REM: Classic or dud?

I know I'm an oldster but in my world, if people are citing R.E.M. as an influence or talking about how R.E.M. saved their lives or whatev, they are more likely to cite Fables of the Reconstruction, Reckoning, Murmur, Life's Rich Pageant.

They are not, by and large, talking about Green, Out of Time, or Monster. They're almost certainly not talking about Up or Around the Sun. Of course I love Automatic for the People and it's a stone classic, but.

Some of this is as piscesx says: If you heard and liked some Talking Heads on the radio, your curiosity led you backward through their catalog, not forward to their late-career releases. If you liked, say, "Burning Down the House," your exploration of the band's catalog probably led you toward The Name of This Band Is, not to, say, "I Zimbra."

I think the way the discography will be viewed in the future is that the first 10 albums will be considered the "true" stuff and the three-piece stuff will generally be dismissed, apart from a small cult of fans that are heavily into Up.

I Zimbra is an earlier talking heads song though

I could totally see a younger class of bands embracing Automatic as an influence, sort of like what happened with Graceland a decade or so ago. It might take a while, though. There are still enough acts in the current gen paying reverence to R.E.M. (Real Estate, National) that it's still a little too early for younger bands to distinguish themselves by claiming that sound as their own.

I get the heightened reverence for the early R.E.M. stuff, because those are great, but the sound on those is pretty confined and limiting. Hard to do it w/o sounding like a straight R.E.M. homage. Automatic leaves a lot of threads to expand and build on.

I know I'm an oldster but in my world, if people are citing R.E.M. as an influence or talking about how R.E.M. saved their lives or whatev, they are more likely to cite Fables of the Reconstruction, Reckoning, Murmur, Life's Rich Pageant.

They are not, by and large, talking about Green, Out of Time, or Monster.

Depends where in the world you are. Americans are likelier to say the IRS stuff, Europeans are more likelier to say Document up to Automatic for the People.

I love those IRS era albums, but people wildly overstate the quality of them in comparison to the first five WB albums. There's not that much of a gulf in terms of quality and never has been.

Ironically, I think Out of Time would have been a more apt name for Automatic (and, imo, vice versa).

One thing I love about Automatic for the People is that it all sounds like it was written and recorded in one place, but it went through about five or six different studios across North America...

I love those IRS era albums, but people wildly overstate the quality of them in comparison to the first five WB albums. There's not that much of a gulf in terms of quality and never has been.

imo you perhaps similarly overstate the quality of the early WB albums in comparison to the later ones.

Hah, no. I think Around the Sun is a complete waste of time and an utter pile of shite, and while I like Up, Reveal and Accelerate, they're not in the same league as their first ten albums.

Out of Time and Automatic for the People are wonderful albums. R.E.M. were treading water aesthetically a little before them with Document and Green. Both of those are good and I still enjoy them, but neither of them has the zing of Lifes Rich Pageant.

Monster is a record I have not played much in quite a while. Ostensibly, I like some of the songs like "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" and some others. That song is a classic. But that is easily the worst sounding R.E.M. album. And I'm not a fan of the the New Adventures/Up development of their songs into longer narrative form. Both of those have songs I love, but they are atypical ones ("Electrolite" and "Hope," for example).

I was glad when Reveal came out and that they were seemed to be moving away from the longer form and showing more interest in classic song structure again. In retrospect, though, I think that is possibly their weakest album and that the songwriting is just not there enough of the time. Around the Sun was (as Christgau said at the time!) an improvement and has quite a number of great tracks. Accelerate was kind of another genre exercise that I haven't listened to in a while; Collapse Into Now is a tour de force farewell and to me their best album since the early '90s classics.

Hmm, I can't even remember if I ever heard "Collapse Into Now."

Listening now, this would be a lot better without the big "rock" production. .

It's not "lost" and never stopped being recognised as a classic album, it's more that it doesn't seem to get talked about as much as yer Nevermind's or Siamese Dream's anymore.

What's funny is I would have said I'm surprised by how nobody talked about Nevermind anymore. Ask me in 1993 and I for sure would have said that, not AFTP, was the record people would think of as defining the era.

Couple of quick thoughts after listening to "Green" this morning. One, "Green" is mostly good. I think I broke it down, like a lot of REM albums, into 1/3 great, 1/3 good, and 1/3 eh. Which brings me to, two: why, after signing to WB, does every REM album seem to have at least a couple of songs that sound like kids music? "Stand," "Get Up," "Pop Song 89," "(Untitled)," "Radio Song," "Shiny Happy People," "Sidewinder Sleeps" ... Is it just the mesh of Stipe's goofier faux-naif lyrics with peppy tunes? Is there any equivalent to those sorts of songs on the early records? Not badmouthing them, just observing that they could easily constitute a set for the diaper crowd. (And I don't mean aging REM fans, zing!).

Third, maybe not as much as a band like, say, the Smiths, but this is another group that's almost miraculously more than the sum of its parts. Weird vocalist, non-virtuoso lead guitarist, solid rhythm section, great vocal melodies that frequently make the songs imo, ace arrangements ... there are few indications early on that the band would be come such a novel chamber outfit.

Last, a funny story, which I don't know if I've told before. I have a few friends who are session guys, just gigging musicians who do jingles and stuff. One guy was on a commercial session right around when "Losing My Religion" was peaking, and apparently every producer/writer at the time had a mandolin in mind. So my friend is there playing guitar when they call in this excellent mandolin guy for a jingle. The guy sets up in a booth, starts tuning his mandolin, does a couple of absent minded strums to make sure he's good to go, then hears a voice through his headphones:

"That's great, we got it, thanks so much!"

there are several good songs that get lost in the haze of around the sun

xpost
Goofy/kids song “habit” starts with “Superman”, maybe?

'We Walk'

otm, that's right. so it was always there?

Michael Stipe was a fan of bubblegum music.

pretty clearly they all were. Just another strange facet of this strange band.

at least with 'we walk', the vibe is ambiguous enough that it can be interpreted as a 'death chant'. the morphed pool ball explosions at the end, which somehow sound foreboding, add to that, as well as it's lead in to the more obviously dark 'west of the fields'.

are there similar interpretations of their other lighter songs? is 'shiny happy people' actually an instruction manual on how to kill your parents?

"Can't Get There from Here" is totes one of these

"Can't Get There From Here" is an instruction manual on how to write a crap song

Yeah, it hasn't aged very well!

xpost Ha. I was thinking of what songs on Reckoning or Fables would count as dumb kids music, and that was the first to pop to mind.

i don't find its faux goofiness as off-putting as some of their later ones but i wouldn't go to bat for it. it does feel exceptionally out of place in the middle of Fables tho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niy4Q_1d8Zw

“can’t get there from here” is great wtf

cover of King Of The Road as a legit B side properly kicks off the silly bollocks done for yucks era IMO.

One of their earliest originals was the goofy "Narrator":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqMNPzYFly8

"Cant Get There From Here" is like "Ages of You" in that it's a fusion of different types of song that don't fully cohere. Stipe's Elvis impression + the horns + the main riff go for soul mode but the jangle is still there on the verses. The chorus bores quickly. Is that Stipe or Mills' falsetto? I would never forgive Stipe's vocal here if he hadn't lived in the south (Jagger gets no such benefit).

but it's full of great moments too, besides the falsettos they're Stipe's proclamations:

kiss the ground
bad to swallow
hypnotized, suit and tied
gentlemen, justify

& PHILOMATH ! I went there in high school just because of the song like probably 1/4 of Atlanta area teens. also I now work in philomath in another sense so I did get here from there too!

The middle 8 is the best part of it.

The one I really dislike is 'Radio Song' ... of all the ones mentioned, that's the one that has me reaching for the skip button right away... I like/can tolerate the others. It's just one of the reasons I rank Out of Time at the bottom of the pile of all the Bill Berry-era albums.

Cant Get There From Here has always been top 5 REM for me, I remember being surprised when I found out that most people on ilx think it's not very good. I think I like all of the goofy REM songs mentioned aside from Radio Song
did they do any more of this kind of song after Sidewinder? stuff like Star 69, King Of Comedy + Wake Up Bomb seems feels related but they're goofy in a faux-sleazy rather than faux-naif way, and then Up/Reveal/Around the Sun bring back the faux-naif cutesy stuff but without anything bouncy or zany like earlier examples (maybe Wanderlust?)

"Hey hey alligator" kinda on the last album

More than kinda, actually

"That Someone Is You"
"A Month of Saturdays"

I'm Gonna DJ too but it had plenty of attack live, enough to make it less lolsome.

There's nothing wrong with 'I'm Gonna DJ' and never has been.

"Alligator" has more attack on the live at Hansa Studio video, too, but is pretty much pure bubblegum on the album. Bubblegum with a Lenny Kaye solo.

Is that Stipe or Mills' falsetto?

That's Stipe, and it killed live back in the day (saw Little America and Pageantry tours).

I rank Out of Time very low on the Berry-era list too. Maybe their lest consistent record. And yet! I’ve come to find Radio Song endearing and never hated SHP.

I can't put "We Walk" in this box at all. Or really anything on the albums pre-Superman. But they were definitely into goof-covers live ("In the Year 2025," drunk-wacky "King of the Road" on Dead Letter Office, etc.)

"Can't Get There From Here" meanwhile is eternally classic.

The fanclub singles are ripe with goofiness (“Ghost Reindeer in the Sky”). They’re great.

I love those IRS era albums, but people wildly overstate the quality of them in comparison to the first five WB albums. There's not that much of a gulf in terms of quality and never has been.

otm.

I'm not sure. Was trying to think of where "We Walk" even comes from. My first inclination was to think it was something outside of rock and roll completely (and possibly in the children's music realm, like Disney or something). Putting it on, though, I think of the Velvet Underground and I am reminded of their own children's music aspects.

"I'm Sticking with You," "Andy's Chest," "Velvet Nursery Rhyme"

I mostly connect "We Walk" to Herman's Hermits - "Silhouettes"

'We Walk' was always one of my least favourite tracks on Murmur. That and 'Moral Kiosk' could have both comfortably have been bumped from the record and I wouldn't miss 'em.