Note: this release was originally purchased as a cassette tape, later replaced by a CD (the original issue, not the subsequent reissues in 1993 and 2011).
Last week, I was motoring along many of the same roads in San Antonio that I traveled back in the summer of 1986 and this album came to mind. A quick stop into a used CD store and 4 bucks later I had the soundtrack for the rest of my visit and most of the ride back home.
The fourth studio album from R.E.M., I thought it rocked harder than any of its predecessors; the change to producer Don Gehman done did the boys some good. The group was no longer a "college radio" band - hell, they practically invented that genre - they had become a rock band. Even though it doesn't contain my favorite R.E.M. single (that would be either Radio Free Europe or Can't Get There From Here), it quickly became my favorite R.E.M. album and has never relinquished that honor.
Press of the time:
- Rolling Stone: "the underground ends here."
- High Fidelity: "one of the best albums of the year."
- CashBox: "compelling and infectious"
- Entertainment Weekly (A):"Their most hopeful work."
- Robert Christgau (B+): "no significant departure from the past"
- Musician: "as stubbornly idiosyncratic as ever."
Michael Stipe was improving as a lyricist and vocalist, so there's not as much mumbling mushmouth as in previous releases. (As I type this sentence, the horrid lyrics "I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract" from I Believe are playing, making me reconsider what I've just written.)
Album chart peaks:
- US Billboard 200: #21
- Billboard Pop CD: #11
- CashBox CD: #15
- Rolling Stone: #12
Tracks: let's rank 'em
- Begin The Begin
- Hyena
- Superman
- Just A Touch
- These Days
- Cuyahoga
- The Flowers Of Guatemala
- Fall On Me
- What If We Give It Away
- I Believe
- Underneath the Bunker
- Swan Swan H
Fall On Me has been called "the finest song in the R.E.M. canon" but to me, it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the album. We also get a brief, novelty song in Underneath The Bunker and an awesome cover of Superman, a song originally recorded by the 60's Houston band The Clique. To be honest, I've never heard of The Clique apart from this cover.
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| For more information on the brief life of the CD longbox, go visit The Legend of the Longbox. |
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: see this previous post
Previously revisited for the blog:
Eponymous (1988)
Two band's albums I never bought until much much later were R.E.M. and Pink Floyd because my friend Stephen was the biggest fan of both and lent me all of their stuff, which I dutifully dubbed to cassette.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until late Nineties or early 2000s when he moved away that I realized all I had besides those tapes was a beat-up second hand vinyl copy of Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon and the MFSL gold disc edition of The Wall so I began filling out the collection.
Don't know if I have a favorite R.E.M. album but I have favorite songs and even the 40 track career-spanning 2011 double-disc compilation Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage missed many of my favorite songs by the group.