Listening Post: R.E.M - Collapse Into Now

R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now - 2011

Everything on Collapse Into Now sounds like something else. By that I mean there are melodies that harken back to other melodies in REM's past. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise, after all, songwriters aren't fonts of infinite combinations. The ear and mind's ear hear things a certain way. Then they run ideas through that personal taffy machine and it comes out sounding singularly like that musician. The paradox is: we expect both familiarity and diversity from our musical heroes.
The trouble with this for me as a listener and lover of REM is that I've heard it before and none of the familiarity predates Automatic For the People. Which means that REM is echoing themselves mostly from sounds of their most fallow and least interesting period. Strike that. Their least "exciting" period. In other words, they sound like the Warner Brothers version of REM and decidedly NOT the I.R.S. REM.
But, while "Uberlin" calls to mind "Drive" that doesn't mean the former is bad, it means that I would rather pull up the latter, curl up on the couch and let that brilliant record wash over me. The fact that "Blue" could be a rewrite of "E-Bow the Letter" reminds me that REM's best days are behind them. (Having Patti Smith on both isn't really helping avoid that comparison, guys). I have no idea why it reprises "Discoverer" however.
"Oh My Heart" is lovely but the chord progression is a way too obvious lift from Automatic's "Try Not to Breath" which is a damn shame because that chorus could be so beautiful.
It's that way all through the record. If Accelerate was their 21st century Lifes Rich Pageant, then the experimental side of Collapse Into Now makes this the follow up in spirit to Out of Time, a disjointed album despite it's commercial success.

The album doesn't get cracking until more than halfway through with the horribly titled "Mine Smell Like Honey" (Discoverer is more of an opener than a real rocker, though it's one of the best songs on the record) and it's so uninspired that I find myself wanting to reach for my mouse and click over to the title track from Accelerate, which this sounds like, if watered down.
I do have to admit that "Walk it Back" is one of the loveliest songs the band has put together. And Stipe is in fine, rich, baritone. He seems to be reaching for more Elbow and less Radiohead and I am thankful for that.
The album is a herky jerky disjointed mess. I mean that in a good way. It's familiar, yes, but holy crap, we could have gotten another Reveal or Around the Sun, instead of a band realizing from the last album that the people don't want what's good for them, but we want our band just to be good. The fact that it's got no thematic center, be it the "every instrument except guitar" of A4tP or the moodiness of Around the Sun or the wannabe electro relevance of Up is a boon to this record.
In an era of shuffle play, this album plays just fine on your ipod when you set it to random play REM.

"I cannot tell a lie. It's not all cherry pie. But it's right there waiting for you." - Stipe has written some annoying "don't give up, I believe in you, you've got so much to live for" crap, but that might be one of the worst lyrics ever.

Grade: B
ASide: Discoverer, Uberlin
BlindSide: Walk it Back, Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatte
DownSide: Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I

Listening Post: R.E.M - Ranking

How do the darlings of Alternative fare when all their albums are ranked? Which should you buy? What is their average output? How much time do I really have on my hands?

Murmur: A+ (100)
Reckoning: A+ (100)
Lifes Rich Pageant: A+ (100)
Automatic for the People: A+ (100)
Accelerate: A (96)
Document: A- (92)
Chronic Town: A (95)
New Adventures in Hi Fi: B+ (89)
Out of Time: B- (82)
Monster: C- (73)
Fables of the Reconstruction: C- (71)
Green: D (66)
Reveal: D- (63)
Up: D- (61)
Around the Sun: D- (61)

REM Average Grade: 79 C+. Not too shabby considering how pisspoor those post Bill Berry records are. Let's remove those from the equation and see what happens: 88. B+. Had they just stopped.....

Reflecting Pool: REM - Accelerate

R.E.M. - Accelerate - 2008

Well, this is different. Did someone have a sitdown with Mikey and shake him and tell the boys, "Hey! Dummies! No One is buying your records. We pay you to sell records. Not to masturbate in the studio. Get us something we can sell!"

Because "Living Well is the Best Revenge" is the biggest cut throat rocker since "These Days". More reminiscent of Lifes Rich Pageant than any somnambulist crap from the past decade. Rock on, guys.
The band hasn't sounded like a band since, well, since Berry left. Here they give us everything we've been begging for since Automatic for the People. Remember how the next album would be "the one that would rock"? But it never was? This is tight. This is REM at it's boldest and strongest. And they haven't compromised, they don't sound like another band. They sound like REM. "Supernatural Superserious" sounds like REM circa Green but with considerably more punch.
There's definitely some experimentation on songs like "Houston" but it's shrouded with power and energy and purpose, so instead of being awful, it's great.
Guys, where was this record 8 years ago??? There's no bloat, no filler. It's 36 minutes and lean and powerful.
I imagine the guys knew they were in danger of losing all their fans. Diminishing returns for 10 years proved that. Ray Davies said, Give the People What they Want.
What we wanted was something we can dance to, a sequel to "It's the End of the World". "I'm gonna DJ (at the end of the world) is just that. I didn't think they knew how to do it, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure that even if I didn't just slog through 3 hours of some of the most banal crap I would have loved Accelerate. If you love REM, rather, if you LOVED REM but feel like the direction they went chased you away as they chased Radiohead, give Accelerate a spin. It's worth it.

Grade: A
ASide: Living Well is the Best Revenge, Man Sized Wreath, Supernatural Superserious, Accelerate
BlindSide: Hollow Man, Houston, Until the Day is Done, Mr. Richards, Horse to Water
DownSide: Sing for the Submarine

(To the best of my knowledge this is the 370th album review since I started the Listening Post, Reflecting Pool, DoublShot and One Off series)

Reflecting Pool: REM - Around the Sun

R.E.M. - Around the Sun - 2004

Peter Buck said that for him Around the Sun "... just wasn't really listenable, because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can't stand it anymore."

Well, that just about says it, don't it?

I'm nothing if not a completist so here I go:

1. Leaving New York - Pleasant mid-tempo piece, Stipe is all misty and nostalgic. There's nothing oblique or abstract here. Stipe is as earnest as he's ever been. More so. Not a great opener, but I've given up waiting for "Radio Free Europe" or "Begin the Begin".
2. Electron Blue - REM is lousy with songs wherein Michael Stipe tells someone that they are great, can be great, will be great, buck up, cheer up, etc. He's taken the role of top of the pyramid mother to the nth degree. Here's another one. Rest assured it won't be the last. Yawn. The electro-pop production does nothing for me. Or the song.
3. The Outsiders - Why, why, why???? Did you learn NOTHING from "Radio Song"? Q-Tip? Really??!? Oh, man, talk about a band out of touch....
4. Make it All Okay - From PopSongs: “Make It All OK” seems to exist as though to prove [Chuck Klosterman's] point [about manufactured, fake love]. Its sound is pure “fake love” — if there was a video for it, it would have to look exactly like an episode of Dawson’s Creek or Grey’s Anatomy. (Only worse. - me)
5. Final Straw - The instrumentation on this song, particularly Buck's country acoustic seems at odds with Stipe's lyrics. I don't know that they even need each other anymore. Certainly this song would benefit from a different set of lyrics and a different singer. A shame, really.
6. I Wanted to Be Wrong - A half baked anti-Bush America song. I imagine it's hard to be in REM at this point in time. They started with a fire and fury in Reagan's American. They carried the banner through 11 years of that shit, with stuff to write about and sing about and then there was triumph. The Clinton years were a validation of much of what REM was about. Sure, it didn't create Utopia but it was a better America than the one that preceded it. Then the Bush years happened and the telecommunications act of 96 and vertical integration and boy bands and Fox News and, well, it's like the 90s never happened. Their response? Pap like this. They don't have the fire anymore. They are just tired. And don't know how to play this game. They're not relevant anymore. They're old....
7. Wanderlust - An almost honky-tonk track that can't fully commit. They're just gonna put the tip in....
8. Boy in the Well - It's haunting to be sure. There's no real there there. They've done this better. Truth is the music is REM by the numbers, the lyrics are just terrible, though.

[I really miss Bill Berry.....]

9. Aftermath - Pleasant, mid-tempo rocker. There's no hook, nothing to catch on to, not sure why there's no chorus as the song seems to be begging for one. It's harmless, toothless and uninteresting.
10. High Speed Train - Starts off as the ugliest song in the group's entire catalog then becomes one of the most boring, then just goes away. Finally.
11. The Worst Joke Ever - Oh, dear. Aimless and dependent on murky, oceanic production. Maybe they were listening to U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind a bit too much. It really doesn't work. At all.
12. The Ascent of Man - Reaching for croon, Stipe almost sounds alive on this one. There's movement, some sex appeal, some sway and swagger. It's a little too little too late. But it does feel like its trying.
13. Around The Sun - The first song for which an REM album is named. I think they were just too bored to come up with a title. This is Across the Universe if it was poorly written by bored millionaires with a contractual obligation.

Around the Sun is awful.

Grade: D-
ASide: Leaving New York
BlindSide: I Just Wanted to Be Wrong
Downside: The Outsiders, Make it All Okay, Boy in the Well, High Speed Train, The Worst Joke Ever

Reflecting Pool: REM - Reveal

How do you answer the world when your first album as a trio is roundly, soundly and decidedly shunned by everyone? You "go back to your roots". Or you say you're gonna do that and then you do whatever the hell you want and call it music.

R.E.M. - Reveal - 2001

"The Lifting" starts off the proceedings and it's a definite improvement in openers from the last two records. It's not the soporific "Airportman" nor is it the plodding "How the West....". But, even though it's energetic, it's nearly fogettable as soon as it's over. And before you know it, we're back in slumbertown's "I've Been High". It's a mood piece and sets the plate for "All the Way to Reno", which is not bad but not the best the band has ever had to offer. What band? By this point it's really the Michael Stipe show, isn't it?
I recall when Beck's Sea Change came out I was really angry. Some of the songs on that album were gorgeous, just lovely but Beck insisted on gleeps and blips and effects and tricks that distracted from the songs. As if the songs themselves weren't enough. They should be. I hear the same shit happening here. It's as though the guys are just bored and trying to find ways of making the music interesting to them. In the end, all we're left with is hollow sounds strung together as though they are songs. But anyone can construct a song. Trust me, I've done it. It's not hard. And with enough studio time you can do it too. There's more to it than that. But not on Reveal.

PopSongs said this about "She Just Wants to Be" There’s something a bit uncomfortable about the way “She Just Wants To Be” feels simultaneously strident and languorous, and Michael Stripe’s atrocious grammar ruins the lyrics for me. (In fairness, one shouldn’t come to rock music expecting excellent grammar, but “it’s not that the transparency of her earlier incarnations now looked back on weren’t rich and loaded with beautiful vulnerability” is a truly horrendous construction, especially if English is your first language.) It’s about a minute and a half too long, and in concert, Peter Buck extends it further with a guitar solo that is neither impressive or exciting. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but man, it’s hard to imagine someone actively wanting to listen to this song, much less perform it live.

That's how I feel about the whole record. It's insipid. Worse than that, it seems to want to evoke treacly, faux hippy, groovy tones and lava lamps. Even "Imitation of Life" which was the lead single and called to mind the best years of the band, stuffed in the middle of this record just retains the stink of the everything else and no longer sounds like a song crafted on its own, but instead a piece of one, dull whole.
Reveal does sort of end with "I'll Take the Rain", which is about as abysmal a song as they've ever recorded, but they come back for that encore with "Beachball" (I know I'm reading into this shit, but at this point I need something keep me going.) However, as an encore I would gladly ask the band to not come back out.

I absolutely hate this record.

Grade: D-
ASide: All The Way to Reno, Imitation of Life
BlindSide:
DownSide: The rest of it.

Reflecting Pool: REM - Up

R.E.M. - Up - 1998

For years I've always felt that Michael Stipe wanted REM to be the American Radiohead. Employing the latter's engineer for Up cemented that idea.
I've owned this CD since 98 when it came out. I've never, ever, ever listened to it. Wish me luck.
By the late 90s rock music was changed. The aggressive, post-punk, angst ridden grunge had been swept aside by the hive mind of raves. The Prodigy, The Orb, Moby, Madonna's Bedtime Stories, this was the place where rock bands were going. Edged out of the spotlight by rap, even Bowie was biting on the MDMA-laden scene (Earthling, anyone?)
Radiohead really took the mantle of disaffected alienation with OK Computer, U2 had foraged in this idiom as well. Guitars were over. ababcab songs were dead.
It was only a matter of time before REM joined the party.
With the departure of Bill Berry to his farm, the cohesive, driving center of REM was gone. The quartet who had once declared that should one member leave they would break up completely, didn't. Although rumor has it they almost did during the making of this record.

Up starts off with "Airportman" a song that predates but echoes Kid A in almost every way. It's all ambience and soundtrack, which was wonderful on Bowie's Low, but not so great here. With the next track, "Lotus" it should be obvious to even the most casual REM listener that this is not the band they grew up with. There's no chance for the goofy humor of "Bandwagon" here. There's not the heart of Automatic for the People. It's all post-modern soundscapes and mood. I once wrote, in my review of No Line on the Horizon (here): Imagine you are in a spacious apartment. It's a high rise above a metropolitan city. The carpet is grey, the furniture modern and black. The appointments are metallic and the windows are floor to ceiling.
Guests arrive but barely make small talk. The men are all dressed in fine linen and silk suits, the women are all in flowing haute couture.
The host snaps his fingers. Clothing is removed and the apartment is transformed into a hedonistic orgy.
Music comes on over the speakers.
It is U2's No Line on the Horizon.
When it is over everyone is finished copulating. They dress, barely acknowledging each other and everyone goes on their several ways.
That is about the emotional depth of this album and all it's good for.

The mood is almost the same for Up save for the orgy. The people who would populate a party thrown by hosts who soundtrack it to this album would not think about sex. They've just forgotten about it. They would rather take a nap.
Up is all about naps. Dreams and naps.
The song "Hope" is credited to Leonard Cohen as well as the trio. This is because they had basically stolen the melody and chord progression from Cohen's Suzanne and had to give him credit. or chose to give him credit. Whatever. It's a blatant steal. And all it does is remind me that I really like that other song and this is obnoxious. And I'm not really sure what to make of "At My Most Beautiful" with it's homage to The Beach Boys. I barely need an homage to that group and when I get it I want it to be fun like Super Furry Animals or interesting like Animal Collective.
I do enjoy the hynotic qualities on "Airportman" and "The Apologist" and would happily put them on in a playlist of some of Bowie and Eno's most ambient. The unfocused meanderings of "You're in the Air" should get you to turn this record off, if you haven't already.
I wonder what sessions the lovely and evocative "Daysleeper" was left off of. It has a distinctly Automatic for the People feel to it. And it works in the palette of that record, I think. it's not really about death but anyone who's had to work at night and sleep through the day knows what being a zombie really is. It's lonely and sad and feels like death. It would work there. It really saves this album from the junk pile.

I shant do the playlisting myself, but if you want a primer on how to make Up listenable, go here: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/playing-god-with-rems-up.htm

If you like your music served up by robots with programmed drum machines (by people less talented than the ones who programmed The Cars' records over a decade earlier) then Up is for you.
I was just as well off having never heard it.

Grade: D-
ASide: Lotus, Daysleeper
BlindSide: Airportman, The Apologist, Parakeet
DownSide: Hope, Suspicion, At My Most Beautiful, You're in the Air

Reflecting Pool: REM - New Adventures in Hi-Fi

R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi Fi - 1996

When New Adventures came out my brother asked me what I thought about it and my answer was "I wish REM would stop recording their sound checks." That was my initial response. Turns out I was right about that, too. Unbeknownst to me at the time.

There have always been 3 or 4 tracks from it that I adore but I don't think I've given the album anything more than a cursory listen. I know that I did hear the whole thing once, cause I brought it with me to the gym and played it while on the treadmill. But I think Jerry Springer was on at the same time and I was more than likely distracted by that....

The plodding drums, rhythmic piano, low toned vocals all building to a lush chorus usher in this album. Is it just me or does "How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us" remind of Big Audio Dynamite and Tom Tom Club? Regardless, it's a splendid mood piece. And that's a lot of Hi Fi. Moody, stark, moving and odd. To start the record off with this is bold and strange as the song isn't most inviting piece. On the contrary, it's haunting and off-putting.
Then the album opens up. I have to wonder if I would like Monster better if the two tracks "Wake Up Bomb" and "Undertow" had been included instead of held off and put here. And, given that this album clocks in at an hour, perhaps they were included to break up the monotony and give the record a couple of places for fans to hold on to something beyond mid to low-tempo mood pieces. The former being a fine piece of work and the latter being...well, not so.
The 3/4 time anti-talk show, anti-religious hypocrisy screed, "New Test Leper" is perhaps one of the best singles the band has ever recorded. From PopSongs: The song isn’t really about this specific debate, but rather how commercialized forums tend to reduce serious discourse to reductive “us vs. them” binary conflicts fought out with quick, harsh sound bites between advertisements for car dealerships and laundry detergent.
"E-Bow the Letter" is pretty much the saddest thing in REM's catalog. Based on a letter Stipe had written to his friend, River Phoenix, but couldn't send because of the latter's death, it's wrenching. And brilliant. Wow. Tears are actually welling while listening to this song...
In many ways Hi Fi is the natural follow up to Automatic. Both are stark and dense and etched in sadness, loss and moving on. Perhaps we needed a Monster in between but Hi Fi effectively wipes away the sour taste of that album. The real shame is that it comes on the heels of an album fraught with expectations so high that since it wasn't the answer fans were looking for, it gets the short shrift. You only need listen to "Leave" to realize just how incredible the heights reached on New Adventures are.
The single, "Bittersweet Me" is as pedestrian REM as you're ever gonna get. REM by the numbers. Driver 8 kind of stuff. easy to write, easy to do, easy to sell.
For me, the real trouble with NAiHF comes around "Binky the Doormat". (Oh, that title...cringe) By this point I've already put in the length of Murmur plus. The obsession with filling CDs with as much music as possible was a real problem in the 90s. The labels were charging more and more for plastic discs but who would want to pay $18 for 30 minutes of music? So we got a LOT of filler. By the middle of Hi Fi, I'm just ready for the entire proceeding to be over. Actually, Zither is supposed to be a transition song, but I could do without it. On the other hand, the "encore" "Electrolite" is lovely and a paean to their past, even if it sounds just like "Nightswimming". It's the last song in the "real" REM's catalog and when Stipe sings, "I'm not scared, I'm outta here" a fitting goodbye it is.

All in all, New Adventures in Hi Fi is one of REM's better albums. It would be one of their best if it was 15 minutes shorter. It's also notable that this is the last record that would include the original line-up. Bill Berry would quit to be a farmer after this album.

Grade: B+
ASide: How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us, New Test Leper, E-Bow the Letter, Bittersweet Me, Electrolite
BlindSide: The Wake Up Bomb, Leave
DownSide: Binky the Doormat

Reflecting Pool: REM - Monster

R.E.M. - Monster - 1994

(My apologies for the scattershot writing below, I am listening to the record while writing about it at the same time. Not quite a liveblog, but close.)

I always liked "What's the Frequency, Kenneth. It was precisely the attitude and power I had been hoping for from REM. We had all been waiting for The Rock Record. REM promised this would be it. How could it not? There's a fucking electric guitar SOLO in the middle of that freaking song!
So, what went wrong?
(It's a real testament that Michael Stipe can come across as both Iggy Pop AND Nico on the otherwise annoying "Crush with Eyeliner".)
What went wrong was that REM was never really a "rock" band. They started off as a slanted folk/rock band with decidedly rock undertones. My friend, Robbie Rist, likened my band and Queen and others to what was great about The Beatles, in his opinion. In all those great bands (and I include mine only for reference) everyone in the band has a predilection toward different music. And they would share that with love with others. Harrison dug country, McCartney actually liked, say, show tunes, Lennon loved early rock. You put that all together and start to create. There's no doubt the 4 members of Queen had differing musical tastes. REM is no different. This is totally unlike, say, KISS or Motley Crue, where the members come together through a love of one band or style. Berry loves the rock, Mills is the arranger and probable archivist, Buck digs the folk, Stipe is the artiste.
I'm not sure where REM got their influences but, rest assured, they are varied and wide and intellectualised as often as they are visceral.
So, the outcome is the antiseptic and ugly Monster. An appropriate title.
I can remember exactly when I pushed stop while listening to this album in 1994. Probably during "I Don't Sleep, I Dream", a song that would play with the "Oddfellows" style but it's contempt for it's subject matter and narrator are worn on it's sleeve. And it's not pretty. More like a soundtrack for a serial killer. That would be fine, but REM took me on that road of tears and sadness so well on the last album. Is it so much to ask for for those guys to play music I want to listen to? The album picks up a bit with the "Ignoreland" sounding "Star 69", a song rendered redundant now that we have caller ID. But, at least it rocks. On the other hand it's followed by a new REM trope: the arpeggiated ballad. "Strange Currencies" could be "Everybody Hurts" with new lyrics. Or a play on "Nightswimming". Or... On it's own, "Currencies" is a lovely tune. Played after the brilliance of "Hurts", it feels like a band repeating themselves or having run out of ideas.
Props to the faux soul of "Tongue", however. Calls to mind mid-70s Mick Jagger. The song is even more poignant when you realize that it's written in the voice of a woman who is tired of being a "last ditch lay". She can't help doing it because she's needy and desperate but she hates herself for it. Sad.
I get that "Let Me In" is written for Kurt Cobain, but wouldn't a more fitting tribute to that dead friend be a song that doesn't sound like Sonic Youth's tonguebath?
The album proper ends with "Circus Envy" an over-processed garage rock song that suffers from sounding too much like nails on a chalkboard. And with that it's time for the, you guessed it, encore! It's too bad "You" is nothing more than a grinding dirge, milling the listener's ears and daring you to ever play it again.

I don't like Monster. I feel as though any REM fan either has to accept that it's bad or spend eternity trying to defend it. I won't be the latter. It's not a great record. I think REM is using their own success currency to do whatever the hell they want. And that's fine, that's how it should be, but when your drummer has an aneurism playing your music, maybe you're doing something wrong.
Okay, that's not fair, I'm sure Berry would have had one if he was playing a "1,000,000" but he didn't. And, after 50 minutes of this album, I feel like I'm about to have one, too.

Grade: C-
ASide: What's the Frequency Kenneth, Bang and Blame
BlindSide: Star 69, Tongue
DownSide: King of Comedy, I Don't Sleep I Dream, Strange Currencies, I Took Your Name, Let Me In, Circus Envy

Reflecting Pool: REM - Automatic for the People

R.E.M. - Automatic for the People - 1992

After all that over production the year before, all of which led to the biggest sales number an Athens, GA college rock band could have imagined, REM went back in the studio and stripped themselves down to the bare core.
Automatic for the People is, first and foremost, an album of songs. Haunting, elegiac, sad, terrifying, ironic, and every other adjective you can get in there.
It's their masterpiece. Possibly the most powerful album of the Alternative Rock Era. Easily one of the 10 best of the 90s. I would rank it in my top 50 of all time.

"Drive" sets the tone. With it's giant chords distorting all over the place, it's full of fitful stops and starts (Drive, get it?). It's also important to recognize that, at the time of this song, Stipe was having a lot of trouble (or maybe a little) coming to terms with the age difference between him and his fans. A4tP comes as the band had been recording professionally for 10 years. They were men in their 30s playing to an audience of teenagers.
The sadness continues with "Try Not To Breath" a song that reminds me of trying to run in a dream. Where you can't get traction and your legs won't work. That's this song for me. Makes me want to cry every time I hear it.
"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" is a palette cleanser, a virtual pop song amidst the morass of death and sadness. And speaking of sadness, if I listen to "Everybody Hurts" and think about my late daughter, I'm a mess for the duration. It's astounding how taking a simple three chord structure, basic arpeggios and what is, essentially a song about encouragement, can be so devastating. From PopSongs: “Everybody Hurts” is a public service, and its arrangement is precisely calibrated to appeal to a person in a state of melancholy, and subtly, gently lift them up into a feeling of hope. There are no empty promises, and no expectations of easy salvation in the song, but there is kindness, generosity, friendship, and the encouragement that pain and suffering are not everlasting things, and that we often have the power to flip those negative experiences into something beautiful and constructive.
I'm down with that.
"New Orleans Instrumental" is a perfect complement to "Everybody Hurts". I liken it to taking a walk after some really good advice, letting it sink in and embarking on the rest of your life.
Is Automatic for the People about death? Yes. Is it sad? Yes. Is it morose? No. And that's the distinction. Death surrounds this record so much that when it came out I and some friends believed that this would be the band's swan song. That Stipe was writing about death the same way that Freddie Mercury was: Because his own was imminent. I guess we all were so terrified of AIDS that we would read it into just about every gay icon who focused on the end. It would make a lot of sense that Stipe would be fixated on death at this time, we were losing great artists, great people, just about at every turn to that disease.
But, in the end, A4tP celebrates life, the aforementioned encouragement song, the elegy for the great Montgomery Clift who had to hide his sexuality, the king of irony, Andy Kaufman. The album celebrates life while embracing and understanding death.
It's important, in this context to recognize "Ignoreland". This album came out while we were enduring the last breaths of the Regan/Bush era. Reagan didn't mention AIDS during his entire first term. It was a harrowing time for gays. For the left. For artists. We are still feeling these repercussions today.
I can probably do without the Badalamenti-esque "Star Me Kitten" but that's the only dank spot on the record.
(Coda report: The album proper ends perfectly nicely with the tender and nostalgic "Nightswimming" only to call the band back for the encore, my favorite song on the record, "Find the River".)
For all their successes and failures, REM can say they made this album. And I'm grateful they did.

Grade: A+
ASide: Everybody Hurts, Drive, Man on the Moon, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, Nightswimming, Find the River
BlindSide: Try Not To Breath, Monty Got a Raw Deal, Ignoreland
DownSide: Star Me Kitten

Reflecting Pool: REM - Out of Time

R.E.M. - Out of Time - 1991

REM had put out a record every year from 1982-1988. But the touring for their major label debut was exhaustive and they wouldn't enter the studio for another couple years after Green. The result? Their first massive international smash.
Everybody had this record. Everybody. It was ubiquitous. It was huge. Alternative music was everywhere in 1991. Gen X had finally taken over. REM led that charge.

Let's get this out of the way first: "Losing My Religion" is just as wonderful now as it was back then. I haven't heard it in about 10 years because I heard it every day for about a year back then. It's lush, melodic, sad, sweet, as I said, wonderful.
That being said, the record isn't all Losing My Religion. Even the generically titled "Radio Song" and the uber pop of "Shiny happy people" are beacons on an otherwise dark and experimental record.

Depending on your mood, "Low" is either deliciously harrowing or unlistenable cliche. That's the inherent irony and joke about REM: Here they are, the darlings of the independent music movement, heroes of the left, multi-millionaires who never had to compromise, right? But they always straddled universal acceptance with a desire to be Sonic Youth. Depending on where you stand on that kind of experimentation determines your appreciation for the band. I have to wonder what the teenage girl who bought this record because of it's hit singles thinks of something like "Low" or "Country Feedback". She was either bummed out or just hit forward to get to the shiny brightness of "Near Wild Heaven", a song I always forget about because I have to get past "Low" to get there.(Not that it's that great. It's piffle, at best)
In other words, Out of Time is not a great experience for the top forty listener who buys it on cassette.
The record is about as disjointed as you can imagine but one thing I'd like to point out is, regardless of how cheesy and annoying and downright cloying "Shiny Happy People" is, it's the closes to early REM that we've gotten in a while. It's a good sense of where they might have ended up had they followed that muse to it's own endgame. It's catchy as hell, kind of a shame they've never, if rarely, played it live.
The album certainly feels like it's over by the time the dour "Country Feedback" finally exhausts its welcome. But then! Encore time! "Me In Honey" comes on like the band has been asked back for one more.
Because of the schizophrenia of Out of Time, I would never recommend it to a casual listener, however, because so much of it is rewarding I have to place it higher in the canon than my memory would have let me.

Grade: B-
ASide: Losing My Religion, Near Wild Heaven,
BlindSide: Belong, Texarkana, me In Honey
DownSide: Endgame, Half a World Away, Country Feedback

Reflecting Pool: REM - Green

R.E.M. - Green - 1988

I've always wondered if REM named this album Green because they made so much of it from their deal with Warner Brothers.

At least once during a Listening Post I "liveblog" one album. All that means is I listen to the album and write about each song as they play.

1. Pop Song 89. Wow, REM, generic title much? This is as poppy as I ever thought REM could get. There's a meta-sarcasm in Stipe's voice as he asks "Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about the government?" As if both are time killers when you've run out of things to talk about. Interesting considering just how much singing about the government REM has been doing over their career.

2. Get Up. Seems designed to get an audience moving. I'm sure its about more than that but that's all I get from it. It's a little thin and reedy, due to Mills' backing vox, and the chorus' "dreams complicate my life" is confounding since I keep reading about how Stipe and others like Berry would get song ideas or ideas for parts of songs from dreams. (Stipe dreamt he was at a party and everyone there had the initials, "LB", hence that part of their biggest hit.

3. You Are The Everything. I know it's not supposed to be meant this way but I always thought Michael was "very scared for this world" because he feels like "he can barely sing". Talk about hubris! A harbinger of what's to come on the next two albums and one of the finest pieces in the band's catalog.

4. Stand. Oh, that calliope sound. This song, like much of the album and the one that preceded it, is mired deeply in the 80s, it's the sound of that decade. More so for me than madonna or Duran Duran or anyone. This song, with it's accompanying video and the gender role mockery stood on the precipice of biting the hand and knowing more about the hand than the hand did. It's kind of a dumb song, really.

5. World Leader Pretend. If I am remembering correctly this was the only song for which the lyrics were provided in the cd. I'm too lazy to get my cd out of the case, so I'll just go with that. I remember thinking at the time; wow, talk about being pretentious. Really think this message needs to be out there, be understood, Stipe, that you had to include the lyrics? I still think it's a wee pretentious. And when I say, "Wee", I mean "Brazen". That's not really the worst part. The worst part is the song is sort of boring. Egregious.

6. The Wrong Child Now THIS is pretentious. A meandering tone poem on nonsense. And I'm pretty sure that it was at this point that I stopped listening in 1988.

7. Orange Crush. There I am, sitting in the little box office of The Tiffany Theater on Sunset. Listening to the radio. George HW Bush has been named the official nominee of the GOP and this song came on. And all I could think was, "You couldn't come up with a better metaphor for Agent Orange than Orange Crush? As disappointing a single as Queen's Body Language 6 years earlier.

8. Turn You Inside Out - Have you heard the album Monster? All of the seeds for that record are right here in this song. If you didn't like Monster you will not like this song.

8. Hairshirt Hello, Mandolin. Why not let Peter play you while Stipey caterwauls in the foreground? Mills, you put some harmonious synths behind it and pluck your bass and we'll call it a song. Yeah, that'll work. Wow, if we could just make this something that someone would actually want to hear we could record it and put it on an album called Automatic for the People....

9. I Remember California - This sounds way too much like "Odd Fellows Local 151" that I can't get past it. Nor can I get past just how much I seem to hate this record...

11. Untitled - Oh, remember "hidden tracks"? The dumbest thing ever in the history of music (and I'm including 8 tracks. Pleasant enough, if completely unmemorable.

I guess there's a good reason why I never listened to Green after I bought the day it was released. It's horrible. Rather than writing great songs and pushing the envelope of what their music can do, they pushed the envelope in the other direction. Toward experimentation. Which is fine, if that's what i signed up for. If I buy a Captain Beefheart album or a Flaming Lips album, I know what I'm getting. Even if they diverge from a debut. But REM's shift away from what made them so interesting and wonderful is so off putting that I wonder if I can keep this up.

Grade: D
ASide: Stand, Orange Crush
BlindSide: You Are the Everything
DownSide: The Wrong Child, Orange Crush, Hairshirt
This is the first time since I've been doing this blog that a single (represented by the ASide moniker) also was one of the worst songs on the record.

Reflecting Pool: REM - Document

R.E.M. - Document - 1987

By the time Document was released I had already moved to Los Angeles and was nestled in my basement apartment with the same REM loving roommate in West Hollywood. I lived less than 100 yards from Tower Records on Sunset Blvd. The movie billboard that faces west on Sunset was displaying Ishtar.
1987.

The opening track explodes like a marriage of U2 and Simple Minds and I can't decide if that's a good thing. This is a beefy REM. The jangle pop group of just 5 years earlier have matured into something different. Something bigger. Something MTV friendly.
They scored their biggest hits on this record, too. "The One I Love" is the strangest hit song ever, I think. It's barely a song. Three verses that say basically the same thing. Is there a chorus? It's a mean tune as well, too mean to be used as a wedding song. It's pretty hateful, you know? U2's "One" is appreciated the same way. Embraced for a few lines that are meant to be ironic, "One I love" is anything but lovely. It's harrowing. I've always been bothered by it because it is the gateway song for so many fans and it bears no resemblence to the band's best work. That said, I especially dig the music of the song. Mills' bassline is killer and that Buck riff is metal-tastic. (Factoid! Food Network's Alton Brown was the DP on the video for this song!)
The other hit is the 80s anthem, "It's the End of the World (and I feel fine)". The most fun song to sing along with, regardless of if you get the words right or not.
Surrounding those tunes are anti-corporate governing polemics like "Exhuming McCarthy", which is as relevant today as it was then. It could also just be the background music for a james Toback love triangle movie.

There is a strength to Document and a real 3rd sphere awareness. REM is more than just a pop band, they were saying, they get it, they would lead the charge, music CAN change the world!
Did it? I don't know. I know that Document changed REM's fortunes. They would go on to sign one of the biggest contracts in Rock the next year with Warner Brothers and usher in the age of Alternative as mainstream.
The entire record teeters on schizophrenia, hard lefts, rights, upper cuts, ironies abounding and for that reason and the strength of conviction I have to give it extra points. On the other hand, it feels really dated, doesn't it? Maybe it's those gigantic drums, this was the 80s, after all. Special mention to Bill Berry who crushes the skins on this album and is the main reason "Lightnin' Hopkins" works. And "King of Birds" is one of the most beautiful song of theirs up to date, a song that singlehandedly makes you wish that Stipe had this kind of confidence when he was writing those earlier tunes. He's just a giant here. It's lovely.
And that song would be a perfect closer. And then there's the encore, "Oddfellows Local 151". My least favorite on the record but one that keeps the fire motif (the chorus of "The One I Love", the song "Fireplace", other places.). It's fine, I guess, just not up to par with the rest of the record.

Grade A-
ASide: It's the End of the World, The One I Love
BlindSide: Exhuming McCarthy, Disturbance at the Heron House, Welcome to the Occupation, Strange, Lightnin' Hopkins, King of Birds
DownSide: Oddfellows Local 151

Reflecting Pool: REM - Lifes Rich Pageant

R.E.M. - Lifes Rich Pageant - 1986

And then R.E.M. rocked.
In my senior year at NYU my roommate and I decided to paint all over our dorm room. He, being much more talented than I and smarter, created enormous doodles and motifs.
I painted "I believe in coyotes, I believe my throat hurts" around my door.
We were about to embark on Life's Rich Pageant, I guess.

Seemingly to atone for the shite that was their previous record, REM brought it rock producer, Don Gehman, got their Cause celebre on and gave their fans the album we had been waiting for. The anthem for our generation. We almost didn't get it. U2 decided to be the GREATEST ROCK BAND IN THE WORLD. REM decided to be artists. And a great rock band. And, oh, yeah, the voice of an entire generation. Pissed at the way the native americans were treated. Pissed at pollution. Pissed at Reagan. Just pissed. And LRP expressed that. In bloodlettings like "These Days" and "Hyena" and "Just a Touch" they proved they had the chops and they could chop hard. In conscience tracks like "Fall on Me" and "Cuyahoga" they proved they had something to say and mumbling wouldn't cut it anymore. They had the balls to record a cover, "I Am Superman". They even had a sense of humor, "Underneath the Bunker" and "I Believe".
(After an album where the coda theory fell down, simply because Fables just goes on and on, LRP brings back that encore feel, with an actual hit for the band, the cover of "I Am Superman") The more I read about LRP the more I am learning just how political the album is. "Flowers of Guatemala" is about dissidents in that region who disappear. However the combination of obliqueness and mumbling makes the content of the songs more difficult to suss out, so they aren't as important to my listening experience as a whole. It's nice to know that "Hyena" is about government squashing other governments, though.

On Lifes Rich pageant, REM proved that they could do it on a stadium level. That's what's most important about LRP. It jettisoned REM from Leaders of the Alternative Pack to actual stadium rockers. With light shows and courage and anthems. They were OUR heroes. Our Springsteens. Our Zeppelins. Generation X finally had their own idols and could consign those others to "classic rock" radio.

Grade: A+
ASide: Fall on Me, I Am Superman, I Believe, Begin the Begin
BlindSide: These Days, Cuyahoga, I Believe, Hyena, Just a Touch

Reflecting Pool: REM - Fables of the Reconstruction

REM - Fables of the Reconstruction - 1985

The anticipation for Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables or whatever the hell the guys were calling it, was palpable. How could it not be? REM was, by this time, OUR band. We heard them on college radio when we were seniors in high school. We played them on college radio when we were there. This was the validating record, the one that would send them into the stratosphere.
I heard they made a video.
I heard you can understand what Michael Stipe is singing!
I heard it kind of sucks.
Um, what?

Turns out it was all true.
They did make a video for the poppiest, 80s-est riff on a television commercial tagline, "Can't Get There From Here". There were WORDS on the video!
And the whole thing, in comparison to the 2.5 albums that preceded it, kind of sucked.

I couldn't bring myself to listen to it again until I moved to Los Angeles in 87. At the time Document was coming out and I was doing what I'm doing here, I listened to all their albums in a row. Except it wasn't as copious a task. After that listen, I put the CD away and never dusted it off again. Until now.

Fables isn't unlistenable. It's just really different. It's angular, Buck's guitar is almost churlish. And it's dark. Dark dark dark. It's not a pleasant listen at all. Except for the dopey lullaby, nightmare come to life at the Wendell Gee. A song so obnoxious peter Buck refused to play on it, or play it in concert. I don't blame him. It's catchy, but it's not really a song as much as it's a pretentious song. And a lot of what's here harkens back to other songs. Like "Good Advice" which is just a redux of "Camera" and "Green Grow the Rushes" which call to mind "7 Chinese Brothers" but also portends work on future albums.

Fables is a clumsy record. But for it's posturing and aching there are some terrific moments, case in point, the perfectly fine and catchy "Driver 8" and the aforementioned single.

I don't care for Fables of the Reconstruction and I'm happy to wait another 23 years before I have to listen to it again.

Grade: C-
ASide: Can't Get There From Here, Driver 8
BlindSide: Feeling Gravity's Pull, Kohoutek
DownSide: Life and How to Live it, Old Man Kinsey,

Reflecting Pool: REM - Reckoning

"There's a splinter in your eye and it reads 'react'. R. E. A. C. T."



R.E.M. - Reckoning - 1984

Often dismissed as Murmur part 2 (I have no empirical data for this, I just feel that way through conversations...and the fact that this album seems to never get talked about), Reckoning, recorded in less than 3 weeks is a much more urgent and, in many ways, more accessible record than the first. That takes nothing away from either record, but it's obvious that touring for Murmur taught the boys a lot about playing together and writing songs.
In other words, Reckoning is REM's version of a pop record at the time.
I say this because one listen to side one and you will realize that you know and love and miss all these songs. "Harborcoat". "7 Chinese Brothers". "Pretty Persuasion". "So. Central Rain". That's half an album's worth of toe-tapping, air drumming, Indie pop.
Reckoning isn't as mysterious as Murmur. Albeit Stipe is still hiding behind mumbles and shyness. Despite that lack of mystery, the songs are enigmatic anyway but this time, as opposed to last, Mills, Berry & Buck are a tight rock unit supporting melodies and harmonies and lyrics, all of which are indecipherable.
That's sort of brilliant, dontcha think?

There is a blog called "PopSongs". The author spent a couple years listening to every REM song and dissecting them. Michael Stipe even weighed in after a while. It's pretty dense. I will most like quote it here as often as I deem necessary. This is what a better writer than I wrote about Reckoning:
"That’s Reckoning for you — nearly every song on the record in some way deals with the aftermath of an event, and at least half of them are traumatic. It’s an album about mourning your losses, taking stock of changes, owning up to guilt, and, in the end, moving on. In this way, the recurring theme of water in the lyrics is extremely appropriate. Just as with the fire of Document, the floods of Reckoning are destructive, but also purifying. There may be panic and trauma on Reckoning, but it’s ultimately a record about finding maturity after a period of chaos. "

The coda theme is proving correct on Reckoning. Don't Go Back to Rockville feels like the end of the record. Incidentally, http://www.hermenaut.com/a135.shtml is an personal account of that song, and hysterical one at that, by the woman on whom the song is based. "Little America", while easily one of my favorite barnburners of the 80s, comes across as an encore. A sublime one, though.

Pound for Pound, if I had to choose, and it would be an impossible choice, I take Reckoning over Murmur to my desert island. It's less difficult to penetrate and sometimes I just wanna sing along. Even if I have no idea what the fuck I'm saying.

Grade: A+
ASide: Don't Go Back to Rockville, So. Central Rain, Pretty Persuasion, 7 Chinese Brothers
BlindSide: Harborcoat, Time After Time (AnnElise), Second Guessing, Little America

Reflecting Pool: REM - Murmur

R.E.M. - Murmur - 1983

If we agree that the birth of rock and roll was 1955 with Rock Around the Clock, and it's 2011, then the midway point for rock music is 1983.
The year Murmur was released.
What can be said about Murmur that every rock critic hasn't already said? Pitchfork gave it 10/10 here. It's considered one of, if not THE greatest debut albums of all time.
It's hard to argue with all that. I won't.
The album is as mysterious as the kudzu on the cover, the lyrics almost impossible to penetrate and layered over by copious but never overwhelming music.
"Radio Free Europe" is slightly different from the original Hip-O single. Most notably the speed but, more importantly, the Mills basslines. (Listen to whatm he's doing on "Laughing" and you will get what I mean. It's the confidence of a 20 year vet) Listen to this album again with 21st century noise canceling headphones and it will be like hearing a new record. A spectacular, edgy, jangly, moody, brilliant one.
My college roommate was a HUGE fan of this album. He used to talk about how it HAD to be listened to in order, not shuffled, not random, all in one sitting, preferably. I think he's right. There's no central theme, it's not a concept album, but it works better as a whole.
The closest the record gets to the intersecting roads of New Wave are the percussive, almost Antmusic-like back beats on "Moral Kiosk", at once separating the band from that burgeoning divide and connecting them at the same time. What I love about that track is that it abuts right up against "Perfect Circle" a ballad of all things, but one that still employs musical largesse. There's a lot going on in that song. More than just 4 guys in a church. That it closes out side one makes a lot of sense. It does harken to an end and a new beginning.
And what a beginning! "Catapult", which could be on the soundtrack to just about any 80s comedy. "Sitting Still", one of the catchiest tunes the band has ever written, "Shaking Through", "9-9", one astounding classic after another.

Something I have always notices about early REM records is that they seem to end and then re-emerge with a coda. In this case the loping closer of "We Walk" is encored with the scorching "West of the Fields". I think this is a theme that continues, if I recall correctly.

The maturity shown on tracks like "Pilgrimage" and "Laughing" and "9-9" are what one would expect from a band on their third or fourth record. REM hits no skids here. The construction of the songs build and fall, stop and re-ignite, it's a masterwork.
There. I think I just said what everyone else has said. Now, go listen. And, while you do that, if you think, 'hmm, this sounds kind of familiar, this sound isn't THAT unique', bear in mind that this album is the creation of that style. Nothing sounded like this when it came out. After Murmur, music would never be the same.

Grade: A+
ASide: Radio Free Europe, Catapult
BlindSide: Pilgrimage, Laughing, Moral Kiosk, 9-9, Shaking Through

Reflecting Pool: REM - Chronic Town

Since I have been listening to Zevon and I know that Sentimental Hygiene was basically a Hindu Love Gods record with superstar guests and THAT was REM with Zevon as lead writer/singer AND I know that REM has a new album about to come out, I thought this would be a good time (or as good a time as any) to look back on the quartet that brought college rock to the mainstream, created the Alternative scene and were the first band my generation could really call our own.
My college roommate was a HUGE REM fan. Because of him I really started listening. I only stopped when they lost all their irony and became the most pretentious group in music.
But those late night high school evenings, listening to WFMU and hearing, back to back, "I Will Follow" by U2 and "1,000,000" by REM set the stage for my musical future as well as the rest of the world's.



R.E.M. - Chronic Town - 1981

Most of us had heard of REM by 1981. The rumblings in the mags about Radio Free Europe were loud. We wouldn't get to hear that finished product for another year or so. While we waited, there was the Chronic Town EP. Jangle-nervosa is the best way to describe this record. Like many young men it sometimes feels rushed, like they are having such a great time that they can't wait to finish. Doesn't really matter, though, this was a new kind of folk, a new kind of rock. While New Wave was playing with more and more synthetic sounds, the boys from Athens had cut their teeth at live shows and had enlisted the mad genius Mitch Easter to produce and the result is perfect.
Wolves, Lower starts off the record and it's the kind of track that would make a listener anxous to get back to it. Harmonies to die for, Peter Buck's maniacally arpeggiated plucking. It's followed immediately by Gardening at Night, which is The Byrds on speed and acid. There's a healthy spattering of psychedelia in this song as many of us would take REM to task for later. The songs are also very simple proving that it's the alchemy that's just as important as the writing or producing. It had to be Buck, Mills, Berry and Stipe. That's how it works. And we will see that proven later. I would reckon that, while Stipe is a master of imagery and poetry and Buck was redefining what a lead guitar was supposed to do and Mills is a bassist and arranger beyond compare, the real secret weapon of REM was Bill Berry. He's the driving rock force. Like Tre Cool in Green Day, his contribution isn't just to keep time, he's an instrument without which, it would be impossible to focus. He's more than just a connector, though. He's the soul of the music.

Grade: A
ASide: The Whole Thing.

FlickWatch: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World & the current state of comedy.

I've heard nothing but good things about this movie. That it's a real, geUwine comic book come to life.
It is. But that don't make it good.
It's annoying and difficult. I would stack it next to Kick Ass as the hyperbolic comic book movies of the year. Kick Ass, while violent as hell, is a better companion piece to Watchmen (A movie I truly loved, but in a geek that knows it's not as good as he wishes it was kind of way).
Pilgrim is so self aware, so self conscious and so pretentious that it left us with nothing to hold on to.
This could just be generational. I felt as detached from Napoleon Dynamite earlier this decade and I realize that I am in my mid-40s and movies aren't made for me anymore.
Fine. No problem. I'm happy to go into that good night. There is something more at work in Scott Pilgrim, though.
I grew up in a golden age of comedy. Steve Martin, Bill Murray, David Letterman. These were anti-comics working in the world of ironic detachment. Where they are superior to the characters they are playing and, while not embracing of them, certainly not hateful of them either. This is different from irony, which is the standard bearer of comedy. Ironic Detachment is snootier. And probably why I don't care for Conan O'Brien. He traffics in earnest doofusness. And Sandler, Farrell and early Jim Carrey. They don't love their characters. Those characters are just dumb and they aren't smarter than them, winking with us. They are more callous and indifferent.
Pilgrim traffics in what I am calling Ironic Alienation. The characters are so far removed from reality that they border on meta-people. There's no humanity but the actors playing them play them like the characters themselves are smarter than the people playing them. (I'll give you a second, it's a pretty bad sentence) It is the direct opposite of The Jerk. And there's nothing for me to grasp on to as there no place for me to relate. The audience can't fall in love with Pilgrim or Ramona or Knives because they have no semblance of human-ness. They aren't people, they are aliens in human clothing. At least in Kick Ass the characters bled and felt loss. The teeniest amount, perhaps but it was something.
Scott Pilgrim is the uber-meta-outside observer. And everyone who populates the film is as well. It's a good sign that the film was a flop.
Thoughts?

Grade: C