R.E.M. trio albums POLL

"Beat a Drum" is fantastic.

Classic R.E.M.

“I’ve Been High” has great singing. Really that’s all I need from Reveal. Maybe “Beat a Drum”.

"Beat A Drum" is my pick too, amazing song. Several of the others felt a little too anonymous to me at the time, like any band could have done "She Just Wants To Be" or "I'll Take the Rain." I should give it a relisten though.

"Imitation of Life," though. Like another Out of Time hit. That one was rad live.

absolutely, that and pilgrimage were the highlights when we saw them in '05

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

reveal was... a little overcooked imo, as i think this superior demo proves

xp yeah the Unplugged version of “I’ve Been High” from the Reveal era may reveal charms to the resistant

er not xp!

I suppose a big reason for the change in studio approach after Berry left was that Berry and Buck tended to like to get things down onto tape quickly, whereas Mills and Stipe liked to labour over things a little more. When Berry left the band, the balance tipped in favour of Mills and Stipe, who were heavily into the details of the production, sometimes working on perfecting a couple of bars of music for hours. Up, Reveal and Around the Sun were all recorded with this type of approach, until they all agreed to go back to a more organic way of working. Stipe probably laboured over the vocals to those albums far more than their other records - which is probably why they may sound "half-hearted" to some.

But how do these albums make you *feel*? "Up" does what it says on the tin, despite some of the somber moments, overall it makes me feel positive and hopeful.

That's one of REM's secrets - their music often taps into your emotional core, making you feel *something*. As opposed to the later albums, which just don't make me feel much at all aside from a track here and there. Listening to any of their IRS-era material, the albums positively soar at times. That faded away for me after "New Adventures" and "Up".

This is nice. "Bad Day" b-side, 2003, Magnapop cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-g4cdSjvo

Same disc, Mills, Three Dog Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvttMIOPiT0

My other conclusion listening to the second Complete Rarities today - they remained a good surf band ("Tricycle," "Surfing the Ganges," "165 Hillcrest").

man i'm listening to reveal r/n and it's less good than i remembered. :( "beat a drum" is still fantastic" and "imitation of life" lands like someone just jabbed the album with a syringe full of energy. but after "the lifting," side A is just a prettily-produced wash of songs that are too basic to sustain the nth repetition of "all the way to reno... you're gonna be a star!" or "she just wants to be somewhere she just wants to be" (get it). i really don't like where stipe's good-advice/adult-wisdom songwriting mode ended up here and i agree that his singing is not great.

"she just wants to be" is def one of my least favorite rem songs

wow just looking at the tracklisting i'm like "this is a very uneven album that i listened to constantly in high school for some reason?" i used to love "i'll take the rain" but now recognize it as the palest xerox of a rem ballad

i love "i've been high" and "disappear" (which sounds like it's broadcasting the second side of accelerate early) though

all of Around The Sun sounds like the part of a concert where your favorite band plays newer material and all the energy drains from the room.

'She Just Wants To Be' sounded much better live. Around the Sun starts off well ('Leaving New York', 'Electron Blue') and then it goes south.

most of these songs sounded much better live. the around the sun tracks especially

around the sun songs i'll go to bat for:

electron blue
the outsiders before q-tip appears
i wanted to be wrong
boy in the well
aftermath
ascent of man

"high speed train" is also great i think but it covers very little ground that "boy in the well" doesn't

I'm surprised DC didn't note "I've Been High" as one of the good ones! the electronics threaten to swallow the singing but if you don't like his singing here then that's a good thing. I think his singing on it is gorgeous and as I said even better on the Unplugged from 2001, where the sequence is "Disappear" -> "Beat A Drum" -> "I've Been High".

yeah idk with that one, it just kinda bores me. the lyrics don't land with me, i hear them as generic deep-thought stuff, the images and word choices aren't very unique. i don't fall in love with songs because they have unique words mind you - just trying to articulate what it is that's present in many other r.e.m. songs that's missing here.

i've made this point before but around the sun kind of "works" as a document of post-9/11 exhaustion. it came out a month before the 2004 election but it's so depressed i feel like it actually predicted four more years of dubya

there are still too many aimless ballads stacked on top of each other

also re: reveal: the tempo is all very samey on a lot of songs here, and it's a few bpm too slow imo. feels like he gets an idea out, takes a swig of water, deep breath, step away from the lectern, come back to deliver the next line.... everything's kind of contented, no urgency to anything.

'Summer Turns To High' is an underrated one from Reveal, IMO.

I like the lyric "The light, sometimes it washes over me", it's evocative of a feeling of passivity, and I've always had an ear for Stipe's lyrics suggestive of being a bottom (cf "Bang and Blame") though probably that's just me.

man "i'll take the rain" just goes on and on. it's 5:51! when it comes back to the strumming around 3:40 i have a momentary terror that "she just wants to be" is about to start again.

'I'll Take the Rain' is my least favourite track on that LP, because it's totally unsuccessful at what it's trying to achieve. It aims to be this anthemic tear-jerker and it doesn't make me feel a thing.

"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.