In the comments to my post on Reveal, 2f's says he's looking forward to my comments on Up.
Up was an album by a band trying to reinvent themselves after losing a key member. It's R.E.M.'s ..And Then There Were Three. Instead of replacing Bill Berry with another drummer and continuing to do what they were doing, R.E.M. embraced the late 90's electronica fad, with more emphasis on keyboards and drum machines, but no matter how hard they try to make it something else, it still sounds like an R.E.M. album.
When I listen to Up, I always wonder why I don't listen to it more, but takes a lot of patience to listen all the way through. One challenge is that it's a really long album, with 14 songs that don't fit on one side of a 110 minute cassette. Another challenge is that there isn't a lot of variation to the sound, and my favorite songs ("Lotus","Daysleeper","Walk Unafraid","At My Most Beautiful") are tracks 2,5,8, and 11, which leaves two tracks in between them. Up is like a really strong EP with about seven filler tracks. It still creeps into my top ten in my final ranking (below), ahead of Monster, Reveal, and Around The Sun, but well below their peak.
Here's my R.E.M. album ranking, as of 3/31/2008. My month of listening elevated the status of Green and Out Of Time and dropped Fables and Reckoning, but the other albums are roughly in chronological order.
1. Murmur
2. Automatic For The People
3. Document
4. Out Of Time
5. Green
6. Fables of the Reconstruction
7. Reckoning
8. Lifes Rich Pageant
9. New Adventures in Hi-Fi
10. Up
11. Monster
12. Reveal
13. Around The Sun
Thirteen albums in 25 years is quite a run, since Bruce Springsteen and U2 have only released eight studio albums since 1983 (if you don't count Rattle & Hum, which I don't). This pace was helped by releasing an album a year from 1983-1988. Album #14 Accelerate comes out tomorrow. It leaked on the internet a couple of weeks ago, and I've only heard three songs. It's supposed to be a return to form (whatever "form" is), and even though a part of me is still skeptical, I'm going to buy the CD tomorrow, my first time purchasing an R.E.M. album on the first day since New Adventures. I'll probably post my first impressions after buying it, but I'm kind of R.E.M.'d out after this month, so it might take me awhile to fully digest Accelerate.
2 comments:
My copy of Accelerate is on order too ("look who bought the myth"). We'll see. I'd probably rank them Murmur, Document, Reckoning, Automatic, Fables, Pageant, OOTime, Up, Monster, NAHFI, Green, Reveal, ATS - although there's a lot of wiggle room in the middle - they're all pretty damned good to my ears. The first two slots and the last two are firm, though. I'm guessing I too might elevate Green w/more listening.
Thanks for that walk down REM-ory Lane, Steve. You made me remember just how crucial this band was to me, and how much great stuff they've done, even during less-inspired moments of their career.
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