You Wore Your ExPOLLtations Like An Armored Suit: REM's "Monster"

listening to "Circus Envy" now, my god the guitars

brad otm about the guitar tone

I love how “crush with eyeliner” is just being constantly sliced open by that ultra distorted hard tremelo-d guitar

I did an A/B listen of the two versions of "WTF,K?" – and while the new one sounds fine, yeah, I don't see the point.

It sounds slower somehow

This new anti-canonic Kenneth remix kinda defeats the purpose.

listening to "Circus Envy" now, my god the guitars

R.E.M. were such a tight band.

I mean, the Bill Berry R.E.M.

Listened to the remixed “what’s the frequency Kenneth,” why would you take out the tremolo bit in the chorus? clearly someone needs to re-remix it to add even more tremolo.

― JoeStork, Thursday, 5 September 2019 07:24 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The new remixed version is 20s shorter, weird, song has a cold end too so there must be a few bars missing somewhere.

Mine is even shorter but it leaves out all the non-essential bits.

Wasn’t there a reissue of Music from Big Pink recently where they included a completely new remix for no apparent reason? What a weird trend for reissues

I’m no rem stan but the guitar tones in their early jangly stuff or mid point like in “one I love” and “orange crush” for example are so much more crisp, exciting, nuanced, treble happy than the midrange middle aged bloat of Wtf, K

The fuzz and tremolo on this album are the noise equivalent of the jangle in the early work, c'mon

Pearl Jam remixed Ten by taking off the post-production effects (digital reverb etc.).

and those drum machine intro/outros, no?

I believe so. Anything that screamed '1991' (aside from the actual music).

One point about the original Monster album is that it is very well-sequenced.

I hate to be 90s-fankid, but is it likely that "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" was titled to share an acronym with "wtf, Kurt?"

I mean I know the Dan Rather story of course

One point about the original Monster album is that it is very well-sequenced.

^ Absolutely.

The big stupid guitars are the best part of this album!

I've got you covered

― dorsalstop,

I'm going to listen to the remaster once tomorrow and then doralstop's remix for the rest of the 7 hours.

Coulda used a little more tremolo, tho'.

earned the reputation as one of the most ubiquitously traded-in discs of the CD era.

I scored my copy by accepting it in trade for a copy of Siamese Dream. I originally got Siamese Dream through a trade where I gave up the s/t Social Distortion cd.

Somehow I never got around until now to listening to live recordings of "Kenneth" to see how Buck did the solo (backwards on the album) in a live context. Pretty interesting to hear the song with an entirely different solo. (I'm too tired to break down whether it is in fact a retrograde.)

Pretty much agree with calstars. I think if Buck wanted to do a heavier thing, he could have been a little more thoughtful about his tone.

R.E.M. were such a tight band.

― cpl593H, Thursday, September 5, 2019 3:01 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, the Bill Berry R.E.M.

― cpl593H, Thursday, September 5, 2019 3:01 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ugh, the Bill Rieflin R.E.M. were a tight band.

xp I don’t think he was going for “heavy”; but instead artificial, glammy, whatever. I assume he got the exact tone they wanted for the aesthetic they were going for.

Accelerate is the sound of a band that no longer gaf what their guitars sounded like.

Can't wait for the Exile on Main Street remix where they boost the vocals and take out all the horns.

^the 2010 remaster added some overdubs(?)

this "Kenneth" remix is like idk okay for the verses, but losing the tremolo is nuts (make it sound like a demo, no call-and-response to the chorus takes away a major hook!). at no point does it sound like an object from 1994. why do that? pretty pointless exercise IMO.

Oh wow wtf I do not want to hear that. I don't even really know what the point is of doing a digital remix/remaster of an album that was released in the CD era. I love the guitar tones on this album; they are my favourite aspect (certainly more than Stipe's weird scansion). I didn't think of it as an attempt at 'heavy' at all; closer to their take on shoegaze, maybe. Although it's in some ways v different from the early sound, it was a return of sorts in terms of burying the text a little more.

wow, i love that shoegaze connection. so if anything what would be cool is a remix that tries to make it sound more like loveless... further bury stipe's vocals (turning down the volume and/or adding chorused layers to them), maybe try to muffle the drums... could be amazing

Can't wait for the Exile on Main Street remix where they boost the vocals and take out all the horns.

― pplains, Friday, September 6, 2019 6:51 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^the 2010 remaster added some overdubs(?)

― #YABASIC (morrisp), Friday, September 6, 2019 8:19 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

They only overdubbed the 'new' songs (which they did again on the Some Girls reissue), going so far as to bring in Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman for recording new parts.

Jagger did say he had to resist the urge to remix and clean-up the original album.

wow, i love that shoegaze connection. so if anything what would be cool is a remix that tries to make it sound more like loveless... further bury stipe's vocals (turning down the volume and/or adding chorused layers to them), maybe try to muffle the drums... could be amazing

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Friday, September 6, 2019 10:21 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

in other words, make everything sound like "Let Me In"...yeah, i could dig that (and honestly a lot of the rest of the album is already at least halfway there).

wow what a pointless remix

there's like extra stereo separation going on, they've added some kind of dumbass booming reverb to the drums, idgi

i put on the original right after and thought "wow what a fantastic-sounding song"

Accelerate is the sound of a band that no longer gaf what their guitars sounded like.

I don't think so - that's just...AC30 raunch or whatever it is. Not my favorite R.E.M. record sonically, but neither is Monster! If you guys are objecting to "heavy" as the description of what Buck was doing on Monster, OK, I didn't mean Tony Iommi, but he was definitely using a Marshall and playing with louder, overdriven amp sound.

i like this album but every song feels too long - i always enjoy the openings but eventually i’m ready for them to end and surprised to see like still 2 minutes to go

Always and forever will love Monster. Whenever I think about how I’d rank REM albums (seems to be an annual activity), I always surprise myself with the realization that Monster is a personal Top 5, maybe Top 3.

morrisp otm re: the 'artificial' sounds, it was them forefronting guitars-as-rock-showbiz, is how I always read it

putting stipes vocals upfront doesnt make them any clearer bc its not the mix that makes them difficult to understand, its always his weird cadences and delivery. I get that they need to find/create new content to sell the reissue but that remix is such a strange idea.

the flaming lips released a version of clouds taste metallic at one point that was just ronald jones' isolated guitar tracks, they shouldve done something like that

putting stipes vocals upfront doesnt make them any clearer bc its not the mix that makes them difficult to understand, its always his weird cadences and delivery.

Yeah, what I was trying to allude to re his weird scansion. I had no idea he was singing "Richard said 'withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy'" until I read it, not because of the mix but because the lexical stress was so odd. Similarly, I think he accents the first syllable in "expectations" in the line this poll was named after.

(Obv, the fact that the lyrics are stuff like "what's the frequency, Kenneth? Is your benzedrine? Uh-huh" doesn't help with ease of comprehension.)

Always and forever will love Monster. Whenever I think about how I’d rank REM albums (seems to be an annual activity), I always surprise myself with the realization that Monster is a personal Top 5, maybe Top 3.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Friday, September 6, 2019 12:26 PM

Not quite that high for me, but, yes, and their sexiest album.

i like this album but every song feels too long - i always enjoy the openings but eventually i’m ready for them to end and surprised to see like still 2 minutes to go

― Screamin' Jay Gould (The Yellow Kid), Friday, September 6, 2019 11:13 AM bookmarkflaglink

This was a fun album to use the "preview" button with.

And the promo video at the link, how many different ways do you think skinny white dudes grabbed the mic stand at the "Michael Stipe" audition?

The remix does sound more "contemporary" and less nineties, though. Which may have been what they were looking for with this lame thing they delivered.

I suppose the remix for "Crush with eyeliner" will be 4 minutes of silence.

i know it's not but i always heard it as "your Benson dream"

their sexiest album

And I think it was the first time they ever sang directly about sex? Some of the results were a little, er, dorky ("I've got my telescope head in the haystack"); but it worked overall.