{"id":27392,"date":"2024-04-03T05:30:54","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T09:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=27392"},"modified":"2024-04-03T12:27:36","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T16:27:36","slug":"album-review-r-e-m-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/03\/album-review-r-e-m-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review \u2013 R.E.M. \u2013 Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As I\u2019ve noted previously, while I was a major fan of R.E.M. in the band\u2019s early (I.R.S. era) days, by the CD era, I began to tune out. Again, it was only partly a function of my feeling that the band\u2019s sound no longer lined up with my tastes; I was a late adopter when it came to CDs, and around the time of Monster<\/em>, vinyl was effectively a non-option.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m a latecomer to the band\u2019s post I.R.S. catalog. And to my delight and surprise, I find that there\u2019s much to like. And as it happens, the very last of the group’s albums to find its way to my ears is 1997\u2019s Up<\/i>. I know there\u2019s a brand-new \u201c25th<\/sup> Anniversary Edition.\u201d but this review concerns the vinyl configuration, issued as a 2LP set.<\/p>\n

Wow, \u201cAirportman.\u201d What a strange way to open an album. For a moment I thought I was listening to Kid A<\/i> outtakes. The murky, downtempo vibe bears nearly no resemblance to any of the musical characteristics I\u2019ve come to associate with R.E.M. On top of that, it\u2019s just\u2026 uninteresting<\/i>. The song goes nowhere. It\u2019s an inauspicious way to open an album.<\/p>\n

Equally unexpected is the next track, \u201cLotus.\u201d Stipe\u2019s squawking \u201cHey hey!\u201d that introduces the tune suggests funk or r&b. As the tune unfolds, the arrangement moves toward something that vaguely resembles the group\u2019s sound. And by the sort-of-chorus, the tune has settled into a more conventionally melodic vibe. It\u2019s still miles away from prime R.E.M., but it\u2019s not terrible. On one level, Michael Stipe\u2019s bid to deliver a different sort of vocal is admirable. In practice, though, it\u2019s only moderately successful. Peter Buck\u2019s guitar doesn\u2019t figure largely into the arrangement, but when he inserts a lick, the tune brightens. Exceedingly spare use of horns adds a subtle dash of flavor, but it\u2019s so<\/em> subtle that you probably wouldn\u2019t have missed it if it weren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

Electronic drums and Wurlitzer are joined by strings on the chill-vibe \u201cSuspicion.\u201d The tune isn\u2019t melodically adventurous, but as a mood piece, it works, and well. Stipe\u2019s sleepy vocal suits the song\u2019s character. One keeps wishing that the melody would go somewhere beyond the two-chord vamp that forms its backbone, but in its own modest way, \u201cSuspicion\u201d is nice enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cHope\u201d opens with a skittering, propulsive electronic percussion and synthesizer bed. To my ears, it\u2019s the sound of Stipe singing in a video arcade. Listeners who grew up on \u201cSitting Still\u201d wouldn\u2019t likely even recognize it as Athens\u2019 finest, but Stipe\u2019s vocal is very much like him. Had the song been arranged in a guitars\/bass\/drums style, it could have worked that way as well, but it would be a different song. I can\u2019t help wonder what this tune would have sounded like (and looked like) in concert. I suppose if there\u2019s any live footage of Human League, that might provide a clue. The splashes of acoustic piano are nice, but as with some of the previous tunes, \u201c\u201dHope\u201d doesn\u2019t seem to go much of anywhere. The final 30 seconds of the song are the best.<\/p>\n

The acoustic piano that introduces \u201cAt My Most Beautiful\u201d suggest that we\u2019re finally \u2013 five songs into the record \u2013 in for something special. And the tune delivers. The songwriting values that informed R.E.M.\u2019s best work (in a ballad vein, anyway) are wholly present here. There\u2019s still little in the way of \u201cband\u201d character. This far into the record, I find myself thinking that Up<\/i> could easily have been marketed as a Michael Stipe solo album.<\/p>\n

The snaky, hypnotic \u201cThe Apologist\u201d feels a bit more like the group we knew and loved. Keyboards continue to dominate, but the song at least feels like a logical progression from the music R.E.M. made in the past. The insistent lyrical repetition is effective, and Buck\u2019s distorted lead guitar riffs are quite welcome. In fact, \u201cThe Apologist” is easily the strongest track on the record so far. But that it took until the sixth song to get this good is a troubling development.<\/p>\n

Ah, finally: some guitars. That was my first thought upon hearing \u201cSad Professor.\u201d Some simple, soulful acoustic chording opens the song. E-bow guitar comes in, and then a tasty electric rhythm guitar. The song is melodic, and it keeps hinting that it\u2019s going to take off into something bigger. Yet it never does. There\u2019s a pervasive feeling of \u2013 I guess one might call it \u2013 restraint<\/i> on this and most everything else so far on Up<\/i>. What\u2019s behind that, I do not know.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re in the Air\u201d serves up Mellotron and more canned percussion. Buck\u2019s appealing guitar work is buried in the mix; the tune suggests R.E.M. might have been listening to a lot of Martin Denny. The elements of the song are all lovely, but yet again, the tune feels underdeveloped. Only around the four-minute mark does some simple guitar picking take the song somewhere slightly different. Yet in total, the guitar and keyboard textures add up to something alluring.<\/p>\n

On \u201cWalk Unafraid,\u201d the group makes Up<\/em>‘s most effective use of Peter Buck\u2019s guitar. There\u2019s a simmering, sinister quality to his work here. The tune unfolds into a wide-screen arrangement, and while it still has that persistent holding-back quality, here it works; the tension builds, releasing on the bridges. The tune would have been out of place on earlier R.E.M. albums, but like \u201cThe Apologist,\u201d it delivers something with which fans of the band\u2019s earlier work have at least some chance of connecting.<\/p>\n

The melancholy \u201cWhy Not Smile\u201d offers some intriguing sonic elements, but the unfinished quality persists; it feels like a bunch of worthy elements were marshaled in support of something less than an actual song.<\/p>\n

The most well-known song on Up<\/i>, \u201cDaysleeper\u201d hearkens back to Out of Time<\/i> with its gentle acoustic guitar and accordion. A lilting 3\/4-meter beat draws the listener in. The song is easily the most fully-developed piece on the record (at least so far). For once on this record, it feels like Buck, Stipe and Mike Mills are all fully engaged in making memorable music.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiminished \/ I\u2019m Not Over You\u201d keeps the quality going. It feels like something that might have served as an interlude on earlier records, but it\u2019s quite evocative and hypnotic. The song is (again) reminiscent of the quieter moments on Out of Time<\/i>. The end bit feels tacked on in the manner of the White Album\u2019s \u201cCan You Take Me Back,\u201d but it\u2019s inoffensive.<\/p>\n

With piano treatment that suggests Pink Floyd\u2019s \u201cEchoes,\u201d \u201cParakeet\u201d is a fetching melody. By this point in the album, the listener will have resigned him\/herself to the inevitable: Up<\/i> ain\u2019t gonna rock. An overwhelmingly introspective character \u2013 a kind of gloom, really \u2013 seems to hang over the entire affair. It\u2019s title notwithstanding, the album is a largely downcast, morose-feeling collection of songs. More than once I\u2019ve found myself wanting to shout at the turntable, \u201cC\u2019mon<\/i>, guys!\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas, no. Up<\/i> concludes with \u201cFalls to Climb.\u201d Some clever lyrical turns aside, the song is more melancholia. There\u2019s absolutely nothing on Up<\/i> that\u2019s bad. If created by most any unknown group, the record could be thought of as a fascinating, moody sonic excursion. But from the group that gave us so many great songs, it feels like a disappointment.<\/p>\n

If the objective of R.E.M.\u2019s 11th<\/sup> album was to cast off the group\u2019s reputation as makers of guitar-based, indie-rock classics, well, then mission accomplished. But while early R.E.M. albums successfully straddled introspection and accessibility, on Up<\/i>, the group seems wrapped in a navel-gazing cocoon of its own, isolated from the larger world. It was their first release without drummer Bill Berry, and a listen will leave listeners wondering just how critical Berry must have been to the group\u2019s musical aesthetic.<\/p>\n

Succinct verdict: unmemorable, half-baked, a few mid-to-high points, not a disaster. Happily, R.E.M. would find their way back toward the light on their next release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve noted previously, while I was a major fan of R.E.M. in the band\u2019s early (I.R.S. era) days, by the CD era, I began to tune out. Again, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,65,73],"tags":[1773],"class_list":["post-27392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-r-e-m","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27392"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27401,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27392\/revisions\/27401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}