Nonsense has a welcome ring

November 15, 2017 4:40 PM

On the 25th anniversary of Automatic for the People, R.E.M. has released a remastered album. Remastered in Dolby Atmos by the original producer (Scott Litt) and engineer (Clif Norrell), the reissue has been well received.

In addition to the original tracks, the set includes the recording of Live At The 40 Watt Club 11/19/92, the band's only live show that year, the unreleased Mike's Pop Song, and bonus duet Photograph with Natalie Merchant. The deluxe edition comes with a disc of demos, a Blu-Ray of music videos, and a 60-page book, offering "never-before-seen photos by Anton Corbijn and Melodie McDaniel, plus expanded, new liner notes by Scottish music journalist Tom Doyle."

Pitchfork concludes that, "if Automatic for the People is the ultimate emblem of a distant era when R.E.M. were the biggest, most important rock band in America, it’s an album that—in surveying a fraught political landscape, the fragility of our mental health, and the fate of our planet—still speaks emphatically to our current condition. It’s just that the dark clouds it saw creeping in on the horizon have since erupted into a violent storm."

posted by hexaflexagon (85 comments total)

Shiny Happy People holding canes.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:47 PM on November 15, 2017 [10 favorites]

I remember when Automatic for the People was R.E.M. like, totally selling out, maaaan. I feel old.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:50 PM on November 15, 2017 [27 favorites]

One of the best albums of all time. Thank you for posting this.

Interesting conclusion by Pitchfork. I instinctively reached for this album on 11/9/2016, and listened to Ignoreland ad nauseum.
posted by onecircleaday at 4:51 PM on November 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

I've been buying records steady since 1971. "Automatic for the People" is my favorite album of all time.
posted by davebush at 5:06 PM on November 15, 2017 [8 favorites]

Atmos? Interesting, although I wonder how the producers and engineers handled the dialnorm and dynamic range compression profiles that Dolby insists upon.
posted by infinitewindow at 5:16 PM on November 15, 2017

Our family recently went on a road trip to Quebec City and I decided to make it an old school trip and use only CDs instead of mp3s or streaming for the car ride. I also wanted to spend time with an album in a more intimate/on-repeat kind of way. So I only took 10 albums with me for the entire trip. Automatic for the People was one of those ten. And it was kind of sweet to watch my entire family fall in love with R.E.M. and this album in particular.
posted by Fizz at 5:19 PM on November 15, 2017 [8 favorites]

R.E.M. has a few songs that I like enough to turn up the volume if one comes on the radio, and What's The Frequency Kenneth? is a standard of mine for karaoke, and that's about it. Oh wait, yeah, there's Automatic For The People, which is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING PERFECT. Seriously. Start to finish. I can't even really explain what it is that I love about it. It sits in a class with my two favorite Radiohead albums (Kid A & Amnesiac) and my favorite Beck album (Mutations) and probably a few others I'm forgetting by managing the seemingly impossible feat of having one foot in optimism and the other in melancholy. Magical. Maybe another way of putting it is it's folk music for someone like me who doesn't like folk music.

I.... I'm not actually sure if I have a vinyl copy. Guess I'll go check, and if not I know what I'm purchasing tomorrow.
posted by mannequito at 5:36 PM on November 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

I remember finding the singles off this album (remember those?) bafflingly sentimental. I still have a soft spot for "Man on the Moon," though (asking a dead man, "Are we losing touch?").
posted by praemunire at 5:39 PM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have three older brothers and one older sister. My musical tastes were heavily influenced by them. My oldest brother was into metal, next brother into pink floyd / dave matthew's band / beastie boys, my sister into west coast rap and my 3rd brother was into grunge. I'm still into most of those things.

Super eclectic.

Automatic for the People was the first album I bought that I loved, and that all of them disliked or hated. It represents the first instance of my tastes diverging from my family and will always hold a special place in my heart for that.
posted by Groundhog Week at 5:39 PM on November 15, 2017 [11 favorites]

I remember when Automatic for the People was R.E.M. like, totally selling out, maaaan. I feel old.

When were people not saying that about R.E.M.? Certainly that accusation has been flung around at least since Green, when they were sellouts for signing with Warner; on Out of Time they were sellouts for sounding too commercial; on Automatic for the People they were sellouts for being too popular; on Monster they were sellouts for...well, for still being R.E.M., I guess; and so on.

(Personally, I massively prefer their ‘80s albums to their nineties ones, but that has nothing to do with it.)
posted by Sys Rq at 5:48 PM on November 15, 2017 [11 favorites]

As a fan who saw them tour for Murmur, the pop sensibilities of the albums after Document really did seem like selling out.
There were so many more interesting things going on in music than the direction REM decided to go.
I quite suppose that to fans that came to them later, when they were established as legendary, the melancholy of AFtP was an appealing change of pace. To my ears it just seemed to be a sign that they had lost their edge.
posted by OHenryPacey at 6:01 PM on November 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

I would like to thank radio, tv, movies, documentaries, even my catholic school! for ruining Everybody Hurts for me. It's almost a lazy soundtrack cliche to play it over the slo-mo funeral scene, over the obit piece, DURING MASS. Not the whole thing either, that'd take forever. Just the chorus.

The tragedy is I loved that song, it was my favourite on the album, but from the start it was overplayed and abused and it's still overplayed. It's like Vivaldi over a luxury car commercial. This is why people only know the Spring part of Four Seasons. For that matter, it's like 'Man on the Moon' over any popsci story about the moon. I'm just bored with it.
posted by adept256 at 6:07 PM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

Hey I just noticed on the wikipedia page the genre of AFTP is listed as 'baroque pop'.
posted by adept256 at 6:12 PM on November 15, 2017

Yeah don't get me started on them.
posted by OHenryPacey at 6:14 PM on November 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

Life's Rich Pageant is the best R.E.M. album, but from this album...goddamn: Nightswimming
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:16 PM on November 15, 2017 [40 favorites]

When Stipe laughs after "... and a reading from Dr. Seuss" it's because he did a bunch of takes where he kept saying "Dr. Zeus" and he finally got it right.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:28 PM on November 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

Life's Rich Pageant is the best R.E.M. album

QFT. But there's something for me in each of their albums, even the "bad" ones. I remember this was the first of their albums I got on CD.

My favorite memory of high school was sitting in the chorus room after school and this guy played Nightswimming on the school's rickety old piano. Hmm. I haven't played in a long time, but I do have all the sheet music for AftP and access to the kid's keyboard. I think I have some practicing to do.

(Can you still buy sheet music at record stores? Most of my collection comes from a job at a music store where one of my duties was ordering sheet music, but I got some at record stores, too.)
posted by Ruki at 6:32 PM on November 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

Green is their best album. The stuff before was really good, but Green was a turning point into both art music and pop hits. A rare moment in music.

After Green it all felt very ... trying too hard. IMO.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 6:34 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

there's something for me in each of their albums, even the "bad" ones

right back at ya, QFT.

Me in Honey
Turn You Inside Out
King of Birds
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:45 PM on November 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

I don't know about piano score, but the software I use for guitar tablature has a huge giant colossal community of fan made tabs.

Here's a pdf of Nightswimming that looks legit.

Great song btw :)
posted by adept256 at 6:45 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Automatic For The People is one of my favorite albums, I love REM's early stuff!

And that, kids, is how you make a bunch of 50 year olds shit themselves.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:28 PM on November 15, 2017 [12 favorites]

All their albums are their best album, you heathens.
posted by epj at 7:37 PM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

love the 1981 Tyrone's boot, but you have to admit they got a little too commercial and slick once Chronic Town came out
posted by escabeche at 7:51 PM on November 15, 2017 [17 favorites]

The closing two songs - "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" - are just a gut punch for me. And damn, those string arrangements by John Paul Jones were freaking gorgeous to behold.
posted by Ber at 7:57 PM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

R.E.M is my favorite band. Thank you for this post. I'm really enjoying it
posted by 4ster at 8:16 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also "Nightswimming" has an oboe solo, which puts it in a special category of pop music.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:21 PM on November 15, 2017 [11 favorites]

Atmos? Interesting, although I wonder how the producers and engineers handled the dialnorm and dynamic range compression profiles that Dolby insists upon.

I'd love to hear more about this mixing from a non-technical perspective and what might be involved.
posted by hexaflexagon at 8:52 PM on November 15, 2017

Life's Rich Pageant is the best R.E.M. album

The insurgency began, and we missed it.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:02 PM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

I'm a new adventures in hi fi kinda person myself.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:15 PM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

Spatial audio is the most exciting thing to happen to pop music since stereo -- REM’s original album engineers tell Ars how they harnessed Dolby Atmos to blow us away. (Sam Machkovech for Ars Technica)

Even without a Dolby Atmos system or the $15 license to run Atmos through headphones on Xbox, Playstation or a PC, there is a distinct audio separation in the remaster, it's pretty impressive.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:32 PM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Me in Honey is a treasure, but not in the sense of being a standout song on a bad album. All of the songs on Out of Time are great--just different levels of great. I get that Shiny Happy People doesn't play well in a post-post-irony age where everything is the toilet. But it's still a great, catchy pop song with clean-jangling guitars and hand claps and the incomparable Kate Pearson.

It makes me wonder whether unbridled expressions of joy, increasingly forbidden among the ranks of the woke, might one day find purchase again as a kind of cultural insurgency.
posted by dephlogisticated at 9:34 PM on November 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

It makes me wonder whether unbridled expressions of joy, increasingly forbidden among the ranks of the woke, might one day find purchase again as a kind of cultural insurgency.

Yes I would like one funk revival please and thank you
posted by jason_steakums at 10:08 PM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

When were people not saying that about R.E.M.?

Murmur was my entry point into R.E.M. and I remember peopke on The Source sniffing and telling me they'd sold out since Chronic Town.

Also, two minor blog links - a ranking of all their singles and writing about every REM song.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:10 PM on November 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

I will take the unpopular position that Out of Time is their best album.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:10 PM on November 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

Mastering tech and skill today is no better than it was then, and this was the biggest band in the world and had every opportunity to have it mastered to the highest level at the time, and did so.

To be fair, back in those primitive days they were still not completely sure that everything sounds better if you compress it into a 1dB dynamic range.
posted by flabdablet at 10:34 PM on November 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love this album and I love the production and I don’t think it needs a remaster.
posted by Kwine at 10:38 PM on November 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

God, this album. It’s basically my Junior year of high school. Three memories come to mind:

1. Singing at the top of my lungs with my friends in the car: IGNOOOOOORELAAAAAAND!

2. Making out with my girlfriend with Star Me Kitten playing in the background. Very sexy.

3. Watching the MTV VMAs where they played a kickass up-tempo rocker version o “Drive.” I thought then and still think now that rocker version far surpassed the mellow acoustic version on the album.
posted by zooropa at 10:55 PM on November 15, 2017 [5 favorites]

In 1995, I wanted to study R.E.M.’s lyrics for my Ph.D. in English, but no grad school I applied to was interested. So I had to do Shakespeare as the backup. True story.
posted by josephtate at 11:13 PM on November 15, 2017 [11 favorites]

I listened to Automatic for the People for the first time in years the other day, and damn if it didn’t stir me.

Also, in the wasted years of my unrepentant youth I used to come up with bullshit pop culture theories in conversation. I just thought about as fun, until I realized one day that it was essentially in person trolling. Anyway, the one bullshit theory I almost convinced myself of was that there was a direct correlation between how much Mike Mills sings and how good an R.E.M. album is. It's not true, but in a more elegant world it would be.
posted by Kattullus at 1:16 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

Dear neighbors that I annoyed by playing Nightswimming for a hour straight: sorry, was just preparing for this moment.

The best REM album is Dead Letter Office because it has Walter's Theme / King Of The Road, featuring Mills yelling keys at the rest of the band because they're hammered and can't remember what to play.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:50 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]

The run of albums from Reckoning to New Adventures In Hi-Fi is astonishing in hindsight. “Sold out” is a cop-out criticism that usually means “I wish they’d make another album just like their previous album” and in R.E.M.’s case, even their so-so post-Berry albums always at least attempted to push the band in new directions. During that 9-album run, though, they could pretty much do no wrong (and yes, I know many snobs don’t like “Shiny Happy People” but there’s a reason that is the song that got them onto Sesame Street - it’s damned catchy and fun which the Pitchfork types don’t realize is an important factor in good rock and roll). Automatic For The People was an amazing album especially in that it was wildly successful at a time when the media and music fans and the music industry were all obsessed with grunge. I don’t know if I have a “favorite” R.E.M. album but iTunes play counts says AftP is in my top 25 most-listened-to albums since I started using iTunes which covers about 15 years’ worth of listening.
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:15 AM on November 16, 2017 [9 favorites]

Selling out is great. That's how you get money. When the Flaming Lips got on "Dawson's Creek" or whatever it was, I was happy for them.
posted by thelonius at 3:36 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Shiny Happy People”

I heard this again in the co-op grocery last week. It's hideous, and immunizing yourself against people who perceive that by calling them "snobs" won't save you.
posted by thelonius at 3:41 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Automatic for the People" is Dexter Weaver's greeting to his customers when they come into his Athens GA restaurant.
posted by brujita at 4:01 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

REM (and the Tragically Hip) were basically the ambient background soundtrack to my undergrad years, and this album in particular I will always associate with the campus pub and copy centre, both of which seemingly had it on permanent repeat.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:25 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

This was the first CD I bought for myself with my own pocket money, partly as a negotiating tactic to get a stereo for my bedroom. ("I obviously need a CD player so I can play my one CD.")
posted by easternblot at 4:42 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

I was in college when it came out. My friend Patrick swore “Drive” would be forever known as”the anthem of our generation.” We thought he was full of it. I did really dig “Sweetness Follows,” and built a great mixtape around it later with U2’s “The Sweetest Thing,” Lauryn Hill’s “The Sweetest Thing I’ve Known,” “Sweetness and Light” by Lush, “Just Like Honey” by the Jesus and Mary Chain, and I don’t remember what else. Surely something from Cocteau Twins. But yeah, this was the last R.E.M. album I bought.
posted by rikschell at 4:45 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Automatic for the People" is Dexter Weaver's greeting to his customers when they come into his Athens GA restaurant.

I made a point of having lunch there when I spent a week in Athens and still have the Weaver D's business card inside my AFTP CD.
posted by davebush at 4:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

'Star Me Kitten' is the song I play when I have to bury a beloved cat. 'Sweetness Follows' makes me cry more with every year that goes past. I love this album.
posted by h00py at 5:08 AM on November 16, 2017

This is my favorite album, even though it is the soundtrack to many, many bad decisions I made in my life. "Nightswimming" will always remind me of how I felt at 15 (and very often since then), hopeful and awkward and lonely and somehow nostalgic.
posted by minsies at 5:28 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

I will try not to breathe... heavily while ordering this.
posted by tommasz at 5:30 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

and yes, I know many snobs don’t like “Shiny Happy People” but there’s a reason that is the song that got them onto Sesame Street - it’s damned catchy and fun which the Pitchfork types don’t realize is an important factor in good rock and roll

"Shiny Happy People" could legit fit on Pet Sounds with very few arrangement changes and then a good chunk of its detractors would be all over it!
posted by jason_steakums at 6:34 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

I have the worst opinions and I acknowledge them as the worst, but my favorite R.E.M. record was Monster until Up came out.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 6:36 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

The first piece of music I ever purchased for myself with my own money was the cassingle (yep) of Warren G and Nate Dogg's "Regulators".

The second was the cassette of Automatic for the People. It caught my eye because it was green (!!) which was different and I had vaguely heard of REM from my father.

I wore that fucker out. Just an incredibly impactful, beautiful, wonderful piece of art. I can't wait to spend more time with it.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:39 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

I will probably never have the cash to make the investment in the hardware necessary to hear the Atmos mix, but I do have a pretty good computer/receiver/speakers, and a 24 bit DVD/A of Automatic. High resolution is amazing with music like this; there is so much detail in it that even CD quality misses a lot of it, and mp3 hasn't got a chance of doing it justice. All the detail gets thrown together and gets lost as a result. The system described in the article has extra channels for some of the detail, and the music was remixed to take advantage of that. But a quiet house, good clean source material, and good speakers come pretty close. The neighbors are gone and it's a dark rainy morning here, so I'm cranking it up!
posted by cybrcamper at 6:42 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

REM is a band whose music I admire more than I like and I could listen to Automatic for the People every day of my life. Actually why don't I listen to Automatic for the People every day of my life
posted by Automocar at 6:46 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Here's an interview with Stipe about the reissue. I've been going through an R.E.M.aissance lately, so this reissue was perfectly timed.
posted by cottoncandybeard at 6:51 AM on November 16, 2017

"Shiny Happy People" could legit fit on Pet Sounds with very few arrangement changes and then a good chunk of its detractors would be all over it!

Shiny Happy People is one of the better songs song on Out of Time, compared to gems like Low and Radio Song and I think there is even a boring instrumental. In my opinion, Out of Time is the last album where REM wrote in multiple different BPMs and afterwards everything slowed way down. It sort of worked on Automatic for the People, but everything afterwards works as individual songs but a whole album is like watching sap drip down a tree. They weren't the only ones either. I think grunge was the cause but it could have been just getting older.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:09 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

(Can you still buy sheet music at record stores? Most of my collection comes from a job at a music store where one of my duties was ordering sheet music, but I got some at record stores, too.)

What are record stores?
posted by layceepee at 7:13 AM on November 16, 2017

It sort of worked on Automatic for the People, but everything afterwards works as individual songs but a whole album is like watching sap drip down a tree. They weren't the only ones either. I think grunge was the cause but it could have been just getting older.

There was a bit in a recent episode of Joseph Fink's I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast where John Darnielle talked about how for a lot of artists when you're still insecure and feeling like you have to prove yourself as a musician you always play faster and harder, and then when you get confident you feel more comfortable letting albums slow down. And I've totally seen that dynamic play out with tons of artists! Probably the case for REM too, it was only after they got huge and had nothing left to prove that they started slowing down.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:19 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

The insights from the arstechnica article make sense—more speakers spatially separated means less frequency carving.

Making stereo mixes that sound “full” is both a black art and basically a solved problem for that art’s practitioners as long as they have access to costly equipment. Instruments in the mix with frequency bands that match have various complementary sub-bands lowered so that they still sound good but don’t overpower the mix. It sounds like a process that can be automated, but it really isn’t, at least not yet.

Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails released amazing stereo mixes with those techniques, but they also optimized their instrumentation and recording for stereo. When Super Audio CD arrived with 5.1 lossless compression, DM’s and NIN’s surround-remixed tracks either sound empty or have unfamiliar elements placed in the mix where they were not before, in a way that is utterly unlike the full original recording that the arstechnica article described.

One more thing: Dolby Atmos piggybacks on a Dolby TrueHD 8-channel lossless stream, which for Blu-ray players is optional, and required to itself piggyback on a bog-standard lossy AC3 stream of up to 640 kbps. It is possible that someone’s Blu-ray setup with the same disc from the article won’t be nearly as good as the Seattle demo experience, or even the headphone experience. Atmos isn’t at the stage where it can be on every cheap device.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:46 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

One thing I appreciated in the Ars Technica article is that they pointedly avoided a "more is better" mindset in mixing this:

Shortly after agreeing to the project, the duo was invited to a Dolby Theater to hear the Atmos mix of Sgt. Pepper. "I think it had 54 speakers, with 17 on the left, 17 on the right, and more above and around," Litt said. "It was exquisite. At the same time, it's tricky. You know that record so well. Anything that doesn't sound like that record is gonna get in your ear—and not necessarily in a great way. After I heard it, it was fantastic, but I noticed differences between original. It wasn't always just sonic stuff. It was music stuff. Things that had combined to make one sound, now you could hear individually as two sounds. I'm not sure that's always the best thing."

Norrell agreed and offered a basic philosophy at the outset: let's just make the album sound bigger.

posted by jason_steakums at 8:02 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Chrysostom, I will join you on Team Out of Time is the Best. We may not have many regulars at our bar, but our duet singalongs shall be epic.
posted by sldownard at 8:07 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Eeeew. Dolby Atmos. I guess they were just too good for QSound...
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:08 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I started listening to R.E.M. when I was ~12. I'd heard them on a local college station that played "Radio Free Europe" all the time (Hib-Tone single, muthatfuckas! I taped it off the radio!). I was slowly integrating non-top-40 sounds into my secret garden of secular music, and R.E.M. were my kings of rock between 1981 and 1995. But this album was where they started to lose me a bit. I'm still not keen on it. Automatic just drags for me in a way that Out of Time, with its similarly folk-based sounds, doesn't. I like 4 songs from it. The rest to me is "meh". As I've stated here on the Blue previously, I went almost completely off them by New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

I don't know why Fables is my favorite. But that's the one. And it's got "Wendell Gee" on it, which is definitely a precursor to the type of music they'd make more often later, deceptively simple folksiness, decipherable, slightly sad lyrics, and all. So it's not a slower tempo or sad lyrics in and of themselves that I don't like. There's something that I can't put my finger on that feels depressing and a little too melancholy to me in much of their music of the 1990's and later, and I can't get into it.

Although I will say "Star Me Kitten" is damn sexy! There's a bit of awkwardness in the come on (as it were) that is very human, not shiny and polished like in, say, a Beyoncé song, that makes it awesome. That one I do like!
posted by droplet at 8:08 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

So we're doing this? We have to pick a side? Chronic Town for me.
posted by thelonius at 8:10 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

People claiming a given album or song of REM that I liked was a sellout or otherwise inferior are my least favorite people.

There are a lot of those people which is why I almost never discuss REM with anyone.
posted by emjaybee at 8:14 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

People have different musical tastes and I dig that, but "sellout" is not a valid musical or artistic criticism. It infers without evidence a motivation behind the band's artistic choices, and it implies that the artificial ideal to which you hold the artist should matter to anyone but you.
posted by rocket88 at 9:35 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

"sellout" is not a valid musical or artistic criticism. It infers without evidence a motivation behind the band's artistic choices, and it implies that the artificial ideal to which you hold the artist should matter to anyone but you.

Disagree slightly. The evidence is the music. The rest is true though.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:55 AM on November 16, 2017

There are great songs on all of their albums, but if I can indulge myself for a moment, if I were going to make an REM playlist that featured my favorite song from each album (including the Chronic Town EP) it would be:

"Carnival of Sorts" (Chronic Town)
"Perfect Circle" (Murmer)
"Can't Get There From Here" (Fables of the Reconstruction)
"So. Central Rain" (Reckoning)
"Begin the Begin" (Life's Rich Pageant)
"Get Up" (Green)
"It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (Document)
"Losing My Religion" (Out of Time)
"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" (Automatic for the People)
"Crush With Eyeliner" (Monster)
"Leave" (New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
"Lotus" (Up)
"She Just Wants To Be" (Reveal)
"Electron Blue" (Around the Sun)
"Hollow Man" (Accelerate) (though I'd pick the bonus track cover of "Red Head Walking" over this)
"Discoverer" (Collapse Into Now)

If I have to include something from Dead Letter Office, it would be their cover of "Crazy."
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:53 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm a bit disappointed the box set is missing my favorite REM B-side. One of the few times I can picture Michael Stipe smiling when he sings...
posted by AbnerRavenwood at 12:18 PM on November 16, 2017

There are great songs on all of their albums, but if I can indulge myself for a moment, if I were going to make an REM playlist that featured my favorite song from each album (including the Chronic Town EP) it would be:

Oooh, the one CD in my car is an REM mix I made three years ago, so it's time for a new one.

"Wolves, Lower" (Chronic Town)
"Perfect Circle" (Murmer)
"Wendell Gee" (Fables of the Reconstruction)
"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" (Reckoning)
"I Believe" (Life's Rich Pageant)
"You Are the Everything" (Green)
"It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (Document)
"Country Feedback" (Out of Time) *My favorite REM song ever
"Nightswimming" (Automatic for the People)
"Strange Currencies" (Monster)
"Electrolite" (New Adventures in Hi-Fi) *For sentimental reasons
"Walk Unafraid" (Up)
"I'll Take the Rain" (Reveal)
"Leaving New York" (Around the Sun)
"Hollow Man" (Accelerate) *But could also be Living Well is the Best Revenge or Houston
"Blue" (Collapse Into Now)
posted by Ruki at 12:47 PM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

Man we listened the shit out of Green. Kind of a crappy show though.
posted by Sphinx at 1:32 PM on November 16, 2017

Not enough love for Document here - not least its anthem for our times:

THAT'S GREAT IT STARTS WITH AN
EARTH QUAKE BIRDS SNAKES AND AEROPLANES
LENNY BRUCE IS NOT AFRAID
posted by Sebmojo at 2:25 PM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

"So. Central Rain" (Reckoning)

If I could have only one track from Reckoning, I think it'd be "Harborcoat"
posted by thelonius at 2:36 PM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

it implies that the artificial ideal to which you hold the artist should matter to anyone but you.

Pretty much all criticism of art boils down to “I didn’t dig it and I can’t believe anyone else does.” If the critic is especially arrogant there’s an added “people who like this are stupid/have the wrong politics/lowbrow.” “I don’t dig it” is usually the best place to stop.
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:46 PM on November 16, 2017

Ruki, your list is frighteningly close to mine. I'll have to go through and figure mine out later, but Electrolite? Strange Currencies? Nightswimming (as previously mentioned)? I Believe?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. (Especially I Believe. That song is my heart.)
posted by minsies at 4:12 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

Just picked this up at my local record shop. As a bonus I found a used copy of Primus' Sailing the Seas of Cheese. Looks like it's gonna be a blast back to 91/92 at casa mannequito this evening.
posted by mannequito at 4:39 PM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

its sad that they broke up after bill berry quit and never released any more albums, but ultimately i think it was the right decision; they could have really screwed up their legacy
posted by entropicamericana at 5:17 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

When I moved away to college, my parents bought a copy of Green because they missed hearing it so often. But man, if Automatic for the People doesn't have some real significance for me. I was an exchange student in Germany and the MINUTE I made friends they wanted translations of every song on the album, and once we went skinnydipping in the North Sea in the middle of the night and sang Nightswimming and the song still makes me cry.
posted by mynameisluka at 5:49 PM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]

My friend Patrick swore “Drive” would be forever known as”the anthem of our generation.”

It turned out not to be, but dang if "Tick...tock...tick...tock" doesn't carry a lot more weight now than it did 25 years ago.
posted by MrBadExample at 9:16 PM on November 16, 2017

"Ignoreland" could have been written yesterday. Great fucking album.
posted by dbiedny at 7:39 AM on November 17, 2017

Not enough love for Document here - not least its anthem for our times:

The day after the election, It's the End of the World As We Know it came up on shuffle while I was doing my errands. When I heard the Trump reference, I laughed until I cried.

Also: Reckoning is comfort food for my ears.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:46 AM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Based on two listens I'm impressed with this new mix. The music really breathes into new dimensions and I was catching stuff in there I had never noticed before. In particular there's some background percussion in Monty Got A Raw Deal, and extra vocal harmonies in Man On The Moon & Find The River.


I was an exchange student in Germany and the MINUTE I made friends they wanted translations of every song on the album, and once we went skinnydipping in the North Sea in the middle of the night and sang Nightswimming and the song still makes me cry.

When I was an ESL teacher I once used NIghtswimming in a listening exercise. Just a fun fill in the blank type of thing where I printed the lyrics with some of the bigger words removed, and the students had three listens to try and fill them in. The real fun was in the open discussion afterwards. I don't think I ever saw them so engaged, just bursting with questions and interpretations. I remember one particularly funny debate between a Brazilian guy and a Korean guy. The Brazilian was absolutely confident that he must have a girl skinny dipping with him, because duh, why else would you be doing that unless you were about to get some action. But no, over and over the Korean guy would resolutely state that he was alone, and it was completely normal and beautiful to spend some time swimming alone, naked at night.
posted by mannequito at 11:47 AM on November 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

thelonius: "When the Flaming Lips got on "Dawson's Creek" or whatever it was, I was happy for them."

It was Beverly Hills 90210.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:03 PM on November 29, 2017 [1 favorite]