Monster

>>75033321
Wholeheartedly agree famalam. Feels like they got kinda caught up in the whole grunge hype. I would say that although it is definitely the weakest of their first ten excellent albums, it's still better than everything after it except New Adventures.

>>75033321
why would you be missing anything?

thoroughly unremarkable album that marks the start of the worst REM period. why anyone would take the time to listen to it half a dozen times is a mystery to me.

File: scaruffi rem.jpg (11KB, 294x88px) Image search: [Google]

11KB, 294x88px

>>75033321
Most underrated REM album

>>75033444

I'd highly recommend revisisting New Adventures. Almost everything after it can be skipped (with the exception of Accelerate), but NAiHF is one of REM's best. I'd give it a solid 9 out of 10. Compatibly, I'd monster a 6.

>>75033515
Agree, it has so many top tier tracks like Wake Up Bomb, E-Bow the Letter or Leave

>>75033561
This is the best track on the album though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y14495PLiZs

>>75033321
One of my favorite REM albums, and the last one by them that I really enjoy. I dont get the hype for New Adventures in HiFi

This got album terrible reviews when it came out.

I bought it on cassette at the Virgin Megastore in Paris, on the Champs-Élysées, the night before my birthday. I fell asleep in my pokey hotel room with the first side playing on my walkman. As I drifted off, my last thought was that it sounded great.

In hindsight it's half good. I think that it marks the point where a cynicism begins to creep into Stipe's lyrics - Songs like 'I don't sleep...' and 'King of Comedy' have great tunes but they are undermined by the words which are willfully lazy and banal.

The "nice try" line in 'Let Me In' rips off 'Tomorrow Wendy' by Andy Prieboy, which I am sure Stipe would have been familiar with (The song was covered by REM's former label-mates Concrete Blonde). It's a stab at poignancy that comes over as somewhat hollow and calculated.

The song that I feel stand up best, is the coda 'You', which was built to reverberate around stadiums.

This album basically sucks. Kenneth, King of Comedy, Star 69, and I guess Tongue are all decent but on the whole it's as missing in sincerity and good songwriting as the lion's share of Out of Time and AFTP, but without songs like Man on the Moon or Losing My Religion that stand among the best songs from their IRA era. It's just a really formulaic attempt at jumping on the grunge bandwagon but really lethargic and drippy, which is why this really marked the beginning of the end for them I think.

>>75033321
Found a CD of it in every thrift store I've gone to.

>>75033321
Like everyone else, I agree. It's not much. But Tongue is awesome, the drums are perfect, Stipe's voice breaking with the on-track backing singers coming in behind, then the guitar taking over before they cut back to piano-drums. It's gold. But fuck, I kind of like Up too.

>>75033917
>This got album terrible reviews when it came out.
Blender 5/5 stars[19]
Chicago Tribune 3.5/4 stars[20]
Entertainment Weekly B+[21]
Los Angeles Times 4/4 stars[22]
NME 7/10[23]
Q 3/5 stars[24]
Rolling Stone 4.5/5 stars[25]
Select 3/5[26]
The Village Voice A−[27]

i've been getting into REM lately

huge fan of reckoning, life's rich pagent, and document.

what next?

>>75035540
chronic town and murmur, then fables eventually
you probably won't like murmur at first but it clicks like a mf when it does

>>75035539
My sense of things at the time was that, despite the scores, there was an underlying tone of disappointment after the hyperbole that surrounded Automatic. The Q review wasn't great. David Cavanagh (writing in MOJO) wrote words to the effect of 'Underneath the Bunker was better than this). That's pretty harsh.

What's the frequency Kenneth is my fave opener by them

File: 39.jpg (78KB, 600x598px) Image search: [Google]

78KB, 600x598px

>>75035540
This as an overview. Automatic for the People as the canonical album of the major label period, and because it's fucking great

File: christgau1med.jpg (18KB, 400x266px) Image search: [Google]

18KB, 400x266px

Monster [Warner Bros., 1994]

Sick of dummies claiming they can't rock, the old Zepheads deliver the first power-riff album of their highly lyrical career. Peter Buck's sonic palette is rainbow grunge--variegated dirt and distortion as casual rhetoric--and he's so cranked even the slow ones seem born to be loud. As for Mr. Stipe, he's in the band, where he belongs. Message: guitars. Which after years of politics and sensitivity is well-timed. A-

>>75033479
Christ
No way is it better than New adventures

>>75033515
New adventures is one of my few 10/10 albums desu
Fave rem

>>75035590
I get that. Happens all the time that critics are kind of scared of pasting a big act when that act has been legit acclaimed.

>>75035613
He has such a reliably bad ear for rock it's unbelievable. I guess all you had to do to top the Pazz and Jop polls was turn up the distortion and a little tremolo.

>>75035626
NAIHF is just too long though. I mean, too many mid paced rockers, too many songs that stick around for another chorus - even if the chorus is nice it's too much. Honestly you could cut any 4 songs, even cut the four best songs, and it'd be a better album as a result

>>75033917
>This got album terrible reviews when it came out

Christgau notwithstanding, it seems most people thought they'd sold out and abandoned their poetry noodling in favor of trying to capture Alice in Chains fans.

>>75035667
I mean, yeah, metalfags will love Monster but I can see why REM's core fans would have felt sold out.

>>75033479
>Automatic 5/10
Triggered

>>75035718
>but I can see why REM's core fans would have felt sold out.
People who sit in front of a window on a rainy day with a cup of coffee looking all depressed.

>>75035661
>He has such a reliably bad ear for rock it's unbelievable

This guy thought the Velvets and New York Dolls were the heaviest bands of the 70s? Get real.

Monster is my third favourite REM release behind Murmur and Chronic Town

>>75035756
looking depressed and singning rockville in a terrible country singer pastiche

>>75035667
I've read that the recording of Automatic was hard on personal relationships in the band.

I don't think they were jumping on the grunge bandwagon, so much as they were attempting to release some tension by recording a big dumb rock album.

Monster was guaranteed to lose them a lot of the fans and mainstream appeal that they had gained from their previous album. The most logical thing to do would have been to release a set of songs in a similar vein to those on Automatic but that would have killed the band.

>>75035665
Fuck off adhd cunt

>>75033321
I always liked that album but it's not consistently amazing or even near the best of what REM has to offer