can r.e.m. reclaim their glory?
We made it a verb.
Oh hey, look, a new and good song, “It Happened Today,” by those old war horses from Athens. Though Joe is our resident R.E.M. sage (if you haven’t, you really ought to read his profoundly great, hyper-informed late-period Icon piece from last year), I find myself strangely rooting for this band to win back some of what made them such an important crew for nearly two decades. Maybe it’s the underdog thing or a late-life reckoning thing–no one wants to believe great bands just burn up without fading away, and yet they always seem to. 2008′s Accelerate wasn’t a bad album, per se, but it was missing something. Between this new one and the recently leaked “Discoverer,” there may be something brewing with Collapse Into Now.
Are you excited by the prospect of a new R.E.M. album?
“Are you excited by the prospect of a new R.E.M. album?”
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i’m depressed about it. the new songs are tuneless and generic.
i loved this band — more than words can express — and now i wish they’d stop.
I wouldn’t count these guys out. I think the last decade was heavy on emotionally bankrupt indie rock from mustached boys from Brooklyn, and REM just might hit the right chord this year. does brilliance really fade? I don’t know. but these guys seem hungry again.
REM died when Bill Berry left. Period.
Not that they mightn’t have gotten into trouble anyway. Half of New Adventures in Hi-Fi was the best record they’d ever made, and the rest was split between the WORST record they’d ever made, and harmless duds. Who knows what would have come next?
What DID come next was album after album without a song in sight. I exaggerate: 3 good songs in 15 years.
I’m not saying this as a Murmur-olator. Through New Adventures, I really did love each new record better than anything that came before. I wanted them to do something new every time — and they did for 13 years, which is miraculous.
If it mattered to anyone, I’d forgive them for everything since, but it really doesn’t. There’s nothing to forgive. Stop counting at 1996, and they’ve done plenty. I will always love them for it. However much money they’ve been paid, it’s not enough.
But as much as I want to be surprised by their new album, I’ll be surprised if I am.
I’m such an REM apologist it’s almost self-parody for me to weigh in here but, needless to say, I’m looking forward to this one as much as I have every goddamn REM record of the last 20 years or so. Sometimes they deliver, sometimes they disappoint, but I always listen.
FWIW: I thought both Reveal and Around the Sun were colossal disasters.
No need to apologize for being an apologist. My disappointment in them could only come from somebody insanely passionate. I literally waited in line to buy their latest singles in the early 80s, which came out at a dizzying rate. (Hence the pleasure of Dead Letter Office.) I saw them many, many times (including with Husker Du opening in 83, and Radiohead opening in 95), and have collected scores of, ahem, collectible recordings. I got to talk to Peter Buck once and thought I was going to wet myself. My wife had to step in and sound intelligible.
They walked across the land as giants. As far as I’m concerned, the most important American band, ever.
More straight than not, but I don’t want to talk to the man who couldn’t fall at least a little in love with Michael Stipe during this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLucca7rt_8
(Mike Mills sang some of the very best songs on Out of Time, and somebody asked him why he didn’t sing lead more often. He said, “Because I’m lucky enough to be in a band with Michael Stipe.”)
That’s why I don’t mind that their records after 96 have been so flat. I’m going to get a lifetime’s worth of joy from everything before then. I can’t think of anybody who has operated at that high a level for so long….but they haven’t for a long, long time. I’m okay with that.