I Ate The POLLtus: REM's "Up"

Well, we only got to vote once. A multiple-choice ranking of Up tracks would have gotten more balance into the mix. I love Walk Unafraid, Apologist, Lotus... but Daysleeper and Hope are undeniably grebt.

Really quite an extraordinary record and I am glad it happened. I have sentimental faves on Fables, Green, etc., but I think Up is a special case. An album that happened exactly once. It cannot be compared to anything else because it just sits there like Mont St. Michel at low tide.

I feel like much of what they learnt doing Up would go on to contribute to the more songful album they perhaps always originally wanted to make in Reveal. So Up is amorphous and open-ended by design. Absolutely a one-off yeah, their own enigmatic Victorian folly.

Except Up is way better than Reveal.

But the band rather disagree afaict

(Personally my love for Up is such that I listen to it more than any of the first four I.R.S. albums so...)

Xp If so, they are wrong.

I'm interested to read their reflections on Up in the 25 set's liner notes. I remember Mike(?) in particular seeming a bit sullen about it at some point in some context when someone told him it was their favourite (pausing and then saying "it's good but it's not our best"). Ofc what I'd really love to happen is for Michael and Mike to do promo including a song-by-song radio interview but that understandably only ever happened for AFTP and Monster.

(and to a degree Out of Time)

there was some time about a decade or so back when i heard this and i remember thinking "of course that's where thom yorke got that idea to do kid a/amnesiac"

I have to find the interview, but somewhere there's a look back at Up (maybe an oral history) where it's mentioned that Mike Mills had little involvement in Up and openly complained about it, to which Peter Buck responded in the present day: "Want to participate? It's easy - JUST SHOW UP."

I can see them preferring Reveal if it was more of a collaborative effort - very uneven, their worst outside of Around the Sun, but I don't think they really settled into the idea of being trio until then.

Hmm. Up has so many keyboards

I'm pretty sure it was Up only because I was taken aback for that reason - it's the one post-Berry album I like in its entirety - but if I can remember where I saw it, I'll post a link. It's tough because I've read way too many articles on R.E.M.

I'm quite used to being the solitary Reveal lover wherever I am. And while it isn't as strong as Up their constant talk about it being a summer record lines up perfectly with my own liminal R.E.M. nostalgia from many, many moons ago.

(Like Up it is also soaked in keyboards and synths, but more in the sense of bubblebath dressing. Cosy lite-psych sfx sprinkled throughout folky soft rock was a spring 2001 aura, cf. Travis' likely-very-despised-here Sing.)

Here's the perfect Up bonus disc (79 minutes, even fits on a single CD):
Emphysema
Surfing The Ganges
Why Not Smile (Oxford American version)
Sad Professor (live in the studio)
Lotus (Weird mix)
Suspicion (live in the studio)
At My Most Beautiful (radio remix)
Suspicion (live in Ealing Studios)
Walk Unafraid (Peel session)
Daysleeper (Peel session)
Lotus (Peel session)
At My Most Beautiful (Peel session)
Passenger (live on Jools Holland)
Country Feedback (live on Jools Holland)
So. Central Rain (live on Jools Holland)
Electrolite (live on Jools Holland)
Man On The Moon (live on Jools Holland)
Perfect Circle (live on Jools Holland)

Man, I love Reveal and I’m so sick of seeing it casually dismissed as a piece of trash not worth debating. It’s great. No skips. The Lifting, All the Way to Reno, Imitation of Life - all fantastic.

Sequencing was R.E.M.'s biggest foe for a while there I think - the whole stretch from Monster through Reveal (not sure about Around the Sun, never actually heard the whole thing) falls into the "great album, kind of wants to reshuffle and lose 2-3 songs though" category.

Below is my long-time Up edit; to my surprise, the four songs I've omitted are among the top six in this poll, so it may displease.
The singles are frontloaded on side 1, which ends with an epic. Side 2 slows down with each subsequent song til it reaches stasis (I was thinking of Before and After Science as a model).

Daysleeper
Lotus
Suspicion
Sad professor
You're in the air

Walk unafraid
The apologist
Diminished (sans "I'm Not Over You")
Parakeet
Airportman

I mostly like Reveal and what particularly impresses me is the production, it makes me think of heat making the air shimmer

Below is my long-time Up edit; to my surprise, the four songs I've omitted are among the top six in this poll, so it may displease.
The singles are frontloaded on side 1, which ends with an epic. Side 2 slows down with each subsequent song til it reaches stasis (I was thinking of Before and After Science as a model).

Great edit, I think you nailed Side A. I'd start Side B with "Hope" and end with "Falls to Climb".

Not that I would change the final album but I think Why Not Smile would make a great opening song