R.E.M. trio albums POLL

I love "The Great Beyond" so much--I think it's very overlooked.

I probably would have simply because it's a soundtrack number, but fortunately it was on the first WB "best of" (and IIRC in a better sounding mix too - I think the soundtrack had a much narrower spread when I later compared the two).

I take that to mean you would have left it off...I was surprised there was no ILM thread for Collapse--I guess (understandably) nobody much cared at that point. Seemed to do okay on the Billboard album chart, #5, though not as well as the previous studio album. They must get approached constantly about getting back together for something.

Oh no, I think the song is great, but soundtrack-only items can slip through the cracks pretty easily unless they're a sizable hit or collected elsewhere.

Collapse is not their worst but it is their least impressionable. I like Discoverer a lot but I’m struggling to remember any of their other songs.

At some point a long long time ago (I guess before Collapse came out) I made an imaginary REM album that sequenced roughly 5 songs each from Around the Sun and Accelerate, and it wasn’t so bad. There are some great songs tucked into each album.

I think whatever discussion there was about Collapse was probably relegated to some general REM thread.

I recently noticed that they are pulling over 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify, so perhaps in addition to reunion offers, I can imagine how hotly sought after their publishing catalog is.

I didn't pay close attention to Collapse until later, but at the time of its release, what stood out was the videos - they made a ton of them and contacted a wide variety of high profile names to make them. The only one I really remember was made by Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan: it was for "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" and they made it out of footage that had been shot by Maysles for Meet Marlon Brando (a pretty great film in its own right).

I posted in some other thread when I first heard "Oh My Heart" last year thanks to The Bear, but it really was the first time I heard a late-period REM song that blew me away: the arrangement, the lyrics, the whole thing.

Yeah, that was an easy one to include on my comp (which I burned a while ago, well before The Bear). I regret not seeing them when they were still together - it was pretty foolish in retrospect to lose any interest in seeing them just because Berry wasn't there.

I've probably mentioned this: saw them in a club soon after Murmur for $5...Not explicit in the lyrics, but they must have had Neil Young in mind when they came up with "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I."

"The Great Beyond" is terrific as a song, but -- here's a complaint I don't often lodge -- the production's thin on the ground.

sorry to fill sna with rem threads but i’m here to declare reveal their worst album

otm

the singles are awesome but the kitchen-sink production deprives the whole thing of oxygen. what if we layered every synth preset ever on top of every single track

around the sun, however tired, at least breathes (ventilator-assisted). actually think it would be much more fondly received/remembered had approx 15-20 minutes of it been cut

Damn, Up cleaned up

also damn, mares didn't even give it a full minute.

(Up was the last album of theirs I heard in full.)

ivy- i will also defend around the sun as their "not worst" album. it has highlights, but i also like its soft rock anonymity. def too long tho. and whatever, i like the one with q-tip.

Reveal sucks really hard, the songs just plod along. It's such a drag.

I love Reveal.

There is definitely some good stuff in Around the Sun though its imperfections definitely hobble it.

I like Accelerate and Collapse but they both feel kinda generic to me.