R.E.M. trio albums POLL

Up >>>>>>>> Accelerate >>> honestly whomst even cares

idk there’s a looseness and charm to “crush” that’s all gone by accelerate. if you don’t like “crush” that’s fine but imo monster is just a great glam rock record with amazing guitar tones

Up > Around the Sun > Collapse > Reveal > Accelerate (it’s unlistenable)

An R.E.M. ranking I nearly agree with for once, though I'd swap the last two (it's very listenable).

The only album here that is out-and-out bad is Around the Sun, all the rest are good to very good records.

Accelerate > Monster. Come on now.

― timellison, Saturday, March 9, 2019 7:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like Monster more now than I ever did in the '90s, but this is indeed true. I'd rank Collapse Into Now higher than Monster, too.

nothing on accelerate as good as “crush with eyeliner,” like at all

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Sunday, March 10, 2019 12:29 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is bullshit. Sorry.

Anyway, my only issue with the results here is that Up took it in a landslide. IMO, the votes should have been more spread out with Around the Sun a distant last.

you’re not sorry

"Up" is like a different band fronted by Michael Stipe - one I wouldn't mind hearing more from. The rest of these albums are clearly sub-prime REM that I'll never bother going back to.

There are great songs on every REM album. I love "Mr Richards" and "Supernatural Superserious" and "Accelerate". But I like Monster more. I have a big soft spot for Monster which I've probably said elsewhere in this thread. It's sort of an alien within their discography but it's cohesive unto itself and I really dig a lot of those songs--Crush, King of Comedy, You, Kenneth, etc.

I feel like they experimented with a new sound for "rock mode" REM on that album, which they then carried over to New Adventures ("Wake Up Bomb" sounds like it could be on Monster without a blink, for instance). But for the most part they ironed out some of the quirks on New Adventures (ie turned off the tremelo effect on Buck's guitar). Accelerate and Collapse, insofar as they "return to rock", sound to me like they were trying to reclaim what they were doing on New Adventures more than any other past REM album.

And I think the thing that nags at me about those last two albums is that they feel like the only two albums in the entire REM discography that saw them looking backwards more than forwards. That's one reason I'd never say Accelerate is better than Monster. For whatever faults you can assign to Monster, REM were being ambitious when they made it, trying to break out of the box they were being put in by the mainstream and also trying to make a rock record that didn't sound like one of their older more rock-oriented.

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

For whatever faults you can assign to Monster, REM were being ambitious when they made it

This is where I disagree a little. I don't know as that I ascribe significant ambition to the change in direction with Monster or with Up. I don't know as that I feel that the approach to the last two albums involved less ambition overall just because it wasn't totally new.

Live “Let Me In” is the only thing I’d save from the Monster era.

The post-Berry albums are so boring, ppl don’t even want to discuss them in their own thread 😂

There are 245 posts!

But we do go over the album hierarchy every year or so, in the various REM threads. I'm sure I've said what I have to say about Up many times, I love it forever, and I will defend Reveal quite a bit (the atmosphere and humid sunny blaze still impresses me) even though I understand the idea that it feels like the start of a stagnation

pgwp- those are good points.

I really like about half of the individual tracks on Reveal, but the whole thing is too soporific to listen to in one go

It's the nooks and crannies of the career that poke at you on Collapse Into Now, ending with "Country Feedback" in a big Radio Ethiopia mess with Lenny Kaye.

Ha, I'm listening to it now - forgot the "Finest Worksong" reprise at the end

still can't stand collapse but i do like your enthusiasm for it tim. maybe one day

however i could mount a defense of about half the tracks on around the sun so

This is where I disagree a little. I don't know as that I ascribe significant ambition to the change in direction with Monster or with Up. I don't know as that I feel that the approach to the last two albums involved less ambition overall just because it wasn't totally new.

Someone who knows more about the band’s history than I could answer this better than me, but what I get from every R.E.M. album from Chronic Town to Reveal is a band that was constantly anxious about falling into a comfort zone. Every album or pair of albums seems like a purposeful move away from the previous pair—an approach that got harder and harder to maintain the deeper into their career they got, as I truly feel they didn’t ever want to repeat themselves. Whether you like specific albums or not, I think this is true.

Maybe that can be said all the way up to the last pair of albums too. But from what little I’ve read about that period, they had really stopped writing songs together—Stipe came in and just reacted to things the other two created and then he wrote lyrics. And it’s no accident that the minute they fulfilled their extraordinary contractual obligations, they stopped. If Reveal or Around the Sun could have been their last record I think they would have been. That’s what I mean when I say that the last few albums—even though they contain great songs!—lack an ambition that imbues the rest of their catalog.

Thought Up etc. tunes came from Buck or Mills demos, too, Stipe adding parts after. Not sure how the process changed.

Yup. And on New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and on Monster, and on Automatic for the People, and on Out of Time, and on Green etc. etc.

I kind of wonder if I tried to make a best-of with tracks from this era if I could get to 12 tracks.

i find that baffling but i am an Up stan. the challenge is more in sequencing, to make the couple of tracks from the last couple albums feel of a piece with the chamber-pop of Up and Reveal.

Off the cuff I can get 4 from Up, 1 each from Revea1, ATS and Accelerate and 4 from Collapse.
so maybe not as bad as I thought. Collapse is the one I listen to the most of this era.

a best-of with tracks from this era already exists, it's called up

the cover of Reveal makes me angry

every time this thread gets bumped i re-marvel at how bad the around the sun cover is

the up cover is also awful. maybe bill berry was secretly the graphic designer of the ban because after he left things went waaaaay downhill

Accelerate would be a much better album with less brickwalled production/mixing. Some of the songs are decent, but the OTT attempt at a "live" "in-your-face" sound doesn't play to their strengths at all

are you saying you know more about producing then the legendary jackknife lee???

lmao

Catfish and The Bottlemen - The Balance (2019)
Sneaks – Highway Hypnosis (2019)
The Killers – "Land of the Free" (2019)
Catfish and The Bottlemen - Longshot (2019)
Jacknife Lee – Space Is The Plaice / Pussyfoot (2018)
Sneaks – Hong Kong To Amsterdam (2018)
Bob Moses – Battle Lines (2018)
The Beaches – Facscination (2018)
The Killers – Revamp: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin (2018)
Snow Patrol – Wildness (2018)
The Beaches –Late Show (2017)
U2 – Songs of Experience (2017)
U2 – "You're the Best Thing About Me" (2017)
Alex Cameron – Forced Witness (2017)
The Killers – Wonderful Wonderful (2017)
Beth Ditto – Fake Sugar (2017)
Michelle Branch – Hopeless Romantic (2017)
Neil Diamond – Acoustic Christmas (2016)
Two Door Cinema Club – Gameshow (2016)
Twin Atlantic – GLA (2016)
Bat for Lashes – The Bride (2016)
Jake Bugg – On My One (2016)
Raury – All We Need (2015)
Yacht – I Thought the Future Would Be Cooler (2015)
Silversun Pickups – Better Nature (2015)
Saint Raymond – Young Blood (2015)
Elle King – Love Stuff (2015)
Kodaline – Coming Up for Air (2015)
Conway – Shut Up (2014)
Neil Diamond – Melody Road (2014)
Vacationer – The Wild Life (2014)
Snow Patrol – Divergent: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2014)
Twin Atlantic – Great Divide (2014)
Silversun Pickups – Cannibal (2014)
Silversun Pickups – Let It Decay (2013)
One Direction – Something Great (2013)
Bonnie McKee – "American Girl" (2013)
Lissie – Back to Forever (2013)
Tired Pony – The Ghost of the Mountain (2013)
Snow Patrol – Greatest Hits (2013)
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (2012)
Taylor Swift – Red (2012)
Robbie Williams – Take the Crown (2012)
Two Door Cinema Club – Beacon (2012)
Silversun Pickups – Neck of the Woods (2012)
LostAlone – I'm a UFO in This City (2012)
R.E.M. – Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011 (2011)
Snow Patrol – Fallen Empires (2011)
The Drums – Portamento (2011)
All Time Low – Dirty Work (2011)
The Black Keys – "Tighten Up (Radio Mix)" (2011)
The Wombats – This Modern Glitch (2011)
The Cars – Move Like This (2011)
The Walkmen – Juveniles (2011)
Crystal Castles – "Not in Love" (feat. Robert Smith) (2011)
R.E.M. – Collapse Into Now (2011)
Blur : Video Game – Blur : Video Game (2010)
Snow Patrol – "Just Say Yes" (2010)
Biffy Clyro – Many of Horror (2010)
Melee – The Masquerade (2010)
Tired Pony – The Place We Ran From (2010)
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (2010)
Snow Patrol – Up to Now (2009)
R.E.M. – Live at the Olympia (2009)
AFI – Crash Love (2009)
Regina Spektor – Far (2009)
U2 – Medium, Rare & Remastered (2009)
Weezer – Raditude (2009)
Amanda Blank – Shame on Me (2009)
Bloc Party – "One More Chance" (2009)
Marmaduke Duke – Duke Pandemonium (2009)
Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns (2008)
Bloc Party – Intimacy (2008)
Weezer – The Red Album (2008)
Hadouken! – Music for an Accelerated Culture (2008)
R.E.M. – Accelerate (2008)
PlayRadioPlay! – Texas (2008)
The Hives – The Black and White Album (2007)
Nicole Scherzinger – Just Say Yes (2007)
Snow Patrol – "Signal Fire" (2007)
Green Day & U2 – "The Saints Are Coming" (2007)
Editors – An End Has a Start (2007)
Bloc Party – A Weekend in the City (2007)
Editors – "Bullets" (2006)
Juliet – Ride the Pain (2005)
Bono, The Edge, Andrea Corr and T-Bone Burnett – Don't Come Knocking (2005)
Snow Patrol – Eyes Open (2006)
The Freelance Hellraiser – Waiting for Clearance (2006)
Vaux – Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice (2006)
Vega4 – You and Others (2006)
U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
Kasabian – Reason Is Treason (2004)
Aqualung – Still Life (2004)
Snow Patrol – Final Straw (2003)
28 Days Later OST Enhanced – Ave Maria (2003)
Sack – Butterfly Effect (1997)

he blows

Silversun Pickups – Cannibal (2014)

great song

also responsible for a weekend in the city the most frustrating album i love

He did a good job with that Bat for Lashes album.

that snow patrol album sure got him a lot of work forever

Tbh A Weekend in the City would probably have been superior without his influence

wait did the killers actually release an elton john / bernie taupin tribute record or did you just slip that in there to fuck with us

i wish i would have, but that's just c&p'd from wikipedia

OK I looked it up and it's a John/Taupin tribute record with ONE SONG by the Killers, which makes more sense

Sack – Butterfly Effect (1997)
he blows

― but i'm there are fuckups (Karl Malone), Saturday, March 16, 2019 2:46 AM

!, I have this album. It was a band Morrissey put on a compilation, a good song but I didn't like that album much. Yet another singer Morrissey loves because he's borrowing heavily from his own voice.

the cover of Reveal makes me angry

― but i'm there are fuckups (Karl Malone), Saturday, March 16, 2019 1:35 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I remember thinking at the time that the Reveal sleeve felt lazily put together.

What's wrong with it? I think it represents the album quite well.

I remember Stipe saying he was deeply involved with album art and wouldn't give it up for anything.

It looks like it was thrown together in ten minutes, pretty much. I'd say that of all the post-New Adventures in Hi-Fi sleeves, Accelerate is probably the best. For me, at least.

What's wrong with embracing a rougher sleeve aesthetic, as they do on Accelerate? The Hib-Tone 45 sleeve was rough.

IMO, their taste in non-musical indicia (album titles, cover art, general aesthetics) did fall apart after Monster.

There's nothing wrong with the idea of embracing a rougher sleeve aesthetic. In the case of Reveal, the main photograph on the sleeve is actually pretty great - it's what's been vomited all over it that's the problem.

(It's a shame, because I like Reveal more than most.)

I'm not saying I'm totally crazy for the later sleeves - I like the covers on the early albums best - but I'm certainly not crazy for the Monster sleeve either.