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Post by Prole Hole on Apr 7, 2017 3:32:19 GMT -5
Invisible Goat - I haven't really touched on the videos at all, but the one for "Man On The Moon" really is great, and so ridiculously simple as well. Just Michael walking to a bar, meeting some people including the rest of the band, then leaving, basically. Yet it does some just work. Brilliant. And you write about music just fine - don't put yourself down (we have the Shoutbox for that)!
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Post by Prole Hole on Apr 8, 2017 9:01:50 GMT -5
Monster (1994) After the dust settled on R.E.M.’s critically best-regarded album the question is – how do you follow that? Well, by putting aside everything that happened over the last three albums and slamming out the loud guitars on the bargain-bin-worrying Monster. But does the album deserve its reputation at the bottom of the bin alongside such luminaries No Doubt, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the Spin Doctors? If I’m To Be A Camera: A big, sleeve-filling, slightly out of focus, ugly cartoon head against a lurid orange background. It’s about as far away from the muted hues and greys of Automatic For The People as it could get. On the inside we get four individual band pictures (in different shades of two tone, all equally garish), a few abstract photographs (a chair, a roof, a sofa), and a series of equally abstract words and phrases apparently assembled at random but in alphabetical order (sample selection: “autumn. Backup chump. Bird mid-flight. Bulletproof. Certain feeling. Code for fucking” And so it goes on. Rather delightfully, I had to resort to the CD version of this album to check the packaging, this being the first R.E.M. album I don’t have on vinyl, and on opening up the sleeve my ticket to see them at Cardiff Arms Park on 23rd July 1995 fell out. I had no idea I still had the stub, but I’m terribly pleased I do. When You Tire Of One Side: Head Side and Tail Side, presumably in reference to the cartoon bear/monster thing from the cover. Pre-existing Prejudices: The One After Automatic. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the album when it was released, a couple of killer singles aside, but I’ve liked it more and more as time has gone by. Time to discover if it’s worthy of full redemption or if it will forever be “the R.E.M. album nobody seems that bothered by”. Songs: “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” Well it didn’t take long for Automatic’s quiet contemplation to get blown out of the water. Big fuzzy glam guitars, and Michael’s vocal is a bit further back in the mix back than we’ve been used to lately (presumably to slightly disguise the fact he sings “fuck” once or twice). Bill’s chugging along, but Mike’s doing some inventive stuff at the low end of the spectrum. Ohh, a backwards, Beatles-y guitar solo! I’d forgotten about that! Pacing is very deliberate – this isn’t a loud thrash, it’s extremely controlled. Terrific album opener. “Crush With Eyeliner” R.E.M. does New York Dolls or early Queen (but without the Goddamn Brian May Guitar Sound (©Nudeviking, 2016), mercifully). Talk about glam guitars… Michael’s back in come-hither vocal mode a la “Star Me Kitten” but less coy. His vocal still isn’t fully up at the front though, and is just a little bit produced. Swathes of guitar on the chorus are pretty damned glorious. Bill’s doing really solid work here (the fall onto toms before “my crush with eyeliner”). Big ugly guitar solo, the right way round this time out. Mike’s “she’s her own invention” backing vocal on the last verse is very funny indeed. “King Of Comedy” No pause between the last song and this one, a first for an R.E.M. record. Michael’s vocal is hugely distorted, as are Peter’s guitars, this sounds musically of a piece with the last song but more… corrupted. It’s a fantastic conceit. Some resentful, judgemental lyrics. “Make your money with a pretty face / make it easy with a product placement / make it charged with controversy / I’m straight, I’m queer, I’m bi”. Strafing guitars are a really nice touch. A filthy, angry song. It’s all resting on Peter and Michael here. “I’m not commodity” Michael declares at the end of the song, but just before it he almost inaudibly spits out the sarcastic “all together now”. Love it. “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” The emotional downward trajectory of the album carries on. Michael just sounds really mordant here, even as he reaches for the falsetto. More sexual implications (“I’d settle for a cup of coffee / but you know what I really need” is suggestive and “do I give good head?” is explicit). Bill’s exemplary here, almost all the atmosphere hangs off his drum work, and its great. A song that finishes abruptly on uncertainty, but not a 7th. Fabulous. “Star 69” OK this one is a thrash. Sounds a bit like something that might have been on Dead Letter Office Vol 2 (were there such a thing), rather than a full album, and feels like it’s reaching for a Nirvana/Pixies vibe. Again Michael’s vocal is not upfront, so it’s a deeply difficult song to work out the lyric, the gabbled delivery really doesn’t help. Peter’s guitars are still very fuzzed, where a slightly clearer sound might have helped a bit. Not bad, but obviously the weakest song so far. “Strange Currencies” Big, picked riff in the style of “Everybody Hurts”, but the fuzz and distortion underneath stops this being a re-tread (Peter can knock these out in his sleep at this stage, it seems). The different subject for the lyric helps too, though comparisons are inevitable. Mike’s doing a very 50’s-style bass line. Still, it’s a big blousy song, and unafraid to be one. Michael’s 100% upfront now, a clear vocal and his most emotional so far on the album. A great performance from him, and the best thing about the song. “Tongue” A Mike-on-piano intro, the some background organ, and Michael now embracing full falsetto. Very much a song of pain, from a rather high-school perspective (“”ugly girls know their fate/ anybody can get laid”), though Michael’s not having any of it (“don’t believe that stuff“). Mike does great on this song, actually, between his piano and organ work, a great, simple bass and his backing vocals. Lovely little instrumental break just before the final verse, those really are the moments that can make a song like this. “Bang and Blame” Peter’s still in glam guitar mode, but Mike’s right up front on bass this time out, and he’s absolutely brilliant. A few nice phrases (“your secret life of indiscreet discretions”). Bill’s doing some great work on the toms again – this song belongs to the rhythm section, despite Peter’s big guitars on the chorus and the instrumental break. Michael’s working hard to make this succeed, but unusually you can kind of tell he’s having to work – there’s something slightly… clinical about “Bang And Blame”, a kind of R.E.M. join-the-dots song. It’s good, but it doesn’t quite make a case for itself somehow, even though all the individual parts are great. There’s a musical ellipse here, with a vibrato guitar, some staccato drums from Bill and a small bass riff from Mike. It parts the album three quarters of the way through, which is appropriate. “I Took Your Name” Talk about vibrato guitars! Ok here we go. Michael sounds so fucking pissed off here, and it’s wonderful. Hugely bitter lyric - “there is some confusion / who’s to blame?” Michael spits out, making the answer obvious. Another dirty, dirty song, Mike’s bass is positively intimidating, and Peter’s working clean guitars in with the fuzz and feedback, giving an extra dimension. A nasty piece of work, and oh so fucking brilliant. “Let Me In” Vast, wall-to-wall guitars completely encircling the listener, and sounds like nothing in R.E.M.’s history. Michaels lost, lonely vocal is right in the middle of them, isolated and afraid, and utterly stunning. It takes us to the second chorus before another member of the band puts in an appearance (it’s Bill tapping a tambourine). Then a pause, a huge hanging D-major, and Mike’s heart-breaking organ arrives, along with his high, agonised backing vocals. They match Michael’s screeching of the song title as the guitars and organ plunge towards the crushing end of the song. How many ways are there to say “fucking amazing”? “Circus Envy” Fuzzed, distorted guitars almost sound like a motorbike, skidding all over the song. The distortion is now racked up so high it’s barely even possibly to tell that there’s an instrument behind it, it’s almost white noise. A sick, sickly song (“here comes that awful feeling again”). Bill’s taking the lead here, hammering every single strike of the kit like his life depended on it. Bitter first verse, but even the fall into the chorus which shifts into a major key offers no release from the toxicity of the song (“I forgot to bark. On command” is followed by a repetition of “here comes that awful feeling again” then “make way for monster jealousy”). An exhausted, frustrated, angry lyric brings everything down to a very personal level, especially with the shrieking and demanding “do you smell jealousy?” at the end of the song. Vile, and completely engrossing. “You” Very much of a piece with “Oddfellows Local 151” but about a million times more. Peter’s vibrato guitar is layered over wave after wave of the song’s main riff and oceans of distortion. Michael’s sounded mad before but he’s never, ever sounded as genuinely demented as he does when he reaches for “turn to youuuuu!” Bill’s playing like a big animal’s heartbeat in the middle of the song while Mike’s just striking single notes on the verses that sound like the earth splitting open (he’s matching Michael’s demented vocals though, his hysterical, insane “wooo!” just before the final chorus). There’s a sheer weight to this song, a strung-out, tension-soaked feel that’s pretty much unmatched, and it’s emotionally shredding. Were it not for “Find The River”, the best R.E.M. album closer, as it finally dissolves the end of the album in electric pulses and vibrato. Stunning. In Conclusion: If Monster is about anything, it’s about sex. It’s also, somewhat, about relationships, their beginnings and endings, and the playful spaces in-between – occasionally happy, but largely not. “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” kicks things off with chunky guitars that very much signpost where the album is going to go musically, and wastes no time shouldering aside the developments of the last three albums to return the electric guitar to its position right bang in the middle of what the band do. There’s no trace of mandolins or accordions here. The shock to the system for people coming in off the back of a couple of albums filled with pastoral ballads of longing and loss was extreme, and in some ways helps to explain Monster’s relatively poor reputation. Because, clearly, this sounds absolutely nothing like Automatic For The People or Out Of Time, and indeed nothing else in R.E.M.’s past. The clichés of R.E.M. – jangly guitars, well-crafted pop songs, restraint – have been entirely jettisoned and even their previous loudest album, Document, doesn’t come close to the sonic construction of Monster. Equally, Michael has never been so explicit about sex or sexuality – it’s impossible to imagine the line “do you give good head / am I good in bed?” (“I Don’t Sleep, I Dream”) on any other album prior to this one, nor would he ever have previously described someone as a “last-ditch lay” (“Tongue”), yet here these feel entirely in keeping, and indeed appropriate. “Star Me Kitten” – the band’s previous most explicitly sexual song – couldn’t come close to competing with the sex and sleaze on display here. Co-incidence though it is, even something as simple as the title of “Star 69” implies sex. There are hints of the “authenticity wars” that dogged alternative music in the early 90’s – “Richard said withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy” from “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” or the sarcastic dismissal of acts who “make it easy with a product placement” from “King Of Comedy” – but for the most part this is an album about the physical and the emotional, not the social or political. Monster doesn’t sound like a progression from the past, it sounds like a complete break from it, which alongside this new explicitness is also something unfamiliar. Until now, every album had a connection to the one that preceded it, so there was a thematic, musical or lyrical bridge between them – even when that bridge was comparatively slender (between, say, Fables Of The Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant), it was still there, reassuring the listener that the albums were all still of a piece with each other. Not Monster. It’s a huge, ugly album that enthusiastically embraces trash aesthetic in its early songs, then uses that aesthetic to gradually corrupt and tear down everything, until reaching the final few emotionally shattering and exhausting songs that sound like steel being scraped over an open nerve. It’s challenging and difficult in a way that no other R.E.M. record has ever attempted to be, and even when seen in light of their entire run of albums, it’s the one that stands out as being its own thing the most – a jagged shard of viciousness stuck into the gut of the band’s back catalogue. Even Up doesn't quite feel this different. The transition between Automatic For The People and New Adventures In Hi-Fi feels much more natural than the transition between Automatic For The People and Monster, yet this is exactly why Monster is so worthwhile. It’s completely unexpected and unpredictable and in unbalancing expectations it finds new territory for the band to cover. Does this approach work? Staggeringly, yes. Monster might be big and ugly, but it sets out its stall, it sticks to it, and it drives itself further than anyone might reasonably expect. Its’ that sense of commitment to its own aesthetic, and to its progression, that really lets Monster succeed on its own terms. R.E.M. albums have had emotional journeys before – Automatic’s swirling musings on death and loss, or Green’s move from cheerfulness through anger to eventual redemption. But no R.E.M. album has had an emotional arc like Monster, because it’s a complete plummet, a diagonal line on a graph from the top of the X-axis to the bottom of the Y-axis. Things start comparatively upbeat then, track by track, beat by beat, get worse and worse, until the howling pain of the last four songs and the manic, tortured screeching of “You”. It’s hard to imagine the band were in a healthy emotional state when these songs were written, but if they suffered for them then it was entirely worthwhile, because the four songs after the musical ellipse – “I Took Your Name”, “Let Me In”, “Circus Envy”, “You” – is one of the strongest four-song runs in the band’s entire career, and deserve a lot more credit than they’re usually given (this is why the ellipse is perfectly placed – those four songs really are of a piece with each other, and it’s not a happy place to be). Monster may lack the reputation of the band’s strongest works, but that’s entirely unfair. Of all the albums covered thus far, Monster was always going to be the one that’s most challenging to write about – between endless bargain-bin jokes and the album’s poor critical appraisal this has always been seen as the band’s first major misstep. But it’s not a misstep at all. It is an explicit rejection of the past, but in rejecting that past the band are able to move on to new territory and attempt something altogether more worthwhile than if they had simply gone for Automatic For The People II (and there is a case to be made that Automatic is already Out Of Time II and indeed that New Adventures is Out Of Time III). They instead strike out in an unexpected, new direction and the results are bracing in the extreme. Monster isn’t ever going to be an album for everyone, but that in and of itself makes it worth investigating. There is no album in R.E.M.’s back catalogue more worthy of redemption that Monster - it’s a challenging, awkward, angular album, and it is magnificent. Best Song: “Let Me In” Worst Song: “Star 69”, though sneakily I think it might be “Bang And Blame” And now, at Nudeviking 's request, a 1973-vintage man wearing a 1995-vintage T-shirt. Try not to all swoon at once...
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Post by ganews on Apr 8, 2017 11:45:18 GMT -5
I love <i>Monster</i>, my first Compact Disc, all the way. I was shocked to learn that this was supposed to be some consignment to 90s bargain bins. (I didn't grow up in a place with a record store, just a crappy mall CD store 30 minutes away.) I think I was young enough to appreciate the album for what it was instead of what I expected R.E.M. to be.
I love the hell out of "Star 69", what a fun little song. “Strange Currencies” > “Everybody Hurts” The intonation of "on command" from “Circus Envy” is one of the most fun bits to sing along to, even in the Eddie Vedder era I didn't dislike “Bang And Blame” but I wouldn't have had it on the radio so much. Weird Al included it in an alternative polka medley.
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Post by Nudeviking on Apr 9, 2017 21:46:43 GMT -5
In early April of the year 1994 Kurt Cobain did suicide. I found out about it in the car ride home from bowling (because in middle school I was on a bowling team). Meanwhile in Athens, GA R.E.M. gathered in their R.E.M. lair to discuss recording their followup album to Automatic For The People. Below is a transcript of what transpired taken from their minutes.
MICHAEL STIPE: Yo dudes Kurt Cobain is dead and we have to record a new album or our record label will kick our asses.
PETER BUCK: We should record an album of melancholy mandolin based ballads as a tribute to Kurt. It's what he would have wanted.
BILL BERRY: Fuck no! I didn't join a band to write folk songs. I need to rock the fuck out! If I don't my head is going to explode.
MICHAEL STIPE: What do you think Mike?
MIKE MILLS: I don't give a shit as long as I can wear a nudie suit and do superb backing vocals.
MICHAEL STIPE: I guess we'll rock the fuck out then in order to prevent Bill's head from exploding. Is that cool Pete?
PETER BUCK: Whatever...I'm going to go get drunk on a plane and fight a stewardess.
Pre-Existing Prejudices In spite of being found in used CD bins all across the world this was my favorite R.E.M. album and was probably the first one I purchased myself rather than just dubbed off albums my dad owned. I'm pretty sure it's the 90s-est thing ever though so listening to it now could end up being like listening to Candlebox in 2000 whatever year this is.
Songs "What's the Frequency Kenneth?" This is a fantastic album opener. I like the maracas in the chorus and the backward guitar solo. Peter Buck is probably the king of awesome, bad guitar solos and the one here is one of his best/worst. It's so good.
"Crush With Eyeliner" I love how sleazy this is. There's a lot of delay on the guitars on this album. Peter Buck's guitar solo is terribly awesome. Mike Mills talking backing vocals are pretty hilarious. He was probably more concerned with his nudie suits than delivering superb backing vocals here, but it kind of works anyway.
"King of Comedy" This is a weird song. Distorted vocals and guitars. A quasi dance beat. It kind of sounds like a drum machine. It sounds like they've got some ladies doing backing vocals during the chorus but maybe it's just drunk Mike Mills doing falsetto in a nudie suit. The outro's got Peter Buck doing an old school R.E.M. jangle guitar riff like, "Hey remember when we sounded like this?"
"I Don't Sleep, I Dream" This has a sick tom beat. Bill Berry has been waiting two albums to rock a beat like this. He's basically taking lead here. The guitar and me-me-me-me keyboard thing are really minimal. Lyrically Michael Stipe wants to get his fuck on. It's a solid song that ends kind of abruptly.
"Star 69" The mainstream alterna-rockingest song of the entire album. This was all over the radio when I was in high school probably buttressed by the latest singles from Sponge and Oasis. It's decent hard rock but nothing special really.
"Strange Currencies" Like "Everybody Hurts" but more suitable for mid-90s high school dances and awkward teenage groping. I kind of like the string section they got going on in this and the guitar harmonics that are going on. Probably the best Michael Stipe vocal performance on the album.
"Tongue" Piano and organ. Michael Stipe falsettoing it up. This kind of reminds me of U2. Some fuzzed out guitars show up briefly towards the middle. I guess that they were the requisite bad Peter Buck guitar solo. This song's kind of mediocre. It was my least favorite Monster track back in the day, and that is probably still the case.
"Bang and Blame" Tom frenzy! Bass riffs! Minimalist guitar parts in the verses! Grunge power chord riffs in the chorus! What is this post song secret riff part? I do not recall this at all. What I do recall about this song is it was playing when some girl I was kind of dating in 10th grade cut my hair in her parents' kitchen and we drank shitty mixed drinks. It's weird how some songs get so linked to some specific event that even 20+ years later you remember that incident better than the fact that there's a weird instrumental thing after the song seemingly ends.
"I Took Your Name" So much vibrato! So much delay! COWBELL! The guitar riff is outstanding. This might be the most menacing R.E.M. has ever sounded. The "there's some confusion/who's to blame" part is great.
"Let Me In" The guitars here sound almost My Blood Valentine-esque. They're huge and oppressive and dominate Michael Stipe's meek vocals. Rock organ and a tambourine(?) come in about halfway through. The organ part is awesome here. This is a really good song. I wish R.E.M. did more distortion guitar/rock organ/vocal songs. It is a far more preferable sort of song than melancholy mandolin and whining songs that they were doing prior to this album.
"Circus Envy" Somewhere in upstate New York there exists a VHS cassette of my high school band playing this song in a basement along with a couple original songs and a Pearl Jam song provided of course my parents didn't throw it away. This was hands down my favorite song off this album when if first came out. I still think it's pretty fantastic. I love the snarling wah guitar bits and how sleazy and mean the entire thing is.
"You" I can't tell what some of the instrumentation on this actually is. Is that throbbing thing a bass? A fuzzed out guitar? A keyboard? Who knows? It's all pretty great though. Berry's drumming is fantastic as is Mike Mills' backing vocals (not that that really needs to be said). The way Stipe yells, "YOOOOOOU!" at the end before the song ends in feedback fading out is pretty haunting and probably one of the better closing tracks R.E.M. has done.
Final Thoughts This is still a really great album and does not deserve it's "Always in the used CD bin because it's a shit album like Hootie and the Blowfish's Cracked Rearview," reputation. It's got a bajillion hooks and rocks the fuck out without being a dumb rock album. I mean dumb rock albums are fun and have their place in society, but this is a smart album dressed up in dumb rock album trappings and it somehow works. That being said, it's also kind of depressing, like R.E.M. listened to "Shiny Happy People," and decided to do the exact opposite of that. It's dark, the lyrics are depressing (particularly the back half of the album). It loud and menacing and makes you think bad thoughts about things, but I absolutely love it.
In a lot of ways it's the perfect R.E.M. album for surly teens circa 1995, which is what I was and is probably a big part of the reason I was so fond of it. My father, who was a far bigger R.E.M. fan than I, did not care for it half as much as I did, probably because he wasn't and angry mid-90s teenager when it was released. It's probably not their best crafted album, or the most timeless, but it's still my favorite R.E.M. album, and rather unfortunately maligned.
Best Song: The last four tracks (From best to fourth best..."Circus Envy," "Let Me In," "You," "I Took Your Name") Worst Song: "Tongue." It's not terrible, it's just the least good song on an album replete with good songs. It's still better than a lot of other songs, just not other songs on this album.
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Post by Prole Hole on Apr 10, 2017 3:44:32 GMT -5
Normally when I listen to these albums for the review I do it through headphones, but this time out I did one listen through headphones and one on my stereo. Prole Him's reaction to putting the album on was "What's with the Way Back Machine?" and "this couldn't be any more 90's, could it?" Both entirely fair statements.
But yay I'm not the only one to defend Monster! And those four last songs... just devastatingly effective. Such an under-rated album.
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,499
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Post by Dellarigg on Apr 10, 2017 5:53:25 GMT -5
Hmmm. I always felt this was a pretty good album, just not a pretty good REM album. It's been a while since I listened to it (I'm listening now), but even so, looking at some of the titles gives me only the vaguest notion of the song they're attached to. I think there's just not enough going on in them. Still, Let Me In is up there with their best.
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Post by Prole Hole on Apr 25, 2017 13:37:03 GMT -5
New Adventures In Hi-Fi (1996) Monster was a huge commercial success, but the subsequent tour and toll on the band was extreme. The result – New Adventures In Hi-Fi, a partly-recorded-on-the-road follow up that finds the band retreating to more familiar territory while still stretching what can be done within those confines. But does it right the ship after Monster’s wobbly reception? If I’m To Be A Camera: Moody black-and-white desert and sky stands in sharp contrast to Monster’s brash, bold cover, and looks more of a piece with Automatic For The People than its immediate predecessor. The back cover gives us curved city streetlights (Los Angeles?) shot from a plane in even starker black-and-white. Even the interior pictures of the band – clustered round a diner table – is in black-and-white, as is the out-of-focus factory, the pool of water and the usual other sundry non-sequitur pictures. When You Tire Of One Side: Hi and Fi. I don’t feel any explanation is really necessary, is it? Pre-existing Prejudices: Variable. Liked, not loved, on release, and for the first time I knew a couple of the tracks in advance of the album being released, having seen them on the Monster tour of 1995 where a couple of tracks were played. But this album also has “E-Bow The Letter” on it, which is one of my favourite R.E.M. songs, so let’s find out of the rest of the album is up to that high standard, shall we? Songs: “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us” Lovely, spartan opening drum line, before Mike’s keyboards and bass arrived. It’s all Mike and Bill here. Sharp, direct contrast to the howling of Monster. The return of Mike’s discreet piano, which is very welcome. Lots of acoustic space in the production. Michael is close-miked and breathy, which we also haven’t had for a while. Very Aladdin Sane piano break, and it’s terrific, the discordant noodling working well and in contrast with the very precise measure of the rest of the song. Brilliant opening “The Wake-Up Bomb” Glam guitars are back! But they’re not really as well done as they were on Monster. It’s trying a little too hard, and you can almost see Michael struggling to strike the same poses he managed so effortlessly on the last album. Peter’s working hard. Chorus into “ooooh the wake up bomb” is the best moment of the song, especially with Mike on near-inaudible distorted backing vocals. Unremarkable, and they’ve done this better. Stupid who-plays-last ending which was the sort of thing the band mocked back on Dead Letter Office. “New Test Leper” The start of Michaels’ vague tendency to refer to Jesus directly in songs. It’s trying really hard, and the sincerity has been cracked up to eleven, though to limited advantage. Lots of hopefully-believable acoustic work. Michael’s doing well on vocals, and the song obviously does mean something to him, but it’s… well, its not bad, but the music can’t quite support the sincerity of the lyric so it sounds a little twee. When Michael sings “what an ugly thing to say”, he’s not wrong. It’s also a bit.. self-important, maybe? The lyric is a bit self-centred, and nobody’s really shining on the musician side of the band (Mike’s probably the best, though the climbing organ isn’t his finest work). So of course it finishes on a 7th. “Undertow” Immediately 100% better. Huge, driving Mike bass line, a Michael lyric he seems to really believe in, lovely fuzzed Peter guitars, and Bill’s finding new patterns to anchor things off on drums. Tiny little restraint on the first chorus when Michael sings “I’m drowning…” he goes down, but on the second chorus he goes up, while Mike’s giving it all on “believe what I say” backing vocals – a brilliant little moment that gives the second chorus just that little extra push. All this and Peter’s back at picking. So much more convincing than the last two tracks. “E-Bow The Letter” “E-Bow The Letter” is fucking brilliant. A stream-of-consciousness lyric, and the best thing Michael’s written is an absolute age. “Whoever she is”. Lovely, keening guitar, courtesy of the titular E-Bow. Peter’s picking with such subtlety, and Mike is just flawless. And then on the first chorus Patti Smith turns up and everything is just better, and it was brilliant before that. Aluminum may taste like fear, but “E-Bow The Letter” tastes like sheer, unbridled brilliance. Dark, but not self-indulgent, passionate but not shrieking. plaintive but not desperate. Patti Smith’s closing “tastes like fear” at the end is one of the best moments on any R.E.M. song. Yeah. Fucking brilliant. “Leave” Slow picking over a harmonium, gently introduces a song which then explodes into that. Sliding, hyper-drugged klaxon, Bill in full thudding power mode. Just great. The fall into the major chorus from the minor verse as Michael shrikes away is positively inspired. This feels like the successor to the screeching pain of Monster. “I suffer dream of a world gone mad / I like it like that and I know it” is a terrific couplet. Yet there’s a restraint here, reminiscent of “Turn You Inside Out”. Oh and there’s Mike, doing what Mike does. At over seven minutes, effortlessly the longest R.E.M. song to date, and easily justifies every single second of it. Howlingly powerful, and an absolute highlight. “Departure” Not so much. As with “The Wake-Up Bomb” trying a little too hard (“The Wake-Up Bomb” is better, though). Decent B-side material not quite up to earning a place on a full album, but here it is anyway. Vague travelogue lyric, but even Mike’s backing vocals can’t quite manage to save this (especially since they sound like they’ve been recycled from “Me In Honey”). Everyone’s working hard to make this succeed, but its unremarkable at best. “Bittersweet Me” If you had a chart that explained what an archetypal R.E.M. song was like, “Bittersweet Me” might be slap bang in the middle. Some jangle guitar on the verse but big power chords on the chorus, a faintly downbeat but not defeatist lyric (“I’m stronger than you think”), understated but well-judged bass and guitar… very typical, yet not derivative of themselves. I can’t really decide if its good or not but I love the line “I’d sooner chew my leg off / than be trapped in this”. And there’s something very right about “static and desire” as an expression. A song that works, but which doesn’t quite ascend to anything more. “Be Mine” Opening vocal-and-guitar-only reminds of “Let Me In” but noticeably less bleak. The lyric feels like its reaching for something romantic but often comes across as “Star Me Kitten” creepy. Still, Peter’s consistently brilliant here, and when the single tambourine kicks in on the second verse you can almost feel things building. Then Mike’s in on a couple of bass-notes, and there’s just a little more texture as tension builds… and finally explodes when Bill kicks in, a fantastic moment. Very much a constructed song, but no worse for it. Fine. “Binky The Doormat” Stupid title hiding a deeply pained lyric. Michael’s quite low in the mix here, which smears the lyric a little, but there’s no disguising the suffering in Mike’s “go away, go away, go go go” backing vocal, which start on the first chorus in the background but by the songs end become the dominant theme of the lyric when Michael eventually joins him in the same refrain. There’s real hurt in Michael’s delivery here which gives the song more emotion than the lyric could quite conjure. “Zither” Silly instrumental that exists as a buffer between the pain of “Binky The Doormat” and the amphetamine-rush of “So Fast, So Numb”. Not a musical ellipse, as such, but maybe would have been better as one. “So Fast, So Numb” Back with glam, grungy guitars, fuzzing it up all over the place. There’s something about this that works, but it’s not easy to define what – certainly Michael’s really committing himself to a lyric that otherwise seems like a fairly inconsequential effort – he’s absolutely spitting this stuff out. Mike’s delivered a really terrific bass too, and there’s a whole chorus of him on backing vocals this time out. This is a minor work that everybody’s unexpectedly giving 110% and it kind of all comes together. There’s even a return of the Ropey Peter Buck Lead Guitar on the instrumental. Surprisingly good. “Low Desert” R.E.M. as widescreen. This is the album cover set to music, dry and distant. One of Mike’s least-appreciated but best bass lines, and great jumps between Michael delivering in low register before jumping an octave for the second chorus on the “say you leave it all behind”. Dusty, desert organ in the background is so simple but adds so much. This is Bill’s album best effort well. Nobody remembers “Low Desert” but I don’t know why, because its absolutely fantastic. Brilliantly produced too. A highlight not just of this, but of any R.E.M. album. “Electrolite” Almost heartbreakingly sweet, and a crack of humour right at the album’s end. It feels like it’s been simply ages since there was something humourous on an R.E.M. album, yet here it, just when it’s needed the most. You can hear Michael smiling at certain stages, and there’s one of those Mike piano lines that sound like a six-year-old could have played it yet belies just what an astonishingly talented keyboard player he is, because that line is genius. Lovely strings on the instrumental break and one of those great pauses just before the final verse. Knowing it’s Bill’s last ever R.E.M. song can’t help but colour perception of the song, but he does himself proud (of course). “You’re outta sight” indeed. He may well be, but those final lines are just… wow. It’s that R.E.M. thing that I’ve mentioned before – when they hit a moment they really hit it, and it’s devastating in its simplicity, and Michael’s last, “I’m not scared… I’m outta here,” is a moment most bands would kill to be able to deliver, yet here it’s almost off-handed. Truly magnificent. In Conclusion: Well, in some ways New Adventures In Hi-Fi is a conclusion, which is to say that this is the last album with the full Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe line-up, and so this serves as an end to the band as it’s been up till now. The fact that this is Bill’s last album inevitably puts a certain weight of expectation on the material here, yet that seems a little unfair – New Adventures has lots of material that could be read as being about Bill’s upcoming departure (there’s lots of lyrics about moving on, and two of the songs are called “Leave” and “Departure”), but this isn’t necessarily a helpful lens through which to view the album. Because in truth New Adventures, as much as anything, feels like a fusion between Automatic and Monster, with the former’s softer, picked moments sitting alongside the big crunchy guitars from the latter. It’s an unusual blending, and recalls Green slightly, in that because it’s an album that’s fairly clearly wearing the influences from the last two releases on its sleeve it never quite manages to become distinctive enough to be its own thing. This is R.E.M.’s longest album by a fair distance, clocking in at just over sixty-five minutes, and the problem here is that there’s an unusual inconsistency in the quality of the material. New Adventures is, and I know it’s not an original observation to make, a road album – largely recorded at gigs, then finished later in the studio – and it’s in the nature of travelling that sometimes you’ll go down a road that isn’t quite the right one, or that doesn’t quite end where you think it will, and thus it is with this album. The weaker songs here – “Departure” most obviously comes to mind – meander, and while that adds something to the texture of the album, it’s not always a productive something. New Adventures is definitely an album where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so the diversions the weaker songs take us down aren’t fatally damaging, but it’s also hard not to feel that had, say, three or four songs been cut (let’s go with “Departure”, “Zither”, “The Wake-Up Bomb” and maybe one other), the album would have been tighter, leaner and all the more effective for it. Because when the material here is good, it’s career-best good, and I don’t want to sound like I’m being down on New Adventures, because I’m not. I’m wont linger on “E-Bow The Letter”, because it’s qualities are self-evident even before Patti Smith’s soaring vocals arrive on the scene, but something like “Leave” is an absolutely extraordinary achievement – completely distinct from anything else the band have done, yet also obviously a clear outgrowth from the work that was put in on Monster. The pained, yearning vocal we’ve had before (even as this is as good as Michael’s ever done it), but the shrieking electronic klaxon that underpins the track is certainly not, and it’s brutally effective. Yet it’s not a song of one texture, it’s able to cut back (the “lift me lift me / I attain my dreams” section) when it needs to so there’s real dimension to the track rather than a straightforward sonic assault. It’s a sprawling seven-and-a-half minute epic that feels like the culmination of a lot of different threads coming together to produce one masterpiece. But it’s not unique on the album in this respect, and at the other end of the spectrum we have “Electrolite”, which demonstrates a playful lightness of touch that shows how much range the band still has. It’s another in a long line of terrific album closers, and of course the final line inevitably brings us back to Bill’s departure from the band, intentional or not. So, since Bill has been such a stalwart until now, let’s leave the final words for him. Drummers never get an easy ride of it, but Bill Berry (The Nicest Man In Rock Music tm) has been unspeakably brilliant over the course of the band’s career, constantly inventive, endlessly imaginative, and able to prove himself not just on drums, but on vocals and other instruments as well. He’s been a core of the band, and whatever heights the band hits going forward (and there are still plenty of heights to hit) things are never quite the same again now that he’s vacated the drum stool at the back of the stage. In truth New Adventures isn’t Bill’s strongest album, but he’s never less than great and, as on tracks like “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us”, proves that he’s still got the goods right up to the very end. So thanks for everything, Mr Berry, it wouldn’t be the same without you. Best Track: “E-Bow The Letter”, with “Leave” just a hair’s-breadth behind. Worst Track: “Zither”
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Post by Prole Hole on Jun 24, 2017 12:34:51 GMT -5
Up (1998) Fare thee well then, Mr Bill Berry. Bill’s departure from the band after the release of New Adventures leaves the band drummer-less and directionless. What do you do when one of your core members leaves? Strike out in a bold new direction, it seems, with Bill taking the vast majority of acoustic instruments with him. This means for the first time the band embrace electronic instruments front and centre of their music on the follow-up album, Up. But does electronic music suit a band who have so far been almost relentlessly traditional in their instrumentation choices? If I’m To Be A Camera: A succession of approximately-pop-art squares, with a big, chunky 3D band logo and the album title skewered by a blue arrow. On the back cover Michael looks down and depressed, Mike looks forward and cheerful, and Peter looks like he’s been snapped after shoplifting at a Kwik-e-mart. So pretty much business as usual. For the first time, the entire lyrics for every single song are listed on the inside. When You Tire Of One Side: Up Side and Down Side. Purely a play on the title, it’s safe to assume, since there’s nothing noticeably more cheerful about side one, nor more depressed about side two (which opens with “Walk Unafraid”). Pre-existing Prejudices: I love Up. It’s for my money the most under-appreciated album in R.E.M.’s back catalogue. New Adventures had pitiful sales figures next to the likes of Automatic and Monster, but at least in terms of its music it’s a largely-redeemed album, at least in the eyes of fans (though only partly deserving of that redemption – I still think it’s too long). Up, somehow, hasn’t ever quite had the same attention that New Adventures has, so it’s time to find out if my love of the album is justified, or if I’m just being contrary. It can, of course, be two things. Songs: “Airportman” Now that’s what I call a contrast! Gone is every single familiar R.E.M. prop – Michael’s way low in the mix again but he’s also singing deeper than he has done… forever? Simple, electronic drums and a droning synth make up the bulk of the track, with some crystalline chiming a little later on. Wildly unusual structure for an R.E.M. song, and no melody to speak of. It’s tough to call this a good song, but it is absolutely not fucking about in declaring a change of direction, for which it deserves some amount of credit. Over-long though – we’ve got the message by about the two-minute mark. “Lotus” Considerably more traditional – we have actual-human drums, a guitar melody before the first verse, Michael’s back in I-can-actually-sing mode, and there’s a lightness of touch to his delivery that recalls the likes of “Crush With Eyeliner”. But there’s electronics threaded throughout the track here too, fusing the traditional song structure to the new approach. It’s very successful. I love the cheek of the line, “dot dot dot… and I feel fine”. Mike’s a bit muted here – nothing much happening on backing vocals and the bass line is fairly discreet in the mix, though this is generally a well-produced song. Yup, pretty damned good. “Suspicion” Back to the electronics being front-and-centre. Michael’s giving a considered, rather underplayed vocal. Indeed the whole song is very understated, and there’s some more vibrato-tinged crystalline keyboard work going on. Mike’s nicely punctuating things on bass and some very slight but well-chosen backing vocals (the “suuuu” just before Michael sings the title of the song), though one vibrato-drenched, instrumental is about all we get from Peter. “Hope” Still no trace of a traditional instrument. Skittish electronic drums, and a droning, repetitive little keyboard riff. Terrific vocal from Michael, full of restrained but powerful emotion. So very many memorable lines (“Cross your DNA with something reptile”, “they did the same to Matthew / and he bled till Sunday night”, “you look up to the heavens / and you hope that it’s a spaceship”). Mike’s doing some great keyboard work here. The huge instrumental pile-up that closes the song out is a fantastic way to end things, especially with the high falsetto vocal weaved through. Magnificent. “At My Most Beautiful” And just like that we’re back on familiar ground with a very traditional R.E.M. ballad. Mike’s turn to shine and boy does he ever. Some typically great keyboard work from him, and some of his most precise (and some of his best) backing vocals on the chorus. Some nice drum work here – it’s not Bill, but it’s effective. Sweet vocal from Michael, but this isn’t his song, it’s Mike’s and he owns it. Really rather lovely. “The Apologist” Vicious, nasty little Michael lyric, almost an inverse of “So Central Rain” as the “I’m sorry”’s of that song are repurposed here as “so sorry”, full of sarcasm and bitterness. “I’m good, all is good / all’s well, no complaints” drawls Michael not meaning a word of it. Some more great supporting electronics here. The “so sorry’s” as backing vocals on the second chorus make things even more sarcastic. Peter gets one guitar line but he really make it count. The shriek of guitar before “I live a simple life…” adds weight. And it all ends on those quiet few notes, the rage of the song coming to a still point – not dissipated, but concluded. Not a nice song, but a bloody great one. “Sad Professor” An acoustic guitar! Yes, really! There’s more feedback and electronics underneath it, and Michael’s giving a tentative vocal on the verses, but this is a straight-up guitar-led song, the first on this album. It’s almost shocking when the big overdriven electric guitar kicks in on the first chorus, but because it’s been ages since we heard something like that it really carries a big impact. Michael’s chorus vocals are the biggest workout his pipes have had in some time as well (on the “I started, I jumped up” line). Some understated keyboard work from Mike here. Also a really, really well produced song. “You’re In The Air” Um. I mean, points for trying I think. “You’re In The Air” has an unusually placed vocal which makes things feel little different, and it’s a good (enough) performance from Michael, but something doesn’t quite work here. It’s a little over-lush, or maybe just over-produced, and the lyric and vocal is a bit over-sincere. So this song is “over-“ then. The instrumental break has real punch to it, especially with Peter’s slightly forced acoustic guitar pick, and is the most successful part of the song. A bit of a failed experiment, though one that was worth a shot at least. “Walk Unafraid” Rather sinister opening, with Mike’s pulsing base, Michael’s almost timid vocal and Peter’s keening, threatening guitar line. Until the second half of the first verse, that is, when the song’s protagonist finds his courage, the song shifts into a major key, and we abruptly lose the interesting early section for something we’ve heard plenty of times before. The song cuts back to this minor-key section a few times and every time it does the song is better for it – the major-key chorus is fine but unremarkable and there’s a sense that if they had stuck with the minor-key part this could really have been something. A bit of a wasted opportunity, though by no means bad. “Why Not Smile” A sweet, genuine little song that consists of three chords, a heartbreakingly sincere vocal from Michael and little else. But it’s not a song that needs anything else, because it’s absolutely perfect the way it is. Astonishingly moving. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. “Daysleeper” The most traditional R.E.M. song on Up by some distance, and Mike’s best bass line on the whole abum. There’s a little picked Peter guitar line, there’s Michael singing clearly in-character, there’s some solid percussion, and almost no hint of the electronica that the rest of the album is swamped in. This makes “Daysleeper” feel fresh, whereas on almost any other R.E.M. it would probably be a bit by-numbers. Still, it’s a strong melody and it’s got a great conclusion as Michael gets to “my bed is pulling me / gravity / daysleeper”. Solid and dependable song, this one. “Diminished” Back to the swampy atmospherics that dominated the early part of the album, but with big washes of slide guitar this time, and a profoundly different kind of Michael lyric, musing on whether the protagonist is guilty of a mostly-unstated crime (“I think I pushed” Michael sings on the second line, suggesting murder, but it’s not clear). It’s a fantastic lyrical conceit, and one of the most unusual lyrics Michael ever pens. More good percussion work going on here as well (the bongos just before the first line). Phenomenally well-produced song, with little keyboard-trumpet echoes, the blending of that slide guitar with the electronics and an up-front vocal that never becomes too dominant. Mike’s back on really rather brilliant backing vocals. A very overlooked song, but a properly brilliant one, with all of U p’s experiments coming together perfectly. There’s a little song here, which for the sake of argument let’s call “I’m Not Over You”. It’s not listed on the album, and it’s just Michael on vocals and guitar (!). It’s more than the musical ellipses we’re used to, but it’s not a fully formed song either. Fine. “Parakeet” A continuation of the atmosphere set up “Diminished”. The lyric is a rambling semi-impressionistic stroll through… something. There’s an implication of threat (“a broken wrist / an accident?”) that makes it feel of a piece with the last song as well and there’s a few phrases that stick out because of how Michael delivers them (“short-wave radio”), though the lyric is much more about mood than anything literal. A very strange song indeed, but pretty terrific. “Falls To Climb” Straight-up genius. As with “Diminished” this is everything album the album has been working towards, and it’s impeccable. Some of the details are absolutely tiny – the little bass strobe that comes in at the start of “I’ll be pounce pony” just giving an extra little push to the song, almost a throwaway details but one which adds so much. Such a great lyric too – so many resonant turns of phrase and moments where Michael is just alive in the way he delivers them. There’s an energy here that’s in sharp contrast to the moody musings of the last couple of songs. The acoustic guitar coming in on the second verse makes it feel like the band is coming together again in time for the conclusion – first we had Michael singing, then Mike’s bass, now Peter’s here too just as we move over into the instrumental break. And on the final chorus we get the snapping of military-style drums, the ghost of Bill there to see the album off to its triumphant conclusion. “I am free,” Michael sings at the end, his soaring vocal closing out another simply magnificent album closer. Perfect. In Conclusion: Of all the directions the band could have gone in following Bill’s departure, it’s doubtful anyone would have chosen “screechy discordant electronica” as the most obvious path for them to go down. The amazing thing here is, then, not simply that this is the path they take, but that it’s one that’s fully and wholeheartedly embraced to generally magnificent results. There’s no album that sounds like Up in R.E.M.’s back catalogue, and the few token gestures towards traditionalism (“Daysleeper”) are the ones that feel out of place here, rather than the other way round. There’s a sense that the band have decided on their approach and they are going to bloody well stick to it. The really big surprise is just how comfortable R.E.M. sound as an electronic three-piece rather than a traditional four-piece. The shake-up the band put themselves through here isn’t just in putting down the Rickenbacker for a Korg, but in fully embracing that change and shaking up the songwriting to go with it. Certainly as an opener “Airportman” stands as a declaration of intent, but it’s not just because of the electronic drone – the actual structure of the song has no comparison in R.E.M.’s back catalogue, and that approach winds its way throughout the album. “Hope” might have Leonard Cohen credited as a songwriter because of its similarity to “Suzanne”, but in terms of R.E.M. it remains unique in almost every regard. “Parakeet”’s semi-conscious lyric feels impressionistic, but it’s miles away from the impressionism embraced by the likes of Murmur or Reckoning – it’s not pastoral in the way those albums were and it’s evoking something entirely different. Even something as straightforward as “Why Not Smile” is bathed in feedback, electronic-generated noise and artificial percussion. The story of Up is one of restless experimentation and an absolute, resolute refusal to go quietly in that good night. Rather than fall back on the band’s traditional standards as a way to reassure fans, they lurch in completely the opposite direction, and the result in the most dynamic album the band have put out arguably since Lifes Rich Pagaent. Of course, the approach isn’t quite 100% successful. As with New Adventures, there’s a slight sense that the album might be a little over-long, and at 65 minutes it’s the second-longest the band put out. Had “Walk Unafraid” been relegated to the B-side it obviously is, and had “You’re In The Air” felt a little less sluggish then the album would be just a touch tighter, and just a little better for it. Similarly, it’s not easy to defend “Airportman” as an opener – even though it works as a “this is us now” statement, it’s not a great way to start things off. But these are comparatively minor quibbles, and none of them do major damage to an album whose constant shifting moods and tones can more than absorb the occasional drift in purpose. Even when experiments aren’t wholly successful there’s still plenty to admire – “You’re In The Air” might be the weakest song on the album but there’s still a few individual moments which make it clear why it was a song worth writing and including. The most conspicuous question here, though, is whether Bill’s absence makes a difference beyond the band simply choosing a new approach after his departure. And the truth is the answer is “yes”, though the embracing of the new approach does a very good job of disguising this. But there’s a few moments where it’s impossible not to feel Bill would have contributed something – it’s impossible not to feel that “Lotus” might have benefitted from some slightly more sympathetic percussion or the addition of his voice to the already-glorious backing vocals on “At My Most Beautiful would have added another dimension. And maybe “Daysleeper” would feel slightly less rote if it had been Bill on the sticks, rather than someone else playing something which sounds a bit like Bill yet definitely isn’t. But it’s a shame to focus on the (very few) minor mis-steps here, because almost everything on Up is an absolute triumph. It’s been said many times that Bill’s departure could have ended the band, but in fact it does the exact opposite and drives the three remaining members to some of the most creative work of their career. Forced into a corner they come out fighting and deliver an album unprecedented in their career but which deserves real recognition and respect, both for what it tries to achieve and for the quality of the songwriting on it. Really, the only bad thing about Up is that it’s the path not taken rather than the start of a whole new direction. But that’s not this album’s fault, and as it stands I simply cannot recommend Up highly enough. Best Song: Gah! “Hope”, “Falls To Climb” or “Why Not Smile” Worst Song: “Airportman” I guess, though that feels a little unfair somehow. Otherwise it’s “You’re In The Air”
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Invisible Goat
Shoutbox Elitist
Grab your mother's keys, we're leaving
Posts: 2,630
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Post by Invisible Goat on Jun 24, 2017 13:58:24 GMT -5
Up was the first CD I owned , I got it for my 13th birthday along with a CD player shortly after its release, having had Out of Time and AFTP on cassette. So in terms of amounts of times I've heard it's up there amongst all-time for me. I still love it but veeery rarely ever go back to it. It's just sooo long and with a good 75% of the songs at a slow tempo.
I like what you said about "Diminished," that's such a strange but compelling song, lyrically and otherwise. The part where he lists off possible justifications for the crime - "Jealous lover, self defense / protective brother, chemical dependence" still gets stuck in my head pretty regularly. But even then it's like 6 minutes long and fairly monotonous, even though the tone is awesome.
Disagree big time on "Walk Unafraid," I love every second of it. Up there with "Hope" for favorite song on the whole album. I probably gravitated to those ones back in the day because they were the few respites from the slow, draggy stuff. Oh big "Lotus" defender too, it's kind of a ridiculous song and it seems like a lot of people hate it and I guess I can see why but I love it, especially the ominous strings towards the end and the braggy, Monster-esque lyrics.
Oh one more thing, when I was a kid my uncle had this incredibly cheap Casio keyboard that I would mess around with when I went over there despite not ever learning anything at all about music, like I would just randomly toggle the settings and press keys. Anyway I remember when this came out a lot of the synth sounds reminded me of that thing, like especially on "Lotus," "Hope," and "Airportman." Boy do I hate "Airportman" though. Like I get it, but I hate it.
Edit: I forgot to mention in "Lotus," opening with the lyric is "I was hell!" and then in the second verse "Storefront window, I reflect / Just last week I was merely heck," is one of my favorite things to ever happen.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jun 24, 2017 17:11:18 GMT -5
Fair enough on "Walk Unafraid" I know my opinion on it isn't the most common one, and ditto "You're In The Air" which seems to get a lot of respect because Michael had difficulty writing the lyric rather than because it's actually good in its own right.
Lotus is just silly fun, and you're quite right with the Monster comparison - electronics aside, it sounds like a song that could easily fit on that album. And given how much I defended Monster, that is of course no bad thing.
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Post by ganews on Jun 24, 2017 19:34:21 GMT -5
Up is the beginning of R.E.M. albums I'm not sure I've heard. I like "Daysleeper" though. I had a live performance compilation CD from 99X out of Atlanta that led off with "Walk Unafraid" (and whose cover art was designed by Stipe). The discord isn't for me, but at least that CD is a wonderful snapshot of rock radio in 1999: Stone Temple Pilots 4th album, Billy Corgan and Chris Cornell both solo, Angie Aparo, etc.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 12, 2017 2:34:58 GMT -5
Reveal (2001) A bold artistic renaissance brought on by circumstance led to R.E.M.’s most unlikely album yet, but which yielded fantastic artistic results on just about every front. That was Up, but rather than pursue the relentlessly unconventional approach pioneered by that album, the band instead lurch in an entirely different direction, finding comfort in warm summer tones, pastoral settings, and more traditional arrangements. Does this pan out as the logical successor to all that electronica and a new direction discovered? Um… If I’m To Be A Camera: Arguably the laziest to date, we have a shadow (Michael’s, going by the silhouette) falling over some random field, while at the top of the sleeve there’s the track-listing. A new, different, 3-D band logo hogs the right-hand side of the picture. The whole thing looks like it took about five minutes to put together. On the back cover we have an amateur snap of the sun taken from an aeroplane. Which is nice. Oh, and another full set of lyrics in the interior. When You Tire Of One Side: Chorus and Ring. Do you get the feeling they’re not really trying with this any more? Pre-existing Prejudices: By some considerable distance, my least favourite R.E.M. album. I know by reputation Around The Sun is the weaker of the two out-and-out failures of the band’s career, but I’ve always preferred it to this. As this project creeps ever nearer to completion one of the more interesting aspects – for me at least – is to see whether my own opinions about these two albums still hold true, or whether I’ve misjudged Reveal and been too lenient on Around The Sun. (Out of) time will tell! Songs: “The Lifting” We start with a bit of muted piano and some background swirling – not quite a follow-on from Up’s electronics - before Michael kicks off. He’s giving a decent vocal performance, and there’s a strong melody. Music is a bit muted – whoever’s on drums isn’t making a great fist of it, Peter’s apparently in absentia and Mike’s… there. Clumsy middle-eight. Oh hey, Peter’s turned up to give a bit of a fuzzy guitar solo. Eh. Then we get a bit more of the same, before it comes to a stop. A verse too long. Not bad, but very far from spectacular, and very close to indistinct. “I’ve Been High” Ok this sounds like R.E.M. Little bursts of static, some electric piano, some Casio-keyboard percussion (mixed with some proper cymbal work), and a fragile little voice from Michael. Terrific vocal, actually. The way he falls into the “so I dive into a pool….” is beautiful, as is the “what I want / what I really wanted….” verse, which is invested with real, grown-up feelings. A lovely song. “All The Way To Reno” Very traditional kick-off. Someone’s doing a good Bill impression on drums - the two off-beats as Michael sings “all the way to Reno” which repeat a couple of times through the verses, are very Bill. Nice little bass from Mike, not flashy but it’s working well with the song. Michael sounds surprisingly relaxed when he reached for the high “star”’s on the chorus, and there’s a simple but enjoyable melody going on here. There’s a little electronic stuff going on under the surface, but Mike and Peter are the dominant instruments here, and Mike’s back to chiming in on backing vocals on the chorus. Hey, it’s not genius, but I really rather like this song it, seems. Maybe this album doesn’t suck! “She Just Wants To Be” An acoustic intro! In fact this might Peter’s most complex picking for a good few albums. And there’s Mike doing proper support work on bass! Ohh, that’s quite nice, that is. Good, strong work from Michael – this is nice, three-legged-dog R.E.M., the remaining members of the band really pulling together as a unit and… oh there’s the chorus. That was a little underwhelming (and a little over-produced). And now the verse has crappy drums over it, which aren’t doing the song any favours. Oh yeah, the production is drowning this song. Mike’s working on backing vocals and even he can’t cut through. Big Automatic strings on the instrumental aren’t what this song needs, dammit! Stop ruining a decent song! Grrrr! Well at least it’s over n… oh there’s another verse. Wait, isn’t this the same mistake that “The Lifting” made? Stop already! Christ, the strings are back! Then it ends on Peter’s fabulous little acoustic riff. What a waste of a potentially great song. “Disappear” A squall of electronics with some acoustic guitar before we cut to a sawing guitar line, which is quite sinister. Michael’s vocal isn’t, though, it’s rambling all over the place. Now some picked electric guitar. This is all very shapeless. Mike’s on autopilot on the bass, which is very unusual. I… I don’t know what to say about this song. It’s four minutes long I guess? It’s completely indistinct. Are we sure a B-side didn’t get accidentally sequenced on to the album by mistake? What’s the point of any of this? Crap. “Saturn Return” Faintly Murmur-esque intro resolves into a song which has none of the quality of that album. Pretty little Mike piano riff, though. Still feeling very indistinct. Every so often it sounds like Michael’s been given a poke in order to get him to sing. “Theeeese! are espouses….” and “You found the ladder….” The lyrics are frighteningly over-written here as well. I don’t get the impression anyone’s trying here. A few ideas but nothing that comes together. Also crap. “Beat A Drum” More Mike piano. Very pastoral, but at least there’s a little wit on display here (“or seahorses, if we were in the sea”), and it’s badly needed at this stage in the album. Nice wash into the chorus, which gives the song a little lift. It’s impossible not to feel we’ve heard something similar before. Rather sloppy instrumental break that’s missing an idea to make it work. Pretty and easy enough to like, though fairly inconsequential. “Imitation Of Life” Quite the abrupt change of pace, and a rather ungainly transition from the last song (were there no more musical ellipses in the can?). Still this sounds like everyone is engaged and making a proper bloody effort. About time. Michael sounds like he’s worked on the lyric, not just written it, Mike’s going full tilt on backing vocals on the chorus (what a fucking difference it makes!), Peter’s playing something worthwhile, and not-Bill is reasonable in the drum-stool. Absolutely not revelatory, but a solid, good R.E.M. song on an album that doesn’t seem to want to feature good songs at all. Even the slightly corny cut back to just snare-and-percussion near the end (“This lightning storm / this tidal wave”) works well. And I never thought I’d be glad to get back to a song that finishes on a 7th chord, but here we are. What have you done to me, Reveal? “Summer Turns To High’ What the fuck is this? Absolute shit. Stupefying. Meandering, pointless drivel that wouldn’t deserve a place on Dead Letter Office (mostly because that album’s quite good). Is Michael stoned? Is everyone? Tum-te-tum-te-tum is all I can hear about. This might well be the worst song R.E.M. have ever released. Oh there’s Peter on guitar – well maybe not, it’s a little arpeggio that could have come from anywhere, so maybe it just got edited in and he fucked off to the pub – and who could blame him? Absolutely shamefully awful. “Chorus And The Ring” It’s a song. Am I still supposed to care about this album? Well it’s better than the last song, but what isn’t? Michael’s stretching his voice a bit but it’s scarcely in service of a song that deserves it. There’s an admirable attempt to write in a slightly different structure (I suppose that’s technically true of the last song as well) but the material isn’t quite up to supporting the structure. Pastoral again, and I don’t mind R.E.M. going for pastoral, but this is mostly just dull. A bit of picking from Peter towards the end, maybe just to prove he’s still in the studio, though the closing section develops a bit of momentum almost despite itself. “I’ll Take The Rain” Fuck me, a good song! A snappy acoustic intro given just a hint of electronic underpinning. Feels like it could be on Up, which is meant as a huge compliment. OK, Michael’s signing about rain again – not exactly his most original subject at this point – but if the rest of the album has been summer-pastoral, this feels much more autumnal and is so much better for it. And that chorus! Oh, that bloody lovely chorus, which sounds like it should be a cliché but Michael finally pours so much into it, and it’s glorious. This isn’t re-inventing the wheel, but on such a sludgy, directionless album the wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented. In fact it’s quite nice to know that there is a wheel. Mike's bass is superb here, his best work on the album (yes, even over “Imitation Of Life”), subtle, and… oh we’re back at the chorus again and I can listen to it forever. The production on this song is light-years better than anything else on the album as well, so the material has space to breathe, the strings are low in the mix, supporting rather than swamping everything else out... Why doesn’t all of Reveal sound like this? Phenomenal, and the only song here that earns that description. “Beachball” Back to Casio percussion and… um, some sort of brass? Real, maybe? This is back to the dreary, directionless nothingness that sinks the bulk of this album. “Those well tequilaed guys” is a nice descriptive at least, and its easy to see what the song’s going for, but – back to this album’s recurring motif – this is mostly just dull. Maybe this all meant something to Michael at the time, but if it did it’s not communicated. The “you’ll do fine” sounds like it’s a lift from “All The Way To Reno” (in fact all of this sounds like a sub-“Reno” re-write). I’m sure this would be fine in an elevator, but nowhere else. A wet fart of a conclusion. On the plus side, the album’s over now. In Conclusion: It gives me absolutely no pleasure to confirm this album’s reputation but unfortunately there’s nothing else I can do – Reveal is, by a massive margin, the worst R.E.M. album to date. Nothing would have given me more pleasure than to listen to this and be genuinely impressed at a much-maligned gem, but there’s just no way for that to be true. Whatever lessons were learned from Up have clearly been discarded, so there’s still traces of electronic instrumentation throughout, but it’s mostly either relegated to the background, or used clumsily. And instead of that album’s robust defense of what the band was still capable of, we instead get a tepid demonstration of what the band might be were they to simply not bother. It needn’t have been so, though. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the idea that the band react against what they did on the last album – indeed, there’s quite a few albums that’s true of (though the extent to which this is true tends to get a bit over-stated by R.E.M. fans – not every album is a hard reaction against the one before it). And the band have successfully embraced the pastoral before, so taking another run at a familiar mood or ethos, but with twenty-odd years of knowledge and songwriting experience isn’t an inherently flawed idea – indeed it’s an extremely interesting one. Michael’s voice has come a long, long way since the band’s last explicitly pastoral album – that would be Fables – and they've been through a lot since then, so taking that experience and returning to familiar territory could yield potentially fascinating results. Without wanting to sound too overblown this could easily be a Songs Of Experience to Fables’s Songs Of Innocence (I’m talking William Blake here, not U2). That’s not what we get. What we do get is a meandering, superficially pleasant but mostly uninspired rummage through the bottom drawer of stuff. So much of the album simply blends into itself – R.E.M. have made a few mis-steps before but the one thing they’ve never been is bland. Step forward, then, “Disappear”, “Saturn Return”, “Beachball” and more, which seem destined to prove that R.E.M. can, indeed, be anything they want, even when what they want to be is, apparently, “not very good”. At least part of the problem here is the production, and Pat McCarthy proves to be a poor fit for the material here, mixing badly, swamping otherwise-good songs with strings so they near-suffocate (“She Just Wants To Be”), or simply misjudging what a song needs (roughly half the album). What’s astonishing about this is that McCarthy also produced Up, and the production on that album was absolutely stellar. Was it just that the songs here were of a noticeably sub-par standard? Or was he simply feeling as uninspired as everyone else? It’s hard to say, but the results testify to just one more cog in the album’s machine that doesn’t turn the way it should. The torture of this is, of course, the few moments when the album does actually work. “I’ve Been High” is unquestionably fantastic – a simple song, in the mould of the previous album, but not ever sounding quite like anything that was on that album either (“Why Not Smile” is probably the closest point of comparison). “I’ll Take The Rain” is just as good, if not better, and here we see what happens when everyone pays attention – neither of these songs are complex, per se, but they don’t need to be, it’s their simplicity that gives them their power, and in that they become almost revelatory. Freed from the over-lush strings or random bursts of noise elsewhere, the material has a chance to break free, and at this at least gives the album some reason to be. Even “Imitation Of Life”, playing the great big “This Is An R.E.M. Song” card, works, simply on the grounds that it’s actually a good R.E.M. song (to be strictly fair, it very nearly tips into being over-produced a couple of times, but always pulls it back, which make its indulgences fun, rather than ruinous). So yes. Sorry, anyone who was hoping I’d find something to redeem Reveal with. I haven’t. Crap. Best Song: “I’ll Take The Rain”, though if you wanted to say it was “I’ve Been High” I wouldn’t argue with you. Worst Song: “Summer Turns To High” just nudges out “Beachball” and "Saturn Return" for the worst R.E.M. song not only on this album, but yet released by the band.
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Invisible Goat
Shoutbox Elitist
Grab your mother's keys, we're leaving
Posts: 2,630
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Post by Invisible Goat on Jul 12, 2017 10:12:18 GMT -5
Yeah, not much to say about this one. When it came out I was still in that phase where anything by my favorite bands was good, so I force-listened to it all summer, but it is indeed pretty awful to go back to. I still put it well above Around the Sun on the strength of "The Lifting," "I've Been High," "She Just Wants To Be," (I hear your criticisms of it but somehow it works for me), and "Imitation of Life," all of which I like better than anything on the latter.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 12, 2017 10:48:11 GMT -5
I do think the song "She Just Wants To Be" is good, to be clear, I just think the production drowns out much of its redeeming qualities. It's a fucking million times better than dreck like "Disappear". I don't remember off the top of my head if it turns up on one of the live albums (I don't think so, but I'm not sure) but I can imagine there's a great acoustic or semi-acoustic version out there.
I dunno about this being better than ATS, I really don't. We'll find out when I get to it next (it won't take me another month, i swear), but you never know how these things will go. I assumed someone would have something to say about New Adventures here, but not a single comment to defend (or even attack) that album appeared. Ah well.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2017 12:43:18 GMT -5
I detested Reveal when it came out and only have come around it in the last few years, in the sense that I like about half the songs. Most annoying to me now is the relative lack of Mike Mills' backup vocals, which only highlights how the band seemingly became the Michael Stipe Show for a while. Nonetheless, Stipe does bring the goods on (again) about half the tracks.
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,499
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 12, 2017 16:22:54 GMT -5
I really, really love The Lifting, and think it builds really well. With too many of the others, however, I'm looking at the titles and not even getting a vague hint of the song.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 13, 2017 5:09:00 GMT -5
Dellarigg - I do think The Lifting is a decent song actually, but it's another one drowned by the production for me. There's a B-side version on one of the singles from the album that's an alternative mix - a little slower, a much clearer and more upfront vocal and much less general dicking around with the song in general. It's way better than the album version, and I find it a lot more affecting. I'm only reviewing albums so that kind of ephemera is on the sidelines, but I can't deny it's likely changed the way I view the song.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 13, 2017 5:10:56 GMT -5
In other news, FUCK ME, Photobucket want four hundred bucks a year because I've had the temerity to post an image link outside their little walled garden. Time to find a new image hosting site that doesn't complain and demand money when you dare to copy-paste a link....
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 16, 2017 6:04:53 GMT -5
Around The Sun (2004) Reveal was the first conspicuous chink in R.E.M.’s previously impenetrable armour – a band that had been unassailable suddenly and unexpectedly looked vulnerable. No longer guaranteed the respect that had previously been theirs to hoard, there was a sudden need to fight again to prove themselves. Instead of that, though, we get Around The Sun. Can it recapture the glory of days the past? What do you think? If I’m To Be A Camera: Somehow even lazier than Reveal, we have a blurred, out of focus photo of the band members in an indistinct setting (is that maybe an aqueduct lurking in the background? It could be the Brooklyn Bridge. Something, certainly). A band with no focus wandering round a ill-defined landscape - what metaphorical implications? The back cover has an upside down silhouette of Michael, with the tracks listed out in a spectacularly ugly font. There’s a full set of lyrics on the inside again, for anyone who’s feeling up to that. When You Tire Of One Side: For the first time since Murmur, the sides are un-named. Says it all, really. Pre-existing Prejudices: The Other Bad R.E.M. Album. Beyond that, the usual. Songs: “Leaving New York” Almost immediately better than anything on the last album. A picked intro, an acoustic strum, and Michael sounding like he’s engaged and means what he sings. Small but subtle bass from Mike. Big Chorus™ but it’s a great one. Oh wonderful, Mike’s back on backing vocals that make use of his talents! Dammit, this is great! The “it’s pulling me” backing vocals on the second chorus from Mike suddenly make this feel like a real R.E.M. song. No ideas-free middle-eight! It just goes back to Michael at his most open and sincere. “I told you forever / I love you forever” and an intertwined vocal line is just perfect. OK, I might be slightly crying now. A three-melody vocal! Just like the old days! One of the most perfect of all R.E.M. songs. “Electron Blue” Very different, yet not at all contradictory. If “Leaving New York” is the most traditional of R.E.M. songs, this sounds like the off-kilter alternative version of the band from Up. A simple, child-like lyric but still radiating the same sincerity that the last song had, and it works. The production is nicely balancing the electronic instrumentation against the traditional ones. A strong melody and a few phrases which carry unexpected bite (“your heart builds like a Light. Ning. Storm”) make this a winner. Very appealing indeed. “The Outsiders” It’s trying very hard, that’s for sure. The same sincerity as the first two songs, though the music isn’t quite as good. Peter’s little guitar line over the chorus is effective, and there’s a nice two-on-the-offbeat on the drums which works well. A touch too lethargic, perhaps, though… I dunno, it’s hard to know why but this kind of works. Well, until Q-Tip inexplicably turns up, then it becomes a whole different thing – not bad, but guys, it’s not 1991 any more. Exceedingly white bands having black rappers on them isn’t a thing any more. Though once he stops rapping and the music comes back in while he’s giving it “I am not afraid / I am not afraid” and Michael’s humming in the background things pick up a bit. Yeah, OK. “Make It All OK” Fuck me, this has a terrible lyric. Disastrously over-clever, trying for the same bitterness that something like “The Apologist” nailed so well and missing it by a country mile. The title playing against the nature of the lyric is a nice little touch I guess. Oh, Beatles-esque horns. “So our past has been rewritten / and you threw away the pen” is just the sort of faux-smart lyric that R.E.M. normally avoid. And now Michael’s mentioned Jesus, which is rarely a good sign. Mike on backing vocals is unexpectedly brilliant for such a poor song, and go a long way to redeeming the musical side of things, but this isn’t great, and this song is crying out for Bill, not some plodding tub thumper. Listlessly irrelevant. “Final Straw” Hey, remember when R.E.M. used to write faintly political songs? Turns out they do as well, so we have this swipe at the Bush administration. Actually, this is pretty decent –it’s actually about something, which helps a fuck-tonne after seemingly endless songs that just aren’t. Peter’s got a great little driving acoustic thing going on, Michael’s not singing the most obvious melody over the top off it, and Mike’s got a great little middle-eight country-esque backing thing happening. And as a declaration of intent for the band “and love / love cannot be called into question” and “love will be my strongest weapon” seems like a decent summation. This is pretty good actually. “I Wanted To Be Wrong” Dreadful production, acoustic guitars all over the place, a bit of fuzz, Michael’s voice is horribly smeared in… I dunno, digital something. The song isn’t completely awful, but it can’t break free from what surrounds it. The over-lush strings on the instrumental break feel like a wearingly-familiar mistake, and Michael’s voice has been drowned in echo. Weirdly suffocating. You wanted to be wrong? Mission accomplished. “Wanderlust” Shit. It’s got a slightly unusual time-signature but nothing else worth talking about. Michael has never sounded more bored than when he delivers the opening two lines. Or all of the other ones. The most engaged person here is the rent-a-drummer, which isn’t a good sign. Fucking awful middle-eight, and actively embarrassing. Make it stop. “The Boy In The Well” R.E.M. by numbers for sure, but compared to that last travesty this feels like a vast improvement. There’s lots of consistency to the lyric (water imagery, sure, but still), and an actual narrative that uses the literalness of what’s been sung about for metaphysical implications (“that sinking feeling”). The chorus is vastly underwhelming, but the verses feel like they have a least bit of bite to them, and Peter’s doing decent stuff on acoustic, and the sinister atmosphere help scarry the poor chorus. Instrumental break suffers from the usual late-in-the-game garbage production. Can Pat McCarthy just piss off now please? Michael’s not fully engaged here, but there are a few moments where he gives it what it needs “the greyhound race for. The Boy. In. The Well” spat out carries some unexpected conviction. “Aftermath” Competent but almost entirely uninspired. Even Mike on backing vocals can’t save this from being remarkably unengaging. Michael’s got a reasonable perspective and lyrically the best moment is the “overfeed the cat” verse, but it’s all just kind of there (if you want to find one interesting lyrical quirk it’s that Micahel sings of the subject’s now-in-the-past beau as “he” rather than his more typical “she”). Somehow even Peter’s guitar solo sounds bored, and rather desultory. An entirely proficient track delivered with the absolute minimum of effort, this is R.E.M. doing yacht rock. It does not need to be done again. “High Speed Train” Fucking great. Here’s all those lessons from Up being learned and used properly. Simple, compelling melody, and some background electronic instrumentation that’s actually in the background. Mike’s surprisingly deep backing vocals on the chorus are simultaneously very funny and rather affecting (there’s a sense that bits of this song are not meant to be entirely straight-faced, despite the sentiments expressed being genuine). Michael slithers his way round certain words “aaantelope” and “burrrn in Keeeeyoto” in a really fabulous way. And Peter’s giving us a bit of Spanish acoustic on the instrumental, which adds a slightly different texture. Mike’s pulsing bass under “love at the end of the line” is a lovely little touch, and there’s some great tom-tom percussion on the chorus. And the sudden injection of desperation and the gabbled final verse “no war / no hate / no past” gives a terrific sense of final momentum as Peter’s guitar and the electronics intertwine and resolve. Vastly under-rated and terrific. “The Worst Joke Ever” Ok, “The Worst Joke Ever” is a really crap song that I inexplicably like. There’s not a lot of inspiration, but I love the way Michael delivers certain lines (the weariness of “some things don’t hold up on the course of a lifetime”). It’s a bit better produced than “Pat McCarthy attempts sweeping strings” usually gives us as well. The second verse (more Up inspiration here) is the best part of the song, and maybe the song would be stronger if it were all played and produced like this. “You’re not hurting anybody else’s chances / but you’re disfiguring your own” is an absolutely killer line, as is the way that Michael delivers it. The song does completely peter (ha!) out though, and never finds a conclusion, which is rather a pity. “The Ascent Of Man” Yeah, any remaining inspiration on this album has evaporated. The verse cutting into “I could never imagine a place more beautiful” is quite a nice moment, but Michael’s rather over-excited “yeaaaahh”’s feeding to the chorus are not remotely convincing, which is a shame because Mike’s up front singing the second melody and it sounds like it would be a bit better if Michael wasn’t shrieking over it. But it would need to be on a better song to carry the effectiveness it normally achieves. Massively uninspired instrumental break with a bit of wobbly organ and Peter randomly strumming stuff in the background. The verses are the best moments here, but there’s not much to get excited about. “Around The Sun” OK, if I’m doing my usual “redemptive reading” thing (which I’m not), it would be easy to see what this song is trying to… no that’s bullshit, this is just rubbish. The strain of “hold on to this boy a little longer” on the chorus sounds incredibly desperate, and not the good “we’ve written this about a desperate situation” sort of way. Plodding percussion is doing this no favours at all. And then, suddenly, we get to the end, thudding toms, choruses of Mike’s, and Michael virtually yelling “around the sun” like the this has become the bastard lovechild of 10CC and The Beach Boys – and that little section is really rather great. Then it resolves into a quieter little moment – a nice idea but both the songwriring and (especially) the production need to be a lot stronger to carry this kind of thing off. Only not the worst R.E.M. album closer by dint of “Beachball” existing. In Conclusion: It’s hard to know where to begin with Around The Sun, really. It’s an album that’s manifestly short of both ambition and ideas, but which nevertheless contains a few absolutely stellar moments. It’s an album which isn’t noticeably different from Reveal in it either its strengths of weaknesses, but which nevertheless displays those strengths and weaknesses in different ways to the previous album. And it’s an album that never sounds convincing, despite a few moments which are extremely convincing. It’s a bit of a puzzle, frankly. One thing you can say about Around The Sun which makes it distinct from Reveal is that it’s noticeably less consistent. Reveal kind of smears together into a single texture, one blandly unremarkable song following another, but Around The Sun is all over the fucking place. That makes it a rather jagged album, and I suspect may account for the reason this has a worse reputation than Reveal – the songwriting and inspiration is still clearly lacking, but the random, scattershot nature of the songs make it a tougher sell than its predecessor. That’s a bit of a shame because, while it’s impossible to mount anything like a full defence of Around The Sun, the high moments here (“Leaving New York”, “High Speed Train”) are noticeably better than the high moments of Reveal, and there’s nothing as wretched or time-wasting as “Summer Turns To High” or “Beachball” to be found here (“Wanderlust” valiantly works hard to correct this, but the unusual time signature means that it can’t quite manage it and remains a fraction better). But the inconsistency of the sequencing of the tracks and, especially, the production’s inability come anywhere close to producing a coherent whole means you have to dig a bit deeper to appreciate the heights. And there’s an… uneasiness to Around The Sun that’s very distinct from Reveal’s pastoral sentiments – though it kicks off with the one-two punch of “Leaving New York”’s sincere love song and “Electron Blue”’s entertaining playfulness, from that moment on there’s something in tone that’s noticeably uncertain. “Make It All OK” is obviously written as a fuck you, but there’s a lot of unsettling feelings expressed elsewhere – the sinister undercurrent to “The Boy In The Well”, the idea that it’s a “joke” that someone stabs themselves in “The Worst Joke Ever”, the doubt expressed in something as major-key as “I Wanted To Be Wrong”. Even the alleged finding-love of “High Speed Train” feels like a not entirely safe place to be, thanks to those tremulous verses before the big sweep into the chorus. It’s not enough to save the album, but it’s interesting. There’s a cloud hanging over the band here, and while it might not have produced their best material (it definitely hasn’t produced their best material) that sense of doubt gives deeper and more questioning material that Reveal’s unchallenging ubiquity. And then there’s “Final Straw”, which sees the re-emergence of R.E.M.’s political side for the first time since… New Adventures I guess? Arguably maybe even since Automatic, when “Ignoreland” was taking pot-shots at this first Bush presidency just as this one takes the same approach with the second (so there’s a neat little piece of symmetry there at least). It’s a strangely effective little song, driven by a hammered-out acoustic guitar line, and Michael finding something to say at long, long last. On Around The Sun, as isolated and cut off as any of the other songs here, there’s nothing to suggest that this track, among the many seemingly-random approaches attempted here, is any more significant than any other. But it is. It’s a little chick of light that, in retrospect, shows us that the dark days of Bad R.E.M. are now over, and the band can return to doing what they do best. On Accelerate, we get a back-to-basics approach that reinvigorates what it means to be R.E.M. “Final Straw”, featuring a return to something which used to be one of the core elements of what the band did, signposts this. But before we get to Accelerate, we have to suffer through this, a largely inspiration-free set of tracks which exist to little overall purpose. I’ll still take this over Reveal though– the awkwardness of it, the uncertainty of tone, the glory of “Leaving New York” – all put this way ahead of its predecessor. It’s not possible to mount a full redemption of Around The Sun, sadly. But as Reveal has shown us, it could be worse. That’s a small victory indeed. Best Song: “Leaving New York” Worst Song: “Wanderlust”
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 16, 2017 6:15:25 GMT -5
Hey everyone, a schedule edit - I'm dropping coverage of the three live albums. I can just barely find the time to finish the actual albums at the moment, and if I do the three live albums we'll be here till the crack of doom. If I have a moment I'll try to squeeze in the Unplugged sessions at the far end (especially the second set, which actively works to redeem some material), but as it stands it will just be Accelerate and Collapse Into Now that get covered, then I'll do a summary (I've not decided if I'll do album rankings yet, but probably I will).
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Post by theshadowplay on Jul 18, 2017 14:07:39 GMT -5
I've really been enjoying your write-ups the last couple of months. PLus it gives me a chance to revisit REM's discography. Kudos!
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 20, 2017 2:17:55 GMT -5
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 20, 2017 16:55:12 GMT -5
Accelerate (2008) Farewell, then, two albums of directionless, inspiration-free rambling, and hello Accelerate. After two lacklustre albums that took a critical drubbing, R.E.M. at last find a way to fight back and the tedium and ennui that have provided such a drag of late, and instead launch themselves full pelt into 1986. Despite it being 2008. I wonder if things improve somewhat… If I’m To Be A Camera: A massive, chunky band logo looms over a collage city, all in striking, stark black-and-white. No half-hearted photos or done-in-five-minutes things slung together here. Instead, this cover actually feels like its representative of the album it’s fronting, broken but unified, constructed but naturalistic, and just a little bit playful. It also reflects R.E.M.’s brief obsession with the notion of “city’, which will carry over on to Collapse Into Now. On the back we have some industrial imagery behind the track listing and on the inside we have the lyrics again. When You Tire Of One Side: I am 100% sure that Accelerate’s sides are named, but they’re not listed on Wiki, and I only have this album on CD so I can’t actually check. If someone knows what they are, please feel free to add them in the comments, but I’m going to call Side A “Much” and Side B “Better”. You can probably work out why…. Pre-existing Prejudices: The One After The Two Bad Ones. But, for whatever it’s worth, also just that feeling that a band I liked got back to doing the thing I liked them doing. It’s always tough when an artist you appreciate does noticeably inferior material, but at least with Accelerate there’s no sense that this needs to be apologized for. Just enjoyed. I also saw them on this tour (the first date they played outside the U.S., in fact, and the last tour the band undertook), and they were brilliant, which I fully admit colours my opinion of this album. Songs: “Living Well’s The Best Revenge” Fuck me, Peter’s alive! Big grungy riff kicks this album off with an astonishing amount of energy, especially given the last couple of outings. Mike’s all over the place on bass, flying up and down the scales, and Michael is yelling his way through this, the most energized he’s sounded in years. Rent-a-Bill is hammering away nicely, and there’s some real righteous anger going on here. And there’s Mike doing His Mike Thing on backing, just as it should be. Incredibly invigorating. “Man-Sized Wreath” Two for two here. A more steady, deliberate pace than the first song, but equally dramatic. This really makes it sound like this is a band, not Michael Stipe, And Also Three Other Musicians, Sometimes. Mike’s backing vocals again help with this, and Peter’s striking a few discordant, hanging chords as well. It’s not quite flawless (“nature abhors a vacuum / the one between your ears” isn’t Michael’s finest line), but there’s a fury here (it’s another anti-Bush song) that just overcomes any other – very minor – deficiencies. And listen to Mike holding that final note. Fan. Tastic. “Supernatural Superserious” That this is a slight step-down from the opening couple of songs shouldn’t be read as this being bad. It is a slight step-down, but it’s still got massive Peter hook right slap bang in the middle, it’s got a staccato start that just gives so much energy to everything, and Mike (for the third frakking song in a row!) is wailing away on backing vocals like a thing possessed. The middle-eight is a little weak but it’s short and “enjoy yourself with no regrets” is a perfectly fine sentiment. There’s a real sincerity about this that’s just light-years away from the blandly accepting tone of the bulk of the last two albums. Nice barrel towards the end of the song too. That’s now three for three! Can we make it four? “Hollow Man” A change of pace, with a simple Mike piano riff, and a much more intimate delivery from Michael. It’s… um, how can I say this? It’s not bad, absolutely not, but it’s also very straightforward. The lyric – basically, “I said a bunch of stuff I didn’t really mean” and the regret that comes with this, isn’t difficult to relate to, but it’s just a little simple, without that slight lyrical push that usually elevates this kind of material. Some lovely, Chronic Town-esque rhyming guitars just before the last “believe in….” run-through. Not four for four then, but a mighty fine stab, nonetheless. “Houston” Some sinister distortion over a couple of guitar line, and a brooding opening few lines from Michael “if the storm doesn’t kill me / the government will / I’ve got to get that out of my head”. Again there’s a real feel that this song matters to Michael – it’s obviously about the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina that the Bush administration fucked up the response to so very badly – but there’s an optimism under all that darkness and anger as well. A short song, but with a surprising amount of punch. And it ends in a wash of feedback. “Accelerate” Right, I know this isn’t a classic R.E.M. song, but I fucking love “Accelerate”. Mike’s doing a quintessential Mike bass-line, the pacing is furiously deliberate, and Peter is sawing away on guitar like he’s digging his way out of an asylum. Mike and Michael matching each other on the chorus is wonderful, and rent-a-Bill is the best he ever gets to be here. There’s a power and momentum to this, and played loud and angry it just sounds amazing. No mucking about with unnecessary instrumentation breaks here, just a declarative “accelerate!” then a cut back the verse in more feedback. “Uncertainty is suffocating” shrieks Michael, and again he means this. The stagger into the final verse is lovely, and there’s a sheer weight to this that’s both oppressive and powerfully dynamic. The final “ac” sung by Mike as Michael drives into “I’m incomplete, I’m incomplete, I’m incomplete” is nothing short of brilliant. “Until The Day Is Done” Rather “Swan Swan H” in feel and tone when it comes to the verse, with mention the mention of republics, marching-band drums sounding the background, and “the country’s in ruins”. The politics of this album is really helping to give a sense of shape and dimension to proceedings. Peter’s little acoustic riff works wonders from very little. The chorus is a little major-key obvious, and this isn’t the strongest of songs musically on the album, but the conviction invested in the material helps a lot. Decent. “Mr Richards” Just glorious. A big, filthy, fuzzed-out Peter guitar line anchors everything here. More very, very deliberate pacing here, and some good work on percussion is helping to anchor things at the bottom end. What a difference a good producer makes as well – the production here is immaculate, whether it’s Mike backing, or a chorus of Michael’s. A lovely fuck you song. The shift of music under “you can thump your chest and rattle / stand in front of your piano” very effectively stops the song becoming overly-repetitive. “But we know what’s going on” faintly recalls the threatening nature of “Turn You Inside Out”, but this isn’t the fury of that song, it’s much more even in tone, and more directed too. It’s amazing what this band are still capable of when they put their minds to it, really. “Sing For The Submarine” The very definition of self-referential. A hugely overbearing, weighty guitar riff kicks things off, which Michael delivering a near-terrified sounding vocal which references (in order) “Electron Blue”, “World Leader Pretend” (“this is where we give in to the machine” as in, “let my machine talk to me”), “Feeling Gravity’s Pull”, “Begin The Begin” (“I tired to explain how it all begins”, “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”, “High Speed Train”, “I’ll Take The Rain” (or possibly “So Central Rain” – there’s a lot of water in R.E.M. and the line is “the rain / it never came”), “Losing My Religion” (“at least my confessions…”). I’m sure I’m missed a few. Deeply surreal, and rather dream-like anyway. When Michael sings “I know it’s a little crazed” he sounds like it, indeed. The fall into the chorus is really lovely – “it’s all in the submarine”. This feels like a palette-cleanser rather than a conclusion or summing up, which is an odd thing for a second-from-last album to do, but when it’s done as well as this, who’s complaining? “Horse To Water” A pretty straightforward thrash. Michael’s giving a good gabble-lyric and Peter’s again running himself at about 110%. Mike’s again back full throttle on backing vocal, and this feels very early R.E.M. indeed. In fact if you wanted to say this was Accelerate’s “Just A Touch”, well that would be a fair description indeed. Perfectly fine, but there’s not a lot to say about it really. “I’m Gonna DJ” Well it gives Michael different song to shriek “end of the wooooorld!” over. Profoundly silly in all the best ways, the whole band is getting a big workout here. Mike’s doing “Sympathy For The Devil” “woo-woo” backing vocals, which is hilarious. Lyrically daft (“death is pretty final / I’m collecting vinyl!”) just adds to a huge sense of fun. Short, punchy and direct, this is the perfect out for the album. In Conclusion: What a difference. Gone are the foggy cobwebs of the last two albums – the going-nowhere sequencing, the lack of inspiration, the hollow production, the dreary sense of “do we have to do this?” Instead what we get is three people powerfully re-invigorated by the sense of what it means to be in a band. Because, for the first time in simply ages, everyone sounds like they actually enjoy being in the band, rather than it just being a chore that requires an album to be stuck out every few years. It seems like an obvious point to make, but here it is anyway – Accelerate is short. In fact, it’s just thirty-five minutes long. This is significant simply because of what it shows – the band have written what’s required, not more and not less, and that’s what we’re getting. In other words, the bloat of the previous albums – something everything post- Monster has suffered from one way or another – is gone. There’s a discipline to everything that’s done here, from the songwriting, to the production, to the length of the album, that speaks to a band who have re-learned what it is they’re good at, and are going to damned well make it work. What this comes at the expense of, however, is originality. There’s nothing on Accelerate that we haven’t seen before, and indeed in many ways this album represents a 2000’s version of Lifes Rich Pageant. There’s certainly nothing that approaches the spiralling inventiveness of Up, but then that’s not really what this album is about. The speed of the first two songs, the “Swan Swan H” feel of “Until The Day Is Done”, and the predominantly up-tempo nature of the material, all lend a feeling that this is territory the band have previously occupied but now need to reclaim. Still, Lifes Rich Pageant isn’t a bad pedigree by any stretch of the imagination (even if I do, personally, still find it more than a little over-rated), and the fact that the band are able to reclaim that territory so convincingly just shows how things have changed between the last album at this one. The politics, too, give Accelerate that late-80’s feel and, again, that’s absolutely no bad thing, because it gives Michael some real anger and some real passion in his writing. The bite that this album has is a million miles away from the hollow sentiments wanly tossed out on the last couple of outings, but equally give the band somewhere to go from the substantially more complete Up and New Adventures. If this album does lack originality, it’s substituted that for anger and drive, and in this case that’s a more than worthy trade. And there’s a sense of humour back too! A song like “I’m Gonna DJ” isn’t meant to be taken in deadly earnest, it’s fun, and sometimes funny, and that just feels like such a relief. The band are having fun and enjoying themselves, and that just becomes incredibly infectious. Like the band’s final album, Collapse Into Now, Accelerate is never going to really get the recognition it deserves, or at least not outside of hardcore R.E.M. fans. In truth the twin wounds of two poor albums and the simple passing of time means that by the time R.E.M. produced this, in 2008, their moment had passed. Accelerate could have been the 2000’s OK Computer or indeed Automatic For The People, but it wouldn’t ever get the credit it deserved – that time has gone. Yet there’s also something rather liberating about that, and you can here that on the record. This is a band that’s coming out fighting after a painful downfall, and even if this doesn’t get much recognition in a way it doesn’t matter. It still stands as a statement of what can be achieved. As a band, they’re still capable of greatness, and their swansong failing to get more appreciation is one of the few great injustices of R.E.M.’s career. But before we get to that we have this – a million times better than what precedes it, yet still not a patch on what’s to come, Accelerate occupies that most uncomfortable of grounds for any record – it’s a transitional album. You can see the mistakes of the past firmly being put away for ever. You can hear the band noticeably finding a way forward, even as it means covering relatively familiar ground. And the energy, pep and verve of Accelerate is incredibly infections, just as the production here (which is simply outstanding) again finds a way to work with and support the music, rather than constantly pulling against it or swamping it out. Accelerate is a minor triumph, in fact, but when listening, do the band a favour and concentrate on the “triumph” part rather than the “minor” part, because Accelerate is a vastly enjoyable, scrappy and determined little album, and it deserves all the credit in the world. Best Song: You know what, I’m gonna go with the title track. It’s “Accelerate”. Worst Song: “Horse To Water”
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Post by ganews on Jul 20, 2017 19:05:20 GMT -5
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 21, 2017 2:29:50 GMT -5
I'm gonna need some clarification there!
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,499
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 21, 2017 3:38:34 GMT -5
Yeah, this is more like it. I always loved that sudden shift in pace out of nowhere in Mr Richards. And thank God for albums that come in at around 40 mins.
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Post by ganews on Jul 21, 2017 11:03:46 GMT -5
I'm gonna need some clarification there! I just like that he yells "wow!"
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Post by theshadowplay on Jul 21, 2017 12:40:55 GMT -5
While I do think this album is an improvement on the last two, for me there is no classics that have any real emotional pull for me. Now, it's very possible that I haven't listened to it enough, and it's very possible that I haven't had year after formative year with it like I have with mid-period (My favorite period) REM.
It's good stuff, but i none of it is really memorable for me, nor do I think there is much distinction here. Except for maybe "Houston" and "Until the Day is Done" it's all just loud (for REM) rock.
Also "Mr. Richards" sounds a LOT like "Hope" from Up.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 21, 2017 14:41:52 GMT -5
While I do think this album is an improvement on the last two, for me there is no classics that have any real emotional pull for me. Now, it's very possible that I haven't listened to it enough, and it's very possible that I haven't had year after formative year with it like I have with mid-period (My favorite period) REM. It's good stuff, but i none of it is really memorable for me, nor do I think there is much distinction here. Except for maybe "Houston" and "Until the Day is Done" it's all just loud (for REM) rock. Also "Mr. Richards" sounds a LOT like "Hope" from Up. A funny thing happened after I did the review for Around The Sun - I suddenly found the songs getting stuck in my head, which hadn't happened since Up. Specifically The Boy In The Well and Electron Blue (a little bit Make It All OK as well, but I have a very long, complex relationship with that song). I think that maybe shows that, while the production and actual band effort was crap, the songwriting might have been getting better but only to be drowned out by other factors. Still, "Mr Richards" sounding like "Hope" sounds like a big compliment to me.
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Post by Prole Hole on Jul 27, 2017 17:52:22 GMT -5
Collapse Into Now (2011) And so we reach the final outing with R.E.M.’s last studio album. Two duds and then a huge, if not entirely complete, return to form have been the band’s recent history, so on their swansong the time has come to prove themselves worthy of their own legacy. But will the weight of expectations crush the band under the burden of their own back catalogue? Or will they throw of the chains of the last three albums and finally deliver a record worthy of their name? Let’s explore probably the most neglected album of their career and find out! If I’m To Be A Camera: Not, if we’re being honest, a million miles away from Around The Sun’s rather feeble effort, with the three band members in front of a fairly nebulous background. But this time you can actually make out who’s who, and Michael’s waving and smiling and leading the band to it’s conclusion with one final hurrah. All three of them look just fine with that (though it’s important to remember that nobody knew this was R.E.M.’s final album at the time of its release). There’s also a slightly collage-y feel that makes an implicit connection to Accelerate – this is a little clearer on the back cover than the front – and on the inside we have the by-now-usual full set of lyrics (minus the last song) and credits. When You Tire Of One Side: X-Axis and Y-Axis, which is better than they’ve managed in quite some time. Not really directly related to the album, but pleasingly different nonetheless. Pre-existing Prejudices: The End Of The Band As We Know It. Obviously it’s their last studio album, and I have a bit of a thing for final studio albums it seems. My favourite Abba album is The Visitors, my favourite The Smiths album is Strangeways, Here We Come, and so forth. While I’m not going to claim this is R.E.M.’s best album, it’s always been one I’ve both loved and been baffled by the fact that more people don’t love it. Time to put it under the spotlight and see if it’s just me, or if it’s really deserving of the praise I think it should get. Songs: “Discoverer” Aw hell yeah. That opening riff! That hammering bass! The sheer ebullient joy of Michael yelling out “Discoverer!” on the chorus! This one song has more energy and drive than the last three albums put together (and Accelerate was not lacking energy). Michael giggling insanely under “I laugh” is fabulously unhinged. This is also one of Mike’s finest moments on bass – his line here is nothing short of stunning. Is this song an apology for the wrong turns? “It was what it was / let’s all get on with it” sings Michael joyously embracing the mistakes of the past while shrugging them off. They turned out a couple of duff albums – so what? We’re back, says the song, and here we are. This is actually a top ten R.E.M. song for me – “Discoverer” is properly brilliant, and completely unapologetic for it. For it has nothing to apologize for. “All The Best” Well it’s not hard to decode is it? The album’s mission statement. “It’s just like me to overstay my welcome” Michael tongue-in-cheek belts out in response to all those who think the band should have chucked it in, shortly followed by “let’s give it one more time / let’s show the kids how to do it fine”. And they do. Peter’s guitar is utterly alive here, better even that it sounded on Accelerate, and Mike’s doing some typically great bass work. As direct a message to listeners as R.E.M. have ever made, but this is a great, straightforward rocker that really gives a sense of momentum to the album. “I just had to get that off my chest”, Michael tells us, “now it’s time to get on with the rest.” ‘Nuff said. “Uberlin” A change of pace, as Peter’s acoustic guitar comes out alongside Michael’s more fragile, intimate side. Some brilliant Mike backing under “I know I know I know that this is changing” shows him finding new ways to do something on backing that doesn’t just sound like “Mike doing that Mike thing”, he’s being genuinely inventive here. There’s a hesitancy to Michael’s writing here which is incredibly endearing and touching – the protagonist timidly asking “do you want to go with me tonight?” is a long way from the Monster-era fuck songs. The title pun “uber / Berlin” is the weakest thing about this but that’s essentially irrelevant – this is a startlingly, strangely moving little song, full of life and real emption, and it’s completely beguiling. “Oh My Heart” Radiating sincerity like a small supernova, this is obviously a sequel to Accelerate’s “Houston”, this being the rebuild after the disaster of that song. This song doesn’t quite nail it – Mike’s again doing new, different things on backing vocals, but the main melody is a little underwhelming, and there’s slight sense that it’s trying just a little too hard to convince. This isn’t a bad song, and there’s some nice muted trumpets and good production all round, but after the one-two-three of the opening songs this is an obvious step down, even if it’s not necessarily a big one. Guess which kind of chord this finishes on, boys and girls? “It Happened Today” A spunky little acoustic guitar riff and some bass drum work leads us into this. But the time we hit second verse “we’ll leave the allegory / to another bible story” there’s a sense of unbridled, blissful joy at the sheer pleasure of making music that follows this through. The whole song exists for the vocal-but-lyric-free latter three-quarter which has Mike, Michael and guest vocalist Eddie Vedder (!) just throwing themselves at a lovely little melody that’s charming and impossible not to love. While it’s possible to wish it was Bill on third vocal rather than Vedder, Vedder does acquit himself very well. This hits exactly the spot “Shiny Happy People” aimed for and so clearly missed. Simply adorable. “Every Day Is Yours To Win” It’s big ballad time, ladies and gentleman! But on the plus side it’s a really rather wonderful one, sung from the perspective of an older person advising a much younger on. “I cannot tell a lie / it’s not all cherry pie / but it’s all there waiting for you” sings Michael. There’s a slight, bullhorn-esque effect on his vocal which works rather terrifically. This time out Mike is doing that Mike thing, but of course he does it great. This is a fairly standard picked Peter riff, and the instrumental could do with a bit more, but this is, like it’s predecessor, rather charming. Michael’s finding a way to deliver on Elder Stastesman Of Music remarkably well on this album, and here it suits him well. The end of side one, I shall note for the final time. “Mine Smells Like Honey” Even with the best will in the world, that’s a stupid title. Pity though, because this is R.E.M. flat-out rocking again, and this has a massive, brilliant chorus “Dig a hole / dig it deeper, deeper” and there goes Mike, Great God Of The Backing Vocals, making everyone’s prayers come true once again. But that stupid title is kind of the point as well – this is a big, daft song that fully embraces its own preposterousness and played with it – “mine smells like hu-hu-hu-hu-honey” indeed. It’s meant to be funny, and it is. Some nice early-R.E.M. drums on the instrumental break as it falls into the chorus again. Oh this is ridiculous, but I don’t care one jot because it makes me grin every time I hear it. “Walk It Back” Another Big Ballad™ with A Mike Piano Line, A Sincere Michael Vocal and, lest we forget, A Six-String Peter Acousitc line, and all of it slots together seamlessly. The sort of song R.E.M. have been making their whole career, and can still do better than anyone else without pausing for breath. Maybe a good example of the line in “All The Best” about “let’s show the kinds how to do it”, since this lacks some of the inventiveness of other tracks on the album, but is simply a band doing something they know how to do well as well as they’ve done it. Yet there’s still moments where this finds new avenues to explore, even if they’re fairly minor – Michael’s “you, don’t you turn this around” departing from the established melody is a terrific moment for him. Good stuff all round. “Alligator_aviator_autopilot_antimatter” Back to flat out rock mode, without the shift from the last song feeling jarring at all – in fact it sounds completely natural. As with the last song, not at all a new thing, but the sound of the band doing one type of song as well as they possibly can. It turns out they can do it fantastically, because this is a great fucking rock out for the band. Peaches on backing vocals gives a little extra texture to differentiate from the other rockers of the album, and her voice works well with Michael’s. Also not meant to be taken remotely seriously, so just relax, enjoy the fun of it, and listen to the last time Peter gets to properly rock out on an outstanding song. Annoying title to type out, though. “That Someone Is You” To be clear, Peter does rock out here too, but this is a completely average up-tempo R.E.M. song, rather than the last one. Mike’s doing his best on backing vocals but this is just a three-chord thrash that doesn’t really go anywhere, and lyrically it’s pretty straightforward. Not bad, but pales next to everything else going on here. “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando And I” The “Swan Swan H” slot – a quiet, acoustic and mandolin driven number second from last on the album. Michael musing on the nature of heroes and how the wider world look at people, which Michael unsure of his own place in the pantheon. Very effective mood established here, possibly the mood is just a little stronger than the lyric here, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong on this at all. Great little moment when the piano arrives on the second voice. Some lovely tonal shifts and incredibly well produced, and Mike offering perfect support. “Blue” It’s impossible to imagine a better song for R.E.M. for their last album to go out on. A revisit, of sorts, to the mood and atmosphere of “E-Bow The Letter”, though this is a better song, which is really saying something. We get a big guitar line (which actually sounds very “Country Feedback”-y), a gabbled, stream-of-consciousness lyric by Michael, and a careful acoustic line underneath. Everything here is incredibly precise and deliberate, poised almost… and then that voice turns up. It’s Patti Smith again (she gets a co-writing credit here, and deservedly so), sounding like the Goddess Voice Of The Century. R.E.M. have both sounded like, and never sounded like, this before. Michael’s non-stop lyrical avalanche ends with “20th century / collapse into now”, a few careful piano chords from Mike, then Patti’s back “Cinderella boy….” Oh fuck that sounds good. She delivers a frankly stunning vocal, while Michael slowly returns in the background “blue / blue / blue” – the production here is astonishingly good. “Into blue…” intones Patti, with a wave of feedback and…. A buzz… a noise. A familiar guitar riff. Because we’re not ending on “Blue”’s downbeat, neon-drenched 2-00am vibe at all, we’re back to the joyous, driving guitar of “Discoverer” and its complete love of life. Mike’s holding a single note on backing vocals! Peter’s all over the fretboard! “Discovereer!” yells Michael one, final time, full of the passion of music, still looking forward, even at the end. And then it’s over. And yet… it’s never over. Time for Chronic Town, I think. In Conclusion: No equivocation here - Collapse Into Now is outright brilliant. It’s not, quite, as good as, say, Murmur or Automatic, but then again almost nothing is, and for a band which, even two albums ago, looked like it was done and dusted, this kind of return to form is so wildly beyond expectation it’s incredible. From the moment the first chord of “Discoverer” rings out to the very final moment when the last chord of, um, “Discoverer” rings out ,this is a confident, hugely enjoyable album that demonstrates a band that have finally found their way back to being a band again. Because, while Bill’s departure wasn’t a fatal wound for the band, it was often a close-run thing. There have been highs ( Up) and lows (sorry, Reveal, it’s you) but there’s always been a slight sense that, even in their finest post-Berry moments the band has struggled to find an identity that wholly belonged to the remaining three members. Not here. This is three-legged-dog R.E.M., a band who can produce brilliant, interesting, challenging music and still find ways of working with their past without discarding it. Because it’s that ease with who and what they are that makes Collapse Into Now sound so enjoyable. This isn’t a struggle, a fight, or an attempt at redefinition. Indeed, “All The Best” quite clearly stakes out what this album is going to be – the band, doing what the band do, for the reasons the band want to do it. In fact the results here are so overwhelmingly better than anything in recent memory that it ends up actively hurting Accelerate. Why? Because, decent album though Accelerate is, it’s also comparatively straightforward, and seeing it next to the complexity that Collapse Into Now brings to the table shows how much more could have been done with it. The material on Accelerate is strong, but there’s certain predictability to it. Collapse Into Now, on the other hand, has variety, it has new techniques being tried at a point where the band could have rightly been expected to just knock out a soundalike (“Blue” is the most inventive song here, but it’s not the only one), and more than anything else it has a sense of real commitment. Accelerate had that last one too, but the material here is much stronger and much more varied, so it can’t help but look paler by comparison. Jacknife Lee produces here for the second time, and though he did a great job on the last album, this is still the best the band have sounded since Scott Litt vacated the producer’s chair back at the end of New Adventures In Hi-Fi. Everything here sounds simply amazing, and there’s a balance and clarity that never tips over into sterility (Pat McCarthy’s biggest failing), while his instrumentation is always in sympathy with, and never dominates, the music. Even on the slightly weaker songs here (“That Someone Is You”, “Oh My Heart”) this remains true, and that means the weaker songs don’t in any way derail the album. Indeed if anything it allows the album to become more than the sum of its parts, conjuring a mood and sound which sustains the listener over a couple of slightly less good songs. But they are only slightly less good, and the songwriting is the best, and most consistent, its been in a decade or so. It’s obvious to say, but it could hardly have come at a better time. If Accelerate was a return to form – and it very much was – then this is the obvious next step, not just a band rediscovering their musical mojo, but taking the next step and really delivering something special. That they did it on what turned out to be their final album seems entirely appropriate – go out with a bang, prove to everyone just what a great band you’re capable of being, then ride off into the sunset. Collapse Into Now really is a special album, and it feels criminal that, even among R.E.M. fans, the album seems unfairly forgotten. The reasons for this are comparatively straightforward and easy to understand – popular music had moved on, and even hardcore fans had been drifting away from them at this point in their career. That’s a shame, though, because for anyone that stuck around to listen to the bands swansong, they got an album fully deserving of their attention. No, it’s not quite a flawless album, and no, it’s not quite their best work. But it just feels incredibly petty to focus on a couple of very minor mis-steps – even the worst songs here sound better than almost anything on the two dud albums, and there’s just so much joy and passion on display here that it’s impossible not to warm to this. Collapse Into Now is an entirely fitting conclusion to the band – circular in nature by dint of its opening and closing songs, the album suggests that the music never ends. It’s always there, ready to come around again when you need it. It’s a poignant, meaningful final sentiment from a band that were never afraid of embracing emotion, yet it’s not cloying or self-congratulatory. Quite the opposite. It is, instead, forward-looking, elated at the wonder of music and the sheer pleasure that it can bring. Really, how could things end any other way? Best Song: “Discoverer” and “Blue”, appropriately. Worst Song: “That Someone Is You”. And it’s still fine. The Albums, listed in the entirely arbitrary order of my preference: Document Murmur Automatic For The People Collapse Into Now Reckoning ( Chronic Town) Up Monster Out Of Time Accelerate Fables Of The Reconstruction New Adventures In Hi-Fi Lifes Rich Pageant Green Around The Sun RevealBut wait…. There’s more! I’ll cover the Unplugged sessions andwrite up a conclusion, probably within the next couple of weeks, so don’t stop thread-checking just yet!
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