We All Go Back To Where We Belong was lovely - Mills finally nailing the Brian Wilson thing he'd been trying for on Reveal, and Stipe pitching the sentiment just right.

I should add that Reveal also has some utter stinkers - I'l Take The Rain is my least favourite REM song*, as if they were going for a big U2 adult contemporary ballad. Thing is, U2, love em or hate em, are very good at that sort of thing, whereas REM don't suit being quite so calculated.
*I'd probably hate stuff from ATS more, but the material is so dreary and unmemorable it's hard to dislike in the same way.

Said it before, but post-Berry REM is very much the sound of a band playing to a click. I wonder if any of them were ever in the same room together.

Otoh, Imitation of Life.

I got the clicktrack impression from Green on. Out Of Time especially sounded incredibly stiff to me; it's less that it sounded like they weren't in the same room and more that it sounded like the idea of playing together as a unit was fundamentally unappealing to them.

At least they were in chamber band mode for much of that, but Berry's drums still have a loose character and quality to them. He may have played to a click, but he's as energetic and non metronomic as Stewart Copeland.

"Up" and on, it sounds like Buck and Mills recorded their demos in different countries to some drum machine, then dropped them off in the mail slot at the studio. Btw, you can kind of tell how unappealing it become, on a personal level, because since the breakup (and a bit before) Buck has been touring non-stop with a bunch of collaborators (Escovedo, Baseball Project, Minus5, etc.), while Mills has been popping up here and there. Even Stipe finally broke stage silence, though I get the feeling he may have been the deciding factor in the breakup.

I thought Mills was more the Baseball Project guy than Buck; I saw them last summer, and Mills was there (and sang on most of the songs), but no Buck.

But I dunno about Berry post-Green...for me, his peak was Reckoning and their early/mid-80s live shows. Once they got into the arenas, and the gestures got broader, a lot of what made him special vanished (including, but not limited to, how he propelled the rest of the band).

(I do think he had his moments here and there on OOT, though)

piscesx Collpase Into Now does have a couple of decent songs. Actually the first 2 songs (Discoverer, All The Best) are fairly great, and as the band generally made no secret of the fact they recorded it knowing it full well this was their final work, there's an extra bit of poignancy to lines like 'just the slightest bit of finesse/might have made a little less mess'. Then you spend the rest of the record in the same vortex of Accelerate wondering is this good, or is this good because Reveal and Around the Sun were so awful and fuck it's just nice to hear them sounding like R.E.M again (That Someone Is You)? It seems like on Collapse they decided well hell if we're just going to give the people what they want we may as well get Mills singing a lot of great backup lines again (uBerlin in particular)

Summary: Good, but not good for you

(unimportant sidenote: It's so great how they just let Riefin cut loose on these last 2 records. There's a fill towards the end of 'All The Best' that Berry would never have played, and possibly couldn't have.)

Oh, man, I will say, I saw the band on the Up tour, with Waronker, and he was a stiff. But REM with Rieflin live was a joy and a half.

Collapse Into Now might seem just as calculated, but it's a pretty nice exercise in late style, and does some quite interesting things with various REM tropes.

Yes, and given that it was a farewell, these can be all the more affecting.

"beach ball" goes down smoothly enough. always reminded me a lot of "emphysema," the b-side to "daysleeper." or i mean it would go on up fine, swap for "parakeet," just part of the texture.

imho apart from "the lifting," "imitation of life" and "beat a drum," every track on reveal is at the level of the couple of tracks i would cut from up, or worse. feels very much of a piece with around the sun from what i can remember of that album. it's cool that other people like this album more than i do but it's really head-scratching to me to remember that it was well-reviewed and well-received at the time. i remember someone making the argument that this had to do with british music journos having a thing for brian wilson around this time, or something, but that doesn't seem like much to go on.

i am almost 100 percent certain the lyric is actually "but life sometimes it washes over me" euler

"The Lifting" and "I've Been High," after which I realize, after thirty minutes, that I've been snoring.

I actually like Reveal a lot, undoubtedly moreso now than I did at the time of its release. Especially now that I understand the type of record they were trying to make - this hazy, summery kind of record both thematically and sonically. The laid-back vocals and tempos are quite evocative of hot days where you just want to take things slow. Also, Stipe's voice sounds beautiful on it and I don't think the vocals are half-hearted at all - they suit the material.

Even on something otherwise gorgeous like 'I wanted to be wrong' it feels like they can't leave well enough alone, like when the slapback guitar comes in on the instrumental break.

That song rules. Maybe my favorite of any of their political songs.

i remember someone making the argument that this had to do with british music journos having a thing for brian wilson around this time, or something

Also late '60s Glenn Campbell/Jimmy Webb was buzzy then.

i don't enjoy "REM does beach boys"

Not sure I do either and yet "Summer Turns to High" is probably one of the best songs on Reveal. At least I maybe have a sense of what they were going for with the arrangement there, as opposed to, say, "Disappear" (thought I get what Brad was saying about that song presaging Accelerate - wish it was arranged like it would have been on Accelerate).

Could similarly take "Chorus and the Ring" more if it had been arranged like one of the more abstract, eccentric songs on Green.

Stipe's voice sounds beautiful on it and I don't think the vocals are half-hearted at all - they suit the material.

The contrast between it and hearing, say, "Make It All Okay" on the next album, though - I feel like I'm hearing him really sing again.

I remember disliking 'Beachball' with a passion in 2001. Love it now, though.

Re-listening to Reveal and 'Saturn Return' only improves with age. Stipe's voice sounds gorgeous on it.

That's fair, but there's something brilliantly transcendent about the looking-back-as-farewell on Collapse Into Now. That record is magic.

man,'Discoverer' popped up on shuffle this am and I am fully on board with this.

I only listened to all of these albums for the first time in the last year or so and collapse into now is definitely the one I've gone back to the most often

There are indeed some moments on "Reveal" where one admires Stipe being in fine vocal form and able to hit the high notes. And then you put on "Accelerate" where his singing has degenerated to a hoarse bark, and you wonder what exactly happened in his life in those 7 years to destroy his voice.

Their tours were fucking massive. But actually I don't know how they'd compare to other bands who did tours like that, but it must take its toll playing to huge audiences who mostly (?) want to hear radio hits.

Reveal has grown for me too. I agree "Saturn Return" is great and that "She Just Wants To Be" should have been cut.

We might have been over this before but were all the tracks recorded in acoustic? Because Buck said they had considered the idea of a whole acoustic album since some of the acoustic versions were so good.

I thought I had every R.E.M. album ever, but I guess I missed Collapse. I don't know--I must have been at least aware of it at the time. I've been reading John Giorno's autobiography, which led me to "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" (missed that too), which led me to Collapse, and a nearby store had a cheap copy in.

I've played it twice in the car. Most of the songs barely register--not awful, just nothing. "Überlin" feels like something.

I do like "We All Go Back to Where We Belong," especially the two videos, so I'll take that as a much better farewell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gdyd8PX7Oc

Don't seem to have Accelerate, either--that's the last one I need. (I mean, not really "need.")

Up deserved to win but Reveal deserved close second place, not distant second place.

I have the ten with Berry and Up, but I generally put on a homemade comp when I listen to this era:

1 Lotus 04:31
2 At My Most Beautiful [radio mix] 03:33
3 Daysleeper [single edit] 03:31
4 The Great Beyond 05:07
5 I've Been High 03:26
6 All The Way To Reno (You're Gonna Be A Star) 04:43
7 Imitation Of Life 03:56
8 All The Right Friends 02:48
9 Bad Day 04:07
10 Leaving New York 04:49
11 Electron Blue 04:12
12 Living Well Is The Best Revenge 03:11
13 Man-Sized Wreath 02:33
14 Supernatural Superserious 03:23
15 Hollow Man 02:39
16 Houston 02:05
17 Discoverer 03:31
18 Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter 02:45
19 Überlin 04:14
20 Oh My Heart 03:20
21 It Happened Today 03:48
22 We All Go Back To Where We Belong 03:35

I love "The Great Beyond" so much--I think it's very overlooked.

I probably would have simply because it's a soundtrack number, but fortunately it was on the first WB "best of" (and IIRC in a better sounding mix too - I think the soundtrack had a much narrower spread when I later compared the two).

I take that to mean you would have left it off...I was surprised there was no ILM thread for Collapse--I guess (understandably) nobody much cared at that point. Seemed to do okay on the Billboard album chart, #5, though not as well as the previous studio album. They must get approached constantly about getting back together for something.

Oh no, I think the song is great, but soundtrack-only items can slip through the cracks pretty easily unless they're a sizable hit or collected elsewhere.

Collapse is not their worst but it is their least impressionable. I like Discoverer a lot but I’m struggling to remember any of their other songs.

At some point a long long time ago (I guess before Collapse came out) I made an imaginary REM album that sequenced roughly 5 songs each from Around the Sun and Accelerate, and it wasn’t so bad. There are some great songs tucked into each album.

I think whatever discussion there was about Collapse was probably relegated to some general REM thread.

I recently noticed that they are pulling over 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify, so perhaps in addition to reunion offers, I can imagine how hotly sought after their publishing catalog is.

I didn't pay close attention to Collapse until later, but at the time of its release, what stood out was the videos - they made a ton of them and contacted a wide variety of high profile names to make them. The only one I really remember was made by Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan: it was for "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" and they made it out of footage that had been shot by Maysles for Meet Marlon Brando (a pretty great film in its own right).

I posted in some other thread when I first heard "Oh My Heart" last year thanks to The Bear, but it really was the first time I heard a late-period REM song that blew me away: the arrangement, the lyrics, the whole thing.

Yeah, that was an easy one to include on my comp (which I burned a while ago, well before The Bear). I regret not seeing them when they were still together - it was pretty foolish in retrospect to lose any interest in seeing them just because Berry wasn't there.

I've probably mentioned this: saw them in a club soon after Murmur for $5...Not explicit in the lyrics, but they must have had Neil Young in mind when they came up with "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I."

"The Great Beyond" is terrific as a song, but -- here's a complaint I don't often lodge -- the production's thin on the ground.

sorry to fill sna with rem threads but i’m here to declare reveal their worst album

otm

the singles are awesome but the kitchen-sink production deprives the whole thing of oxygen. what if we layered every synth preset ever on top of every single track

around the sun, however tired, at least breathes (ventilator-assisted). actually think it would be much more fondly received/remembered had approx 15-20 minutes of it been cut

Damn, Up cleaned up

also damn, mares didn't even give it a full minute.

(Up was the last album of theirs I heard in full.)

ivy- i will also defend around the sun as their "not worst" album. it has highlights, but i also like its soft rock anonymity. def too long tho. and whatever, i like the one with q-tip.

Reveal sucks really hard, the songs just plod along. It's such a drag.

I love Reveal.

There is definitely some good stuff in Around the Sun though its imperfections definitely hobble it.

I like Accelerate and Collapse but they both feel kinda generic to me.