Bring the jangle!
The early stuff with the murky, muddled, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and the magical jangle, that’s the ticket.
Sounds like you saw them on the ‘Green’ tour. 1989?
Stipe has always been painfully shy, and he has said in interviews that people sometimes mistake his shyness for aloofness.
I couldn’t remember the year, but “The One I Love” had just hit, so research shows it must have been 1987.
I’ve seen shy performers who stare at their shoes and don’t talk between songs. Although not my favorite kind of show, it beats being openly antagonistic. But as I said, it’s all subjective and was a long time ago.
Murmer, Chronic Town (yes, it counts), Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life’s Rich Pageant, Dead Letter Office (even this counts), Document, Eponymous and Green = Excellent.
Out of Time and Automatic for the People = Mediocre
Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, Reveal and Around the Sun = Utter crap
To me, it’s a chronilogical degression. Good Bad Ugly.
What happened? Je ne sais pas. Bill Berry left, for one. He was critical to their distinct sound and style. They also changed their format and dynamic—dramatically.
There was a time when I thought that R.E.M. could never make a bad song. Now I wonder if they’ll ever again make a good one. I think it’s over anyway. You lose Berry, you lose the R.E.M. signature. It’s not wholly them anymore.
I wasn’t commenting on their critical reception but from the rabid fans who thought they were so incredibly deep and important to the world at large. I have the same problem with Rush, U2 and Pink Floyd, incredibly pretentious bands that feed on the adulation of 20 somethings and think their importance extends beyond their ability to write and play tunes for mass consumption.
I have nothing against playing tunes for mass consumption, but musicians aren’t going to change the world or improve anyone’s life beyond bringing entertainment, and bands and fans who think of it as more than annoy me to no end. REM is a prime example of that phenomenon.
Chronic Town through Document, please. Definitely include Dead Letter Office (1987), because it’s fantastic.
What a sad, myopic view. You don’t think the money Bono (just to cherry pick an example) has poured into the Chernobyl Children’s Project, the Food Bank of New York, or Ethiopian public health and hygiene programs has “improve[d] anyone’s life beyond bringing entertainment”? That’s a ludicrous proposition on the face of it.
Bono might personally be a douche. I don’t know. But if so, he’s a douche who’s used his money and influence to actually try to improve people’s lives.
Maybe so, but his shyness doesn’t keep him from being eye-rollingly pretentious.
Once *Shiny Happy People *and *Losing My Religion *came out, they were pretty much dead to me. I got a bunch of music from my brother a couple years ago, including the recent REM albums. I don’t listen to them except as they come up randomly on my iPod, so I know I’ve heard some of the newer stuff but don’t know exactly what. Either way, I wasn’t terribly impressed. I think the only “recent” song of theirs I liked was Imitation of Life.
My favorite band, up through Document and some of Green. I have very fond memories of three friends and I crowding into Rich’s car (outside the Physics Building in college; we were physics/engineering majors) to listen to his cassette tape of Lifes Rich Pageant, just released.
The band played a concert in the gym at my small liberal arts college on the Fables of the Reconstruction tour. Awesome.
Loved King of the Road from Dead Letter Office. I bought some of their later albums but never listen to them. Their music always take me back to college.
I was a rabid fan from the first time I heard Murmur. I saw them 7 times over the years. Everything up to and including Green is excellent. By the time Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi came out I was losing interest quickly. Up, Reveal and Around the Sun are so painfully awful I can’t imagine ever listening to them again.
However, I will say Acclerate is the best thing they have done in ages. There are several very good songs on it but I don’t know what it means for the future.
Most bands as they mature are pretty much thrown on the horns of an often unsolvable dilemma-continue to make the same old stuff in the same old style (the Rush Way), or drastically change your sound around every 1-3 albums (the Path of the Crimson King). Do the former, and yeah the fanboys will keep eating it up, but you’ll be creatively bankrupt, sooner or later. Go the latter route, and yeah you might reinvigorate your sound, but more often what I see (err hear) is a band all-too-self-consciously doing everything in their power to not sound like they did 10-20 years ago. They’ll lose those (hopefully unique) qualities which made them appealing in the first place. Maybe they’ll grab the collective ears of a new audience; more often they’ll just break up.
REM pretty much put the jangle pop in their rear-view mirror by Green, but attempted to remain (more or less) wedded to a folksy-ish singer-songwriter kind of sound, with some rocking out here and there (“Orange Crush”, most of Monster). For awhile (IMHO) it worked, but eventually they ran out of any significant creative impetus. But they have lots of company throughout the history of rock.
The only songs of theirs that really registered on my radar at all;
Stand – the earliest song I remember from them… kinda fun, catchy; everybody at the dance would follow along with the silly dance from the video.
The One I Love – probably my favorite song of theirs, I used to accompany a buddy of mine on bass for this one, at a jam night back home.
It’s The End of the World – Fun song, I prefer the Great Big Sea version.
Losing My Religion – In my opinion, this is when they hit it big, and after this, everything else was on the downhill slope.
S^G
I loved R.E.M. from about 1987 on. “The One I Love” blew up and you could hear them on Top 40 radio. I bought an IRS greatest hits album called These People Are Nuts which had “Superman” from Lifes Rich Pageant on it. So I dug into their back catalog in earnest.
I think Eponymous came out in '88 and again, more awesome stuff in the catalog came to light. So as I headed to college (with a new copy of Green in the stereo) I spent my freshman year in Sound Exchange on the Drag getting all of the old stuff - Document, Murmur, Dead Letter Office/Chronic Town, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction…, Lifes Rich Pageant. There just aren’t many bands with such a strong back catalog. All of these albums are classics.
Then of course “Stand” became a radio hit. And then they released Out of Time in '91. They were no longer obscure, they were the biggest band in America. They signed that huge contract with Warner Brothers - I think it was the biggest recording deal in history at the time. The inexorable “Shiny Happy People” became a cult hit, at least.
Automatic for the People was possibly the last completely great R.E.M. album - I certainly like Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi and they’re very good albums, but not completely. I used to cringe when I saw how many used Monster tapes were in Sound Exchange.
Bill Berry left and it all went south. Up is mostly horrible, saved by “At My Most Beautiful.” I have Reveal but oddly, the best track on the album is a direct homage to “Driver 8” - “Imitation of Life.” I agree that the last album was a return to form but I just wish they could get Bill back and do the studio band thing.
I would rank the albums in this order:
- Reckoning
- Murmur
- Green
- Out of Time
- Document
- Chronic Town
- Automatic for the People
- Fables of the Reconstruction
- Lifes Rich Pageant
- Dead Letter Office
- Monster
- Everything else
Keep in mind that 1-9 are amazing albums. Most bands are lucky to make one album in their career of that quality - R.E.M. have nine. So they have permission to suck and still make money as far as I’m concerned.
Very solid case HH- R.E.M. are indeed worthy of respect. Their drift into suckiness - or at least lesser quality - is bound to breed a bit of distaste. You want a reason to explain the drift and many involve selling out or otherwise losing their bearings. But sometimes things just change - Berry was one of those rare signature drummers, who sounded nothing like Keith Moon but was as essential to the band as Moonie to the Who - and their Golden Age is done.
But it was a lot more fun when Stipe was unintelligible.
My favourite of their albums is probably Murmur, second would be New Adventures in Hi Fi. Each album has some gems and some duds. The latest one I think could have had a more varied sonic palette but isn’t bad. I’ve seen them in concert 5 times since 1998. The “Not a show” gig/rehearsal in The Olympia, Dublin was the worst and latest time I’ve seen them.
That’s my theory - once we could understand the words, the musical quality went downhill.
To me, R.E.M. is mostly Document through Automatic for the People plus their pre-Document singles. The more recent stuff is uninteresting to me.