New Adventures in Hi Fi?

what do you like about murmur?

(i realize that's a hard question! would take me a long time to explain what i love about murmur (though i could just say, everything)

Love "Departed" and "Undertow" on this, what can I say, I'm a sucker for when they rock out.

(But agree with people above that they don't rise to the level of some of the earlier rockers, most notably "Just a Touch")

To me, it feels like they're painting with a borrowed palette when they use it.

this is fair. they come so much less from punk than from jangle-rock imo so it's really not a natural fit - and how they zoom in on peter buck in those alt-era rem videos when he hits a distorted power chord, it does feel a little put-on, doesn't it?

i think they kind of grew into the sound by new adventures though, made it their own to a degree.

The atonal piano solo in "How the West Was Won" is so cool

what do you like about murmur?

― have you considered that there are 1 shades of gray (Karl Malone), Wednesday, November 3, 2021 9:28 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know, it's just iconic and the songs, impressionistic as they are, feel like songs whereas a lot of what comes after sounds a bit watery and of its time. Murmur feels timeless. It's hard to explain exactly, but I've tried to listen to the rest of the IRS stuff and it just doesn't really stick.

KM, what drew you to pick up Up and Reveal in your REM-less youth?

Listening to this now... "E-Bow" still has that magic (and its zenith is the chunk beginning "Seconal, Spanish fly" and continuing to the end of the verse), but the rest of the album is just not my jam.

I like all their stuff pretty much up though this album, but Murmur does have a certain quality to it that feels mysterious and timeless

It's definitely an REM record but has something special

xp hideous lump

my friends! in my sophomore year in HS i became best friends with an incoming freshman, and he really changed my life, musically. we started playing together in a band (our first jam was us playing "everlong" as a guitar/drummer duo) and he introduced me to all sorts of bands, and also other music nerds. Up was the new one at that point, so i picked it up at the local cd store and listened to it several billion times

the reason i asked about murmur was that if you like murmur, you should definitely check out chronic town. i imagine the venn diagram between those two is almost completely overlapping, and it's also Iconic imo

sure, it's only 5 songs, but it does what i wish a million other bands would do: just release songs that are top notch, all killer no filler, even if it's only one side

just the first few minutes alone of 'wolves, lower' contains a New Adventures amount of "rock"

which song on Chronic Town contains the word "chronic town"? if you don't immediately know, you have not listened to Chronic Town recently enough

shit pop quiz and i failed :/

it's been ages but my memory is you are right

i guess i meant more reckoning and fables, great great albums but something not quite like murmur that i can't really articulate because on paper and in practice they aren't really that different

they don't have Murmur's kinda muffled production, right? big part of the mystique

totally agree about the timelessness of murmur, too! and yeah it's really hard to nail down why

Cervical of Sorts

I didn't correct what the phone thought

i guess i meant more reckoning and fables, great great albums but something not quite like murmur that i can't really articulate because on paper and in practice they aren't really that different

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, November 3, 2021 6:23 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they don't have Murmur's kinda muffled production, right? big part of the mystique

― lukas, Wednesday, November 3, 2021 6:26 PM (three minutes ago)

i definitely don't have good ears for this kind of conversation (too many drums played in concrete basements!) but to me, for some reason, it's murmur that's always sounded crystal clear to me, while fables and reckoning have seemed murky

xpost lol rip van winko

cervical of sorts (boxcar)

one thing I remember about murmur and early rem in general is Mitch Easter talking about how they recorded their parts in separate rooms/isolation and how that was like so not punk rock or whatever

cervical of jorts (hotboxcar)

This conversation heartens me because my students don't know them at all. They've vanished. U2 have not.

Anyway, LRP rules.

Asked in 1999 about his favorite projects as a producer, Easter cited R.E.M.'s Chronic Town and Game Theory's records – Real Nighttime (1984), The Big Shot Chronicles (1985), Lolita Nation (1987), and Two Steps from the Middle Ages (1988) – which Easter called "a lot of fun, because of the variety in the way they approached recording".[4]

I actually think Murmur is produced very cleanly, the vocals are just kind of low in the mix

REM is so much better than U2, feel bad for the kids

REM is so much better than U2, feel bad for the kids

i don't think any kids like U2, but i may be wrong. U2 has a new single out for some animated film and it's the worst song of all time. i'd like to think that the kids can still identify total trash

they KNOW U2, that's the difference.

rem obviously the better band overall but u2 peaked higher

it still trips me out to remember that rem were as big as they were. i mean sure they had catchy songs that catered somewhat to the zeitgeist, but it was hard to hide the fact that they were artsy, insular and retro leaning at heart, just a band playing together and looking weird doing it. i guess that was the general trend with college rock from the 80s though so it does make some sense, it's just that rem, to me, somehow feel more unlikely as a success story than others.

i disagree. i think that rem is so much better than U2 that it's unbelievable and it makes older people at the BBQ choke on their hotwings.

i say that as a fan of 80s U2

xp

rem is unquestionably better than u2 in all respects imo

but U2 is one of those bands that sucked so hard, so incredibly bad, sucking so badly, from the mid-90s on that it's just like fuck you U2, i don't even care that you used to be good, because you suck so badly now, and the fact that you keep going and making money, i mean come on, fuck you, fuck you bono, fuck you edge, fuck you larry mullen, fuck you other guy, you're all rich, fuck you

really there's no end for the hatred for U2 because they're so well off and they suck so badly

but I just don't like it on REM songs. To me, it feels like they're painting with a borrowed palette when they use it.

― brotherlovesdub, Wednesday, November 3, 2021 2:17 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

severe counterpoint: peter buck's distorted guitar tone 94'-'96 is one of the greatest tones of all time

u2 aren't worth loathing to that degree until you get to the 00s

I dwell on Stipe's "I'm an equal opportunity lech" line shared during the Monster promo cycle and how it retrospectively changed R.E.M.'s catalog and my life.

Out of Time remains a special time. Imagine your mainstream blockbuster the album with that second side and "Low" and "Near Wild Heaven" besides.

i encountered 'where the streets have no name' somewhat recently, and what used to sound profound about it was so transparently hollow now... did bono turn into something that spoiled their whole catalog, or was it always there and everyone just bought the chintziness at the time because they needed it?

Pet Shop Boys as usual opened up the song's vistas by queering it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt2j79pca7c

haha i didn't know about that

U2 is a hell of a live band

I can't really think of a band that went mainstream on their own terms in a more real way than REM

it's pretty simple to me, U2 (or at least bono) just believed their own hype to the point that it all fell apart. where the streets have no name is a killer song if i step back and think about it against any objective criteria, but i can't have an emotional relationship with it or anything else U2 has done.

r.e.m. maintained just enough healthy skepticism to dodge this effect, at least for me.

I can't really think of a band that went mainstream on their own terms in a more real way than REM

I think 10,000 Maniacs were there with them, though obviously didn’t get as huge.

The funny thing is that R.E.M. were playing Spring Break to drunk college kids from the beginning, they always wanted to be huge, they just dragged the world a few notches over to align w/them for a little while.

We are plainly in the minority.

As far as obnoxious prats go, Bono's a better frontman than most. R.E.M. said at the time they and U2 were the Biggest Bands in the World that while they had mad respect for U2 they had no interest in that kind of pressure and scrutiny; Peter Buck also said they'd rather U2 did this rather than Bon Jovi.

(xpost)