pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Ha when I first heard Helmet on the radio, the DJ introduced them as a cross between Metallica and Nirvana.

Helmet is a cross btw Kustom Karnal–era Unrest (who recorded w/Wharton right before they did) and being boring.

morris pls clarify: do u mean the act of being boring or the pet shop boys song of the same name?

new romantic-influenced free jazz STOP STEALING MY RAD IDEAS

okay, i'm gonna start flagging myself for such flippant misuse of the h tag. anyway -- morris?

i'd say so. i really don't think anybody under 30 gives a fuck about REM or even knows who they are.

― budo jeru, Monday, 13 November 2023 00:18 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Their rep has fallen - no one has R.E.M. shirts - but this isn't true at least among under 30s who (to use the above counterexample) know about Pavement

But kudos for making a 2001 style ILM post in 2013

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Sunday, November 12, 2023 6:26 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i aim to please!

fwiw i can't stand REM. to me they just sound like the most boring possible band.

this is me w/all the REM that everybody considers classic -- the mystical kudzu mumble jangle stuff. I get a little interested with "green" and after that I like some of the singles, like when they let Bill Berry loose a little it's fun, but I'll just never get the love for the other stuff, didn't understand it then, have tried and had people tell me where to look and what they hear in it, it's just very boring music to me.

under 30 here: rem are just a good-not-great band who became far less interesting as they got bigger. none of their albums are classics but the first four are all pretty good, and they still had their moments until up. the best thing about them was their vocal arrangements with stipe/mills/berry all singing often largely-unrelated vocal lines, but they largely abandoned that approach around the time of document. i don't really understand the level of acclaim they used to have and i don't really have much fondness for their hits or anything.

i thought in 1998, and continue to think, that up isn't nearly as weird an album as it is usually claimed to be. it has basically the same dark contemplation punctuated by humor thing that automatic for the people has (but with five more instruments on every song), and that record never takes any shots.

this should probably be taken to an REM thread at this point, but whatever.

i honestly think they would've had a much more favorably looked on legacy if they'd kept following those avenues they began exploring on Up.

i'm also under 30 and r.e.m. are maybe one of the.. nine or ten bands I have sorta built a social life around

none of their albums are classics but the first four are all pretty good

I’m surprised you wouldn’t acknowledge the first few as classics (even if you’re not personally a fan)…

“none of their albums are classics” belongs in controps thread.

Stipe is an interesting lyricist. One can't really describe his lyrics as "bad" because they're not, really, it's more that they're free of "tangible content" or "tangible meaning", more about creating a mood than actually saying anything. I personally like meaty lyrics and think of Stipe as somewhat antithetical to what-I-look-for-in-a-lyricist, but can't deny his influence on latter-day "we're not here to say anything" lyricists like Matt from The National. There are some days that I think of this lyrical approach as being apolitical in this kinda rich-kid way that I can't really explain (it's more of an impression than an argument) but that's really the only broad crit I have of this fantastic band.

Reckoning and Life's Rich Pageant are the classics, to me; Murmur rules but the production and mix lets it down; Document through Automatic are "the very popular albums that I don't want to listen to"; my controp is that Green is "a bad album"; Monster is great and underrated, Hi-Fi is as much of a classic as those early albums imo. Moments of loveliness on every record that follows Hi-Fi. I'm loud in my love of "Imitation Of Life" as being one of the best late-career singles ever recorded by any band.

I love "Imitation Of Life," its title a good metaphoric summation of late-era REM.

Saw a good convo starting tweet from Elizabeth Nelson re: "Document"

"A brave and radical gesture from a great band on the precipice of mainstream acceptance, REM’s ‘Document’ is the record that formally untethered southern rock from Lost Cause hangovers and pointed toward a progressive future. As powerful as anything by Fugazi. An ur-text for DBT."=

I continue to find REM's non-mystical influence intriguing. Wild that a group could prove so influential on bands as diverse as Pearl Jam, Radiohead and, yeah, Drive-By Truckers. It's like the idea of REM made as big an impact as the music, but I'm still not sure what the idea of REM even is.

I’m surprised you wouldn’t acknowledge the first few as classics

murmur and lifes rich pageant are certainly their best and come pretty close to being classic but probably aren't quite there for me. reckoning has "harborcoat" which is the best song ever but the songs generally aren't as strong as murmur.

R.E.M. disappeared for years in the small world of the student deejays I oversee, but the ones who still like rock these days will acknowledge them as a formative dad rock band handed down to them by their parents (they have the same cachet as Fleetwood Mac).

a big difference is that fleetwood mac have excellent hits while it's hard to have much fondness for most of rem's

A big similarity is that both have killer rhythm sections and boast singers who specialize in babble.

My longstanding theory re R.E.M. fandom: the generation gap of record store clerks is way narrower. It seems to exist in 3-5 year spans (not coincidentally, more or less the length of a four-year undergrad degree). For instance, I always found it fascinating that indie nerds five years older than me all worshiped R.E.M. and indie nerds five years younger than me all loved Godspeed. Which sorta makes me, born in the mid seventies, part of Generation Pavement, I guess (though I think I narrowly prefer R.E.M. to Pavement).

If you're my age R.E.M. were a big gateway act. Especially if you lived in a town without a college radio station. You'd hear R.E.M. on an FM channel and that would lead you to the Replacements, who would lead you to Husker Du, etc.

a big difference is that fleetwood mac have excellent hits while it's hard to have much fondness for most of rem's

i guess that settles it!

rem were my third favorite band after smashing pumpkins and radiohead in high school so i have no objective perspective on this. they were the first band i ever encountered with an enormous discography where every album seemed worth hearing and like a distinct step forward from the previous

stipe was a big deal to me as a lyricist too, even in the later more lucid albums i loved the way he just tightrope-walked on the edge of sense. i was a stupid bisexual teen obviously aware of stipe’s queerness but i never thought about it much when i listened to the music; now a lot of it kinda reads as gay shit that never outs itself as gay shit*, something that resists direct translation or legibility. “bittersweet me” is prob my favorite lyric he ever wrote, god knows what’s going on there but all those words sound so good together

*except of course kinda-sorta on monster, god it was amazing to watch interviews with stipe in the monster-era while researching the pfork piece i wrote, nothing has changed (derogatory)

i have brought this up in rem threads before but i was a big enough fan that i convinced myself to love around the sun in hs. i never feel like revisiting it but i remember thinking at the time it was the only post-9/11 album i’d heard that was appropriately depressed and insomniac about it

It's their worst but it's not actively bad - Reveal (which I love) if almost nothing on it was as good as the actual Reveal. Pleasantly reminds me of when it was released, really.

I always found it fascinating that indie nerds five years older than me all worshiped R.E.M. and indie nerds five years younger than me all loved Godspeed. Which sorta makes me, born in the mid seventies, part of Generation Pavement, I guess (though I think I narrowly prefer R.E.M. to Pavement

I was an R.E.M. nut in high school and became a Pavement nut in college, but I know that transition wasn't universal (my h.s. buddy, who was/is even more gonzo about R.E.M. than I am, never really got into any indie rock I think). I realized (much later) that I technically first heard Pavement due to R.E.M. – the Born to Choose comp, which I bought for "Photograph," also contains "Greenlander." I don't recall that song making an impression on me at the time (despite it being one of Pavement's best), and it certainly didn't send me running to check out their stuff... I wouldn't get into them until a few years later.

Time After Time was my least favourite song
Time After Time was my least favourite song

Time After Time has always been my favourite. One of many ways me and Malkmus do not get on.

I doubt he meant it.

It’s funny that Pavement have been brought up because they’re a band that never really clicked with me, I think because the rabid fanbase vs quality of actual songs always seemed like a howling void

IDK, part of the appeal of Pavement is the deceptively slipshod quality that makes a listener think "I could have written that!" It collapses (or appears to collapse) the band/audience barrier, makes the experience of listening to them feel more intimate. The whole indie rock thing of "we're not rock stars, where just regular schlubs like you." It's a real parasocial relationship kind of thing. Especially if you first encounter them as an adolescent and the whole smart-but-slacking, impish smirk sort of vibe resonates with you (as it did with me).

For my part, I never clicked with REM! Outside of a handful of hits which are undeniably great, they just don't move me.

so we have consensus

I greatly like a handful of R.E.M. albums, then a number of singles beyond that, but never quite fell in love with them the way one high school classmate did - he was almost fanatical! (He later attended another school, and when I asked another classmate what became of him, I was told that he “became a shaman”.)

(I’m 46, for whatever that’s worth.)

Pavement, on the other hand, etc etc

You gotta wonder how many of their fans have become shamans

Is it weird that I associate Pavement with "sensitive" straight dudes and the straight women who love them? I dunno, your description is perfect, zchrys, but it gets down exactly why I find them tiresome.

That is weird for you to have that association, IMO.

I mean, I’m a sensitive straight dude, so

yeah more like "arch" straight dudes

The archness is a front for their wounded sensitivity.

I totally get what you mean though table and I get why it can be tiresome

I loved Automatic for the People as a young teen and liked whatever other REM songs I heard on the radio, but didn't really dig much further than that until I got into Pavement and found out what a formative influence REM had been on Malkmus and David Berman. Became a bigger REM fan after that, but never really a completist.

IMO, Pavement's whole vibe is "friendly, enthusiastic dudes who could've been in a frat if it didn't involve getting up early and doing other dumb pledge stuff; and who are tight / hang with some of the cooler frat guys." Malk's relationship/hookup lyrics are also notable for their... lack of sensitivity.

Anyway, the biggest Pavement fans I've known are either (a) women (and not in the "Ladies Auxiliary" way suggested in the post above), or (b) guys with a more or less similar vibe as the band itself.

i got into rem in high school and have listened to them plenty, i've been a fan, but that's worn off to a large degree and i don't really ever want to listen to half of automatic for the people again.

pavement don't quite have any classic albums either but they're a way better band overall. probably helps that they broke up when they did though, i might think of rem similarly if they'd broken up after lifes rich pageant. but i love malkmus' solo career too and think real emotional trash is the best album he ever made

malkmus has always really set off my gaydar even though he's straight.

i got into R.E.M. w/Out of Time, i'd heard about them before but only starting paying attention when "losing my religion" hit the radio. my indie awareness was fairly limited up til the middle of high school (pop radio, AOR, hard rock and hair metal were my jams up til then) and so when i started listening to some of the '80s college rock regulars i was catching them on the tail end or after they'd split (i.e. replacements via westerberg solo, husker du via sugar, camper van beethoven via cracker, etc.)

earlier R.E.M. was a harder sell at first, but eventually those first few albums really burrowed in. Reckoning might be my favorite overall, though Document and NAIHF are in the running too.

i never really completely jibed with Pavement, though i do like them.

The second side of OTT unlocked early R.E.M. Even today I can't believe they got away with "Texarkana," "Half a World Away," "Belong," "Country Feedback," and "Me in Honey" on a #1 album.