R.E.M. trio albums POLL

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.

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).

I definitely agree that Reveal is more than a little overproduced. I remember hearing it for the first time just after it was released and thinking "holy shit, this must be the slickest thing they've ever done". I wouldn't lay the blame solely with Pat McCarthy, however... if I recall, the way the production was laboured over on Up, Reveal and Around The Sun was very much the way that Michael Stipe and particularly Mike Mills wanted to work. Peter Buck preferred to work more spontaneously, like R.E.M. did on their earlier records.

lol i don't like collapse into now at all, though it's hard to say why. no one seems to be trying hard enough? whereas i made myself like around the sun in high school (couldn't endure the thought that my favorite band had made a bad record) and iirc it becomes vastly enriched when thought of as the most drained-of-life post 9/11 record probably ever. haven't heard it in years though. i really like "aftermath" still

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.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, January 17, 2015 2:11 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Up, Reveal and Around The Sun sounded like they were layered up piece by piece. Accelerate and Collapse Into Now sound like a band performing all at the same time.

"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.

Accelerate was worked on as a band.

I think the production is appropriate on UP. It gives it kind of a dense, almost humid feel at times.

Probably said this in another thread (similar to The Cure threads, most of us are probably repeating our stances on the last half of their discography, I must have said UP is their best album several times) but there are more of those Reveal demos and Buck seemed to prefer the demo version of the album and said there was a possibility of that version being released.

I have a hard time imagining it being released any time soon, I think a lot of people would be quite cynical about it now. But a lot of fans really love the acoustic (I think that's what they called them? I don't remember them being called demos on the single b-sides) versions of "Beat A Drum" & "The Lifting".

"the lifting" was a demo and it was pretty unbelievably different from what ended up on reveal. demo didn't really have a chorus even

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwuRgvcPAL4

definitely better than the album version. I think I was especially disappointed by the album because these versions set my expectations quite high.

Is that the version you mean Brad?

They were both included on the bonus disc of In Time

yep

i kinda prefer "beat a drum" rich and overproduced but i like the og "lifting" a lot more these days

I still like things about Reveal, it's pretty good. It's one of the sunniest and warmest albums I've ever heard.

Never knew about this.

The February 2001 master of Reveal differed from the March 2001 master of the album, which ended up being the final version. Compared to the official, the differences of the Reveal Advance 2001 disc include:
Two tracks that never made it to the finished version: "Fascinating" and "Free Form Jazz Jam".
An alternative version of "Beat a Drum" called "All I Want".
A longer version of "Imitation of Life".
A version of "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" with an alternate ending, and simply titled "Reno".
Slightly different mixes and/or instrumental changes in "I've Been High" and "She Just Wants to Be".

Neither of the unreleased tracks or any of the alternative mixes have ever been released commercially. However, the band allowed the Murmurs.com fan community to offer downloads of "Fascinating", which had recently been covered by Fischerspooner.

voted for Drop Shadow

"The Lifting" is one of REM's great openers. The first three Reveal tracks are way better than the opening trio on Up actually. Can't stand the rest though.

oh yeah "i've been high" is the greatest, unfortunately it's probably the peak of the record (minus "beat a drum" which was for a short while my favorite r.e.m. song)

It is, seriously check out the unplugged version though

'I've Been High' is one of my least favourites on the record, fwiw. Looking at the tracklisting, the one I really find myself wanting to listen to is 'Saturn Return'.

well you'd be the first

Listening to it right now, in fact. Wonderful song, IMO.

the last third of Reveal is a condo complex in Cape Coral that was built, never lived in, and abandoned years ago.

"i'll take the rain" is such a by-the-numbers r.e.m. ballad that it feels emotionally vacant even as stipe struggles to inhabit it

sunken condos, as Donald Fagen said

that makes it sound more intriguing than it deserves xp

Oh, I love 'Summer Turns To High'.

Up is a really cool album! Favs are "suspicion", "diminished", and "falls to climb". Doesn't sound very dated, I can imagine it coming out right now.
Everything I've heard from the others didn't do anything for me. Wish they had kept making sleepy lounge songs with vibraphones and harmoniums

That song on accelerate where michael stipe makes fun of djs is really bad iirc

I like it.

"Saturn Return" is indeed great. Partly because it feels similar to the broodier parts of Up.

I don't generally care about an artist's interpretation of their own work but I think Stipe's "REVEAL equals druggy hypnotised summer" kinda put some sort of perspective on that record that made me appreciate it a little more. It's funny because when I think about "All the Way To Reno" and "She Just Wants To Be" I think I never, ever want to hear them but I don't mind them when they're on.

I think "All The Way To Reno" is great but I find myself mostly waiting through "She Just Wants To Be".

Having a listen to Reveal and Around The Sun this eve.

Reveal is much better than I remember, especially the first half, overall though it's dynamically *really* soft, the drums are mixed as to have no real impact, songs are all of a very similar tempo (I'm guessing that when you remotely create click or loop based demos you probably never naturally write anything strident or uptempo, it's a 100-120bpm all the way), it's a weird thing to hear an REM record sound so emphatically inoffensive.

Listening on headphones exposes some really wretched glitchy bookend treatments that sound cheap and misplaced, there's like a grasping towards the sound Beck was achieving around 'Mutations' but it comes off sounding like that trend that 90's loop/click based records have of just trowelling on little layers of sonic muck that is great fun to create in lieu of dealing with broader structural problems.

Unsurprisingly, Around The Sun is even more sonically milquetoast, it's translates like one long jangly guitar and pad chord that lasts for the entire record. Even potentially radical changes in dynamic come off as incremental, like cut bars and that jaunty Britpop rhythm in Wanderlust.

I'm at The Worst Joke Ever now, and from Wanderlust to this point has been especially forgettable.

Oh and The Outsiders! Holy balls!

xp I remember AOL streamed their Rock in Rio performance shortly before Reveal came out and that was the first time I heard "She Just Wants To Be" and I remember it being significantly faster and it got me really excited for the new record, and then I bought the album and that song sounded like it was in slow motion.

Oh wait, the last 2 mins of the title track (ATS) is kinda cool!

Yeah, I love the way that song ends. I remember at the time having a discussion with a friend about how they should call it quits, not because it was a bad record, but because that song had such a perfect "last song, last album" vibe to it.

"The Ascent of Man" was my favorite track on Around the Sun. It took me several years to admit that that was a bad record, like I couldn't come to terms with a band I loved so much for so long making something so lifeless and exhausted. But "Final Straw" at least makes me think they were in on the joke; Brad's comment earlier about it being a "drained-of-life post 9/11 record" otm.

Listening to Accelerate, so far so Pageant, I'm enjoying Man Sized Wreath's subtle nods to Back Of A Car.

"Man Sized Wreath" was the one song I liked on Accelerate. Reminded me how well he can sing.

Oh wait, the last 2 mins of the title track (ATS) is kinda cool!

― MaresNest, Saturday, 17 January 2015

That was one of my least favourite things about it. I thought the big ending really didn't suit them. I think REM just don't do epic. I suppose maybe "King Of Birds" and maybe "Fretless" could be considered epic.

I think "Leaving New York" and "High Speed Train" are good songs and there are good moments scattered across the album.

Finest Worksong and Turn You Inside Out are pretty epic I would say.

'Leave'?

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.