R.E.M. had an almost Beatles-like work ethic during most of the \u201880s. Between 1983 and 1988, they released an album a year. It\u2019s hard to imagine that type of output from today\u2019s bands. Even when Radiohead released Amnesiac<\/i> a year after Kid A,<\/i> it was greeted as a quick follow-up. For R.E.M., that type of action was business as usual. <\/p>\n
Fables of the Reconstruction<\/i>, R.E.M.\u2019s third album, was the beginning of the end of R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cearly\u201d stage, which would officially end with Life\u2019s Rich Pageant.<\/i> After that album, R.E.M. moved into \u201cblockbuster\u201d status with five platinum-plus selling albums (The commercial disappointing but underrated as hell New Adventures in Hi-Fi<\/i> helped usher R.E.M. into their current stage, the \u201cwhat the hell are we still doing?\u201d stage). <\/p>\n
Recorded in England, Fables of the Reconstruction<\/i> sounded more cluttered and standoffish from R.E.M.\u2019s earlier releases. The standoffish nature of the album totally matched Michael Stipe\u2019s onstage aloofness, and the organic feel of the album highlighted an obsession with folk and lyrics cryptic enough for a William Faulkner novel. <\/p>\n
Listening to the album for a third and fourth time, I have yet to find a \u201c(Don\u2019t Go Back To) Rockville\u201d or \u201cRadio Free Europe\u201d \u2013type catchy song. Even without a song like this, Peter Buck continued to make riffs that made him one of the more recognizable guitarists in the \u201880s (creating a sound that was simplistic enough to make his style easily recognizable, but quirky enough to have few peers). <\/p>\n
When you look at college rock in the \u201880s, it\u2019s easy to view each band as fulfilling at type of mood. Of course, The Cure was played when you felt like throwing a pity party, The Replacements when you wanted to get drunk, The Pixies when you wanted to get wild. For Fables of the Reconstruction<\/i>, it\u2019s puzzling what mood you would have to be in to listen to it front-to-back. The album sounds like a stream-of-conscious mess. Not even the lead-off track is memorable – yet, despite all this, the album was able to sell an impressive 300,000 copies. The likelihood of an album like Fables<\/i> selling that many copies in today\u2019s musical environment is about as likely as Pearl Jam campaigning for Bill Frist\u2019s 2008 presidential run. <\/p>\n
After two years of nonstop recording and touring, Fables<\/i> shows R.E.M. in a transition period. Tired, weary and still trying to find their sound, too often Fables<\/i> sounds like R.E.M. was thinking aloud. It\u2019s arguably R.E.M.\u2019s weakest album of their \u201cpre-blockbuster\u201d phase. But for fans or people who are curious as to what college rock sounded like in the early ’80s before it was co-opted by everyone from MTV to Miller Genuine Draft, Fables<\/i> is a compelling listen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5748],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-39876","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-r-e-m","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39876"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}