What is it about Michael Stipe\u2019s voice, anyway? There\u2019s something almost hypnotic about it, which must at least partially have to do with the hypnotic quality of his lyrics, which generally feature strings of striking images sung passionately, as opposed to anything resembling linear thought. Call it sound painting or sung poetry or whatever you like; the point is that R.E.M. delivers a mood more than they tell a story, again and again; it\u2019s simply what they do. <\/p>\n
I was reminded of the unique qualities of Stipe\u2019s voice and lyrics after picking up this album almost at random after it had been sitting on my shelf for eight years. R.E.M.\u2019s mid-decade \u201cbest of\u201d covering the first 15 years of their association with Warner Brothers is an interesting document of an interesting period in the band\u2019s life, covering both their most commercially successful years (an interesting era in and of itself for a band that\u2019s never really cared about commercial success) and charting them on through the denouement period after drummer Bill Berry\u2019s 1997 retirement, in which they fell to earth commercially and in some sense returned to their roots. Radio lost track of them, their audience shrank once again to a faithful core, and their sound changed (again), as lead vocalist Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bassist\/keyboardist\/harmony vocalist Mike Mills experimented with electronic drums and synthesizers. <\/p>\n
The Best of R.E.M.: In Time 1988-2003<\/i> bridges these disparate eras in a way only this unique band could conceive. It\u2019s one of those collections that attempts to create unity in diversity by scrambling songs completely out of chronological order and leaving out a raft of singles that charted in favor of the tunes the band liked best. The only real concession to conformity is having \u201cMan on the Moon,\u201d perhaps the group\u2019s best-known song, lead off the disc. <\/p>\n
The most fascinating thing about revisiting the older and more familiar songs here is how time has altered my perceptions of them. Yes, the thumping insouciance of \u201cStand,\u201d the melodic earnestness of \u201cLosing My Religion,\u201d the droning propulsiveness of \u201cOrange Crush\u201d and the plaintive directness of \u201cEverybody Hurts\u201d still shine through, but in many case the older songs that once felt daring now feel familiar and safe.\u00a0 It\u2019s the newer stuff that feels out there, edgy.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons I shied away from R.E.M.\u2019s post-Berry musical output is the reality that a lot of times a focus on electronics dulls or dehumanizes a band\u2019s music, and R.E.M.\u2019s music, for all the willful obscurity of Stipe\u2019s lyrics, has always had a vibrant emotional core. What In Time<\/i> taught me is that the guys in R.E.M. are clever enough to incorporate new tones into their sonic palette without losing the heart of their music. For once while listening to a best of collection, I was less interested in the songs I had known and enjoyed for years than in the songs I hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cBad Day\u201d and \u201cAnimal,\u201d the two most recently recorded songs on this disc, are both standouts.\u00a0 \u201cBad Day\u201d was begun in 1986 but remained unfinished until 17 years later; it unsurprisingly has an old-school R.E.M. feel with furiously-paced (and occasionally furious) lyrics that are somewhat coherent in the beginning but dissolve into surrealistic repetition. \u201cAnimal\u201d delivers a pleasantly psychedelic swirl of guitar and electronics before resolving into a punchy rock chorus with slightly spooky background vocals; a reference to the fourth dimension seems perfect in context.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Great Beyond,\u201d a tune they composed for the Man In The Moon<\/i> soundtrack, is an excellent complement to its counterpart, an airy, expansive tune about pushing the envelope until it\u2019s in tatters. \u201cAll The Way To Reno\u201d is a favorite from the group\u2019s electro years, with a dreamy synth wash and bells doing a gentle, steady build to the point where, as the song crescendos in the last minute, it\u2019s not loud and it\u2019s not heavy, but it\u2019s full and strong and the melody picks you up on its shoulders. The more familiar, jangly surrealism of \u201cImitation Of Life,\u201d from 2001\u2019s Reveal<\/i>, shows that the band never lost their desire to rock, they just needed to explore for awhile before circling back around.<\/p>\n
Besides putting me in an R.E.M. frame of mind, one of the best things about this package is guitarist Peter Buck\u2019s pithy liner notes. He offers entertaining anecdotes about the creation of many these songs, notably the multilayered anthem \u201cMan On The Moon\u201d and the simpler yet gorgeous closer \u201cNightswimming.\u201d Still, my favorite\u2014for the way it concisely sums up the essence of R.E.M.\u2014might be his comment on \u201cOrange Crush\u201d: \u201cI must have played this song onstage over three hundred times and I still don\u2019t know what the fuck it\u2019s about.\u201d Exactly; it\u2019s a driving, dynamic song whose lyrics are a string of nonsense. But it sounds<\/i> great.<\/p>\n
Of course, if you\u2019re talking gibberish you really have to mention \u201cThe Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,\u201d a neck-snapping deluge of non sequiturs that Stipe sings with such earnest passion that you can\u2019t help getting swept up. Less oblique is \u201cAt My Most Beautiful,\u201d the group\u2019s Beach Boys homage and a fine example of orchestral pop. Last but not least, their contribution to the soundtrack to the film Vanilla Sky, \u201cAll The Right Friends,\u201d is another oldie rescued from obscurity that arrives fresh from 1979 and full of drive. <\/p>\n
Perhaps the strangest part of reviewing this album for me was the synchronicity involved. I picked it up years ago\u2014probably as a gift, I don\u2019t remember\u2014and simply filed it away, never seriously considering it for review until I grabbed it while preparing for a long car ride recently. I listened to it all the way through\u2014my first lengthy session of R.E.M. in several years\u2014and enjoyed it a lot, only afterwards remembering that Patti Smith is featured on the eerie \u201cE-Bow The Letter,\u201d and is in fact one of Michael Stipe\u2019s musical idols. Patti Smith, the poet-rocker whose wonderful memoir Just Kids<\/i> I was in the middle of reading at the time after another friend (or perhaps the same one?) gave it to me. <\/p>\n
The random poetry of the universe at work? Perhaps. Or perhaps we should just call it the Stipe Effect\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5748],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-42281","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-r-e-m","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42281","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42281"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}