Overall, then, I can't see why any R.E.M. fan wouldn't want to get ahold of this in the worst way. Plus, if you get bored with the relatively relaxed sound of Murmur (though you really shouldn't), you'll definitely want this as a sign that very early R.E.M. really could have some "real" energy. It only gets an 8 because it's just an EP, but that's really the only major problem.

Now, I have to admit something that may surprise many who consider R.E.M. one of the catchiest bands ever; it's probably just a character flaw of mine, but it is only after many many listens over the years that I've been able to start to separate all of the songs here from one another in my mind. Don't get me wrong, I've really liked the sound of the album from the very first time I heard it, and some individual songs definitely stuck with me almost from the beginning (Perfect Circle especially, which is probably the main reason I'm calling it the album's best track), but for whatever reason, I simply could not, for the longest time, remember even vaguely how most of these songs went. Now, to be clear, I'm much more condemning myself for this than the album, but it does kinda help explain why I only really really like this album, instead of worshipping it like many do; I guess I'm just not meant to be 100% compatible with post-punk rock music. Believe you me, I am fully aware that I'd be a lot cooler if my main musical leanings were towards this sort of thing instead of classic rock and British art-rock, and I do sometimes wish my psyche were wired in that way, but it's apparently not meant to be. Ah well.

Now that I've exerted enough effort to be able to have clear thoughts about most of the songs on the album, though, I just have to say "wow." I still have to play Laughing, Sitting Still and 9-9 for a few seconds each if I want to remember at least a bit of how they go, but they rule when they're on; given that I'd probably peg them as the "worst" (ha) tracks on the album, that should give you an idea what I think about the other tracks. I'll probably NEVER get the chorus to Radio Free Europe out of my head, but the verses are just as impressive, in no small part due to the steady, subtle (yet still pounding) power of the drums and the pulsating bass. Pilgramage, even if it had nothing else (which isn't the case) would still stand out thanks to that distant, echoey vocal introduction that ends up as the chorus. Talk About the Passion is ... no, wait, I'm not gonna do the song-by-song thing here, because there's only so many ways to describe incredibly well-done pop-rock songs that are more or less in the same style (even if, individually, they might all deserve it). Actually, that's probably another reason I like Perfect Circle so much - the mystical piano lines and occasional soft guitar noise provide a nice little diversion form the sound of the rest, not to mention that it's really the only true "ballad" on here.

That said, I want to say one other thing about one of the songs on here: We Walk rules. RULES, I tell you; I see this song slagged all over the place, with people saying it's too silly or nursery-rhyme style to belong on this "impressionistic masterpiece," and that just drives me nuts. This has one of the most perfect "cute" melodies I've ever heard, and if anything provides a nice rest and diversion from the "serious" atmosphere of the rest. Maybe people think Stipe's lyrics are too straightforward here or something, but as somebody who, outside of the choruses, knows maybe 20 words from this entire album, I don't really care one way or the other about that.

Overall, then, this is an awesome album, with plenty of treasures I didn't even bother to namecheck (ok, I'll namecheck Catapult, seeing as it's kinda one of the greatest songs R.E.M. ever did) but that are treasures nonetheless. It isn't difficult at all for me to see how this made such a splash back in '83, nor why so many fans of the band treasure this so greatly. One thing I would note, though, is that R.E.M. never again really made an album like this, style-wise or quality-wise, so while I'd recommend it first for somebody looking for the best of the band, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it first for somebody getting into the band overall. That, however, is just picking nits.

Still, albums don't have to be absolutely amazing to be very enjoyable, and Reckoning certainly qualifies for the latter. It certainly helps that the first side is extraordinarily great, a fine collection of pop-rock that falters in my mind only when I make the mistake of trying to hold it to the Murmur standard. Harborcoat is immediately notable for being much louder than anything on the previous album, but this notoriety is quickly swallowed up by the more deserved notoriety of more nice guitar lines and a fabulous chorus of vocals weaving around each other (well what would you call it?). 7 Chinese Bros is built around an absolutely fascinating (even by R.E.M. standards) repeated guitar line, but also has a slight twist in the middle of going into a totally unexpected somber part. My favorite of the lot, So. Central Rain, stands out in my mind most for the emotive "I'm sorry" chorus, but the verse melody is certainly up to snuff as well, so it's not as if this is a pick based around just one or two of the same moment.

The side closes out with Pretty Persuasion, which opens with an AWESOME layering of jangly guitars and eventually winds its way to a great anthemic chorus that includes the line, "Goddamn, pure confusion" (thanks Mike, I've sure been there), and with a gorgeous, slightly downbeat ballad (Time After Time) that could have fit onto Murmur better than anything else here. Unfortunately, the first three tracks of side two kinda grind the album to a halt for me. Second Guessing, despite its nice (relative) blast of energy, doesn't quite rub my sensitive emotional spots the way I like R.E.M. to; the same can be said for the slightly more downbeat Letter Never Sent, and especially for Camera, a ballad that doesn't show any of the catchiness (Yes, I mean it) or idiosyncracy that makes me care about this band at all.

Ah well, at least they follow Camera with a great upbeat (ironic, considering how pessimistic the lyrics are) number, the piano-laden, countryish (Don't Go Back to) Rockville. I guess this fills the "fun, infectious singalong" slot first established by We Walk, and I'm glad it does - I like it when R.E.M. gets singalongy, it makes it easier for Stipe's singing to grab me. I also like it when R.E.M. gets fast, like in the closing Little America, where Stipe sings some vaguely political lyrics that repeatedly climax in him singing what seems like the same note over just a couple of chord changes in the chorus. Amazingly enough, this manages to rule - there's an interesting tension that builds up (to my ears, anyway) as Stipe stays on that note, after all.

Uneven as it may be, Reckoning is still incredibly worthwhile for any decent R.E.M. fan. In fact, I can see where big fans of Chronic Town might like this even more than Murmur, as this is definitely more in the line of that release than of Murmur. Personally, I'm a little disappointed, but only a pinch, so take that as you will.

It says something to me about R.E.M.'s talent, then, that I still quite like this album. It doesn't work very well as a collection of individual songs, but as a forty-minute mood piece, with Stipe mumbling over the jingle-jangle, it's pretty nice. Besides, I don't mean to imply that there aren't individual songs that stand out, because that's just not so. The opening track, Feeling Gravity's Pull, is much darker than anything yet done by the band, thanks both to the discordant guitar lines and to the dreary strings that pop up in the last parts of the songs, and thus makes quite an impression in my mind. Later on, Driver 8 stands out a bit from the rest because it's actually up-tempo, but also has very effective backing vocals from Mills. It's a little annoying that there's really no clear division between the verses and the "chorus," but hey, that's just a flaw you have to learn to live with on this album. Elsewhere, lessee, there's the oft-bashed Old Man Kensey, which I like just fine (stupid lyrics and all), with a menacing bass-line and almost "heavy" feel. I'm also fond of Can't Get There From Here, with Stipe clearly removing all doubts that he's from Georgia in his amusing vocal delivery, and the "ugly" Auctioneer (Another Engine), which has the sudden switch to discordant for the chorus as quite an effective hook (to my ears, anyway).

There's the matter of the other tracks to address, though. The thing is this; it is entirely possible, were I to review this album a week later, that the tracks I haven't mentioned yet would get individual namechecks, and the ones that I already namechecked (except for Feeling Gravity's Pull, of course) would get ignored. Moodwise, almost everything is exactly the same, and it's not as if there's a lot of variety in the arrangements and the individual song styles to compensate. Well, ok, the closing Wendell Gee has a banjo in the background, but that's the exception. This album is exactly what I was talking about in the overall introduction when I talked about the band relying solely on Stipe's vocals and their accompanying emotional power to get to the listener. Fables, for the most part, offers almost nothing else to the listener. I still give it a very good rating because I happen to enjoy that aspect of the album plenty, but I do so with a total understanding of why many R.E.M. fans regard this as sort of a black sheep. The band had to do something different and quickly, or they risked pushing themselves into a niche that wouldn't be appreciated anywhere near as much as they deserved to be.

It certainly doesn't hurt that this album packs one of the best opening 1-2 punches I've come across in a long time. Begin the Begin debuts the new R.E.M. punch in all its glorious splendor, as the underlying rhythm guitar work and the pounding drums are produced in the exact perfect way for the sound the band is trying to achieve. Stipe's lyrics are as loony as ever, and delivered with the same emotional conviction as ever, but even he improves on his technique by (for what seems like the first time) phrasing his lines in perfect conjunction with the punchy rhythm section. And, of course, do not forget that great little guitar line that bridges the adjacent parts of the verse melody; that guitar line may be the best part of the whole song.

Following that is the ultra-anthemic These Days, which would be worth it if only for the great line, "We are young despite the years." This is a particularly great example of taking the "basic" R.E.M. sound and improving it - despite avoiding guitar riffs like the plague, just like in the band's previous albums, the aggressive jingle-jangle guitars manage to rock like almost nothing else in 1986. Who could have guessed such a thing would be possible after Fables?

Up next is Fall on Me, the band's first minor hit and, probably, one of the best pop songs of 1986. I tell you, in addition to the GORGEOUS vocal intertwinings in the chorus, there is just something unbelievably hypnotic about Stipe singing, "Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky" that makes my inner wuss choke up and cry. Much the same can be said on Cuyahoga, which is ostensibly a political environmentalist anthem, but instead strikes me as one of the lovliest nostalgia songs I can imagine. I mean, who doesn't feel happy memories in hearing Stipe sing, "This is where we walked. This is where we swam." and later "This is where we walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang"? That said, I don't want to minimize its power as a political anthem; along with Peter Gabriel's San Jacinto, this makes the best case in song (that I'm aware of) for preserving the lands and past of American Indians.

I'm not as totally in love with the rest of the album as I am with those four songs, but I like most of the songs nonetheless. Hyena is a very nice guitar-rock piece with Stipe singing fascinating political lines like "The only thing to fear is fearlessness. The bigger the weapon the greater the fear," but as tends to happen in R.E.M. songs like this, my favorite part is the piano textures in the background. After the amusing, Spanishy, minute-and-a-half Underneath the Bunker, we have Flowers of Guatemala (a little sleepier than I like from the band, but still pretty), a LOVELY up-tempo number in I Believe (sounds just like something from the good half of Reckoning), and the slightly boring What If We Gave it Away, which is only notable to me for when Stipe sings, "IIIIIIIII tryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ... ." These are all nice, of course, but they sure let down the initial momentum of the album a bit.

Fortunately, just as I'm starting to droop a bit, in comes a great pop-punk cover (or at least I thought it was a cover for the longest time, for reasons that totally escape me) in Just a Touch, with Buck knocking the crap out of his guitar in all the right places, Mills adding the exact perfect amount of piano and organ, and the band just seemingly having the time of its life. Then, as an interesting bit of contrast, we come to the acoustic Swan Swan H, with Stipe singing something that makes no sense but seems lovely and romantic nonetheless.

All in all, then, when you factor all of that in, and add in the AWESOME dorky pop-punk cover of I am Superman (sung by Mills) that closes things out, you have what must be considered one of the best albums of the 1980's. I will probably never like it more than Murmur, but I nonetheless consider this just as essential for any decent 80's rock collection as that brilliant album was. Buy this the instant you see it next time you're in a music store. And to the person who sold the copy that I eventually bought used from Amoeba Music: shame on you for selling this. But thanks!

Seeing as I covered most of the album (the rest is pleasant background but didn't stand out much for better worse to me) in a couple of sentences, there's really no point in making this review much longer. I will say that it's awfully nice to hear that R.E.M., at this stage, have the ability to be so laid back for once while still sounding competent. This release is spotty and lightweight, but it's still something that hardcore R.E.M. fans should be all over. Plus, as mentioned elsewhere, it's the easiest place to find the Chronic Town EP, so take that into consideration when deciding whether to spend $4 on this (and I'm quite sure you'll be able to find this used for that much).

Since this is R.E.M. that we're talking about, it doesn't ultimately surprise me that the band often achieves such accessible power here in spite of approaches to songwriting that, in the hands of another band, might make me kinda fidget. The best example of what I'm talking about comes from the opening track, Finest Worksong. Not only does it latch onto minimalism that even the Ramones would tend to avoid (the main 'riff' is just ONE CHORD hit again and again in rhythmic fashion), it also has the audacity to crawl at a snail's tempo, a combination which should render its power moot. So naturally it's an amazingly anthemic track, one that doesn't quite make it to Begin the Begin level (I miss the crunchy guitar sound) but nonetheless comes very close. And while we're at it, let's talk about the obvious standout, the immortal It's The End of the World ..., which is basically Stipe singing a verse melody with three distinct notes (and ending with him hammering on one), with only a slight chord change before the chorus to add any contrast, before it goes into the chorus that everybody knows. Once again, R.E.M. gives me a song that would probably sound absolutely ridiculous in the hands of anybody else, and sounds incredibly brilliant coming from them. After all, could anybody else sing these lyrics and sound convincing? I'd venture not, its karaoke popularity notwithstanding.

The other major standout of the album has nothing to do with politics, but it's still a nice bit of lyrical finesse. The One I Love managed to fool a whole lot of people into thinking that it was a regular old love song (even managing to become a prom song!), even though it's actually a vicious putdown of the singer's former love. Man, I can just imagine a legion of braindead teenagers slowdancing to this, the guy moving in for a smooch just as Stipe's singing "A simple prop to occupy my time," and the girl being dumb enough to let him at what was, objectively, one of the worst possible moments to do so.

Anyway, the rest of the album kinda blends together moodwise, as R.E.M. albums tend to do, but that's not exactly a bad thing. It just so happens that, well, they had a style, and they knew how to exploit it well. Naturally, some of the songs have strong political tones (Welcome to the Occupation and Disturbance at the Heron House are major highlights to my ears, while Exhuming McCarthey probably would be if it didn't have those silly synths in the chorus), but some just kinda fall back on familiar strengths. The southern hickishness makes an amusing comeback in Lightning Hopkins, the aggressive energy pops up in a cover of Wire's Strange, the darkness comes in with the closing Oddfellows Local 15, etc.

In short, if you're a huge R.E.M. fan, chances are pretty good you're going to just about worship this album. Personally, I get a little tired listening to it after a while, but I still enjoy it plenty, and I can't see why anybody else wouldn't either.

Now, to be fair, the band pleases me quite a bit in that regard on this album, so things aren't a complete disaster. Pop Song '89 may be kinda bubblegummy (yeah yeah, I know, it's supposed to be a parody of bubblegum pop, I'm still not totally convinced), but it also has an extremely intricate guitar riff to its credit, so it gets a definite thumbs-up from me. Likewise, Get Up and the infamous Stand find the band coming up with some nice original melodies, so even if on a certain level they could be found annoying (though frankly, I'm becoming less and less convinced that "annoying" in and of itself is a worthy reason to put down a song or album), they're nonetheless novel and fun, which is enough for me. There's also a few nice softer numbers (You are the Everything is the standout among these, though Hairshirt and The Wrong Child deserve namechecks as well), so there's a decent balance in the soft-"hard" spectrum on the album.

But still, I don't listen to R.E.M. for fun melodies (unless it's something really charming and unexpected like We Walk, of course), I listen to R.E.M. for songs like World Leader Pretend and Orange Crush. The former is the first instance of the band putting lyrics in its liner notes, and they chose a really good time to do so, because these lyrics are impressive. Honestly, it's kinda hard for me to tell exactly why they are impressive; I guess the best way to put it is that they manage to combine both disarming simplicity and a "mature" set of metaphors, and that's always something I like. Plus, the melody is quite nice, albeit a little rambling. Orange Crush, on the other hand, just manages to rock like mad (at least, in an R.E.M. way, of course), as it covers the Agent Orange situation from the Vietnam war, and in the process manages to become one of the most impressive Vietnam-based anti-war anthems I could possibly imagine being made so many years after the end of the conflict. Besides, it doesn't hurt at all the Mike provides outstanding backing vocals that match the angry mood perfectly.

Aside from these two songs, though, it's kinda tough to tell (to my ears, anyway) that this is supposed to be an album by one of the more brilliant groups of the 80's. It's nice and pleasant, but holy cow I just don't feel that satisfied when it's over. If you're looking to build an 80's R.E.M. collection, get this last.

There are a few other significant factors that make this different from previous R.E.M. albums. The first of these is that Stipe decided to abandon his lyrical commentary on the world's political and environmental issues, and to move on to more personal and emotional subjects. The second is that the arrangements are much fuller than on previous albums, regularly making use of strings, horns, mandolins and all that rot; in other words, the band largely decided to leave its previous guitar-rock persona behind. And third, there are significant appearances by guest musicians; both Kate Pierson of the B-52's and the rapper KRS-One make large contributions to some of the songs on here. All of these factors have been mentioned by various fans of the band as to why this album is subpar, but I'm personally thrilled, and am glad that the buying public was good enough to be so too.

Of course, the extreme success of the album might have also had something to do with the big hit, the infamous Losing My Religion. As you likely have read elsewhere, the song actually has *nothing* to do with religion (the title is a Southern expression for losing one's mind), but the band had to know that only a very small number of potential buyers would know that, and as such millions would latch onto it as some sort of anthem of rebelling against their parents' church beliefs and all that. Oh well, ignorance or not, it's an absolutely terrific song, one of the best of the band's career.

Truth be told, though, the rest of the first two-thirds of the album is kinda uneven. One the plus side, I'm a big fan of the opening Radio Song (which has the KRS guest appearance), which combines significant rap elements (even in Stipe's delivery) with a completely lovely (albeit simple) guitar line and a vocal performance filled with emotion in all the right places (I looove how Stipe sings, "I tried to turn it off to say goodbye"). I'm also a big fan of the Mike-sung Near Wild Heaven, which incorporates a slight dose of piano with a kinda countryish, quite poppy melody that has some lovely falsetto backing vocals at times and Mike singing silly, simple lines like "Whenever we hold each other, we hold each other." On the other hand, the mellow, somber Low is a little too, well, low key for my tastes, especially for being the longest track on the album (it's not bad, though). The countryish near-instrumental Endgame is quite pleasant to listen to, but is hardly stunning (though the lone horn sounds nice), and Belong, with its spoken verses (albeit with a nice instrumental track), is hardly going to grab anybody and make an R.E.M. fan out of nothing. In other words, the first seven tracks on here range from just ok to excellent, and while that's certainly nothing to be ashamed of, these tracks don't exactly justify a rating as high as 9(12).

The last four tracks, however, do. Mark Prindle once commented that these were four of the best songs R.E.M. ever did, and while I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about the first couple of times I listened to this album, further listens showed me that he damned well knew what he was talking about here. Half a World Away is the weakest of the quartet, but still a hoot and a half, as it sounds exactly like an average mandolin-driven number from Green, but better (to my ears) for some reason that somewhat escapes me. Texarkana, which follows, is an AWESOME Mike-sung uptempo pop song, highlighted by a massive bassline hook following each iteration of the chorus, but also excellent in the way it mixes guitars and strings, not to mention the incredible (and simple as usual, but I don't care) vocal melody.

For some reason, though, the following Country Feedback stands out most for me among this foursome. It's slow, dirgey and countryish, which I guess could drive some away, but man, when I'm listening, all of this is trumped by the way Stipe sings, "You wear me out, you wear me out." It's not just that line, though; the whole song just hits my ears in a way that it seems like the band (and Stipe in particular) is carrying the weight of all the sadness and burdens of the entire world on its shoulders, and that's something that I can't help but admire and love.

Naturally, the band follows up this incredible, lethargic emotional experience with an incredible up-tempo countryish pop song with Me in Honey, the other song featuring Kate Pierson on backing vocals. The weird thing is, it almost kinda strikes me as the kind of song a generic nu-country pop-with-slide-guitars artist would do, but while the style might not be something I'd love coming from most artists, it definitely works in this context and in the hands of this band. Besides, I can't turn down such a self-effacing line like "It seems a shame you waste your time on me, it seems a lot to waste your time on me."

Put it all together, and you have what is easily one of my favorite R.E.M. albums. It may have helped bring the underground into the mainstream, but what's more important to me is that it does the underground proud by being such a good album. If you're not pretentious and against anything that the mainstream likes just because of that fact, swoop this up next chance.

The opening Drive, for instance, sounds (as mentioned by everybody else) a lot more like late-period Pink Floyd than like anything R.E.M. had done to that point. While I like The Division Bell quite a bit, the only Gilmour-Floyd album at the time of recording this album was A Momentary Lapse of Reason, which isn't exactly the best album in the world to go ripping off. Fortunately, the melody here ends up beating the snot out of the more somber material from that album, and the backing strings play through grungey guitar chords in a way that gives this an edge that that album almost never even approached.

Quite a few other songs also fall into the category of "I never thought I'd hear R.E.M. doing a song like this," and they're kinda mixed. The infamous Everybody Hurts, from my observations, tends to move a lot of people either to cry or to vomit, and while I find the song nice enough to help me avoid the second category, the banality of the lyrics (come on, admit it) is also enough to keep me from the first as well. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, on the other hand, is so hokey that it turns out to entertain the hell out of me (what can I say, I love that fast-sung chorus). Similarly, the only true "rocker" on the album, the great conservative-bash-a-thon Ignoreland, is so early 80's tough (in, as Mark Prindle brilliantly pointed out, a 90125 sorta way), so out-of-place and so addictive that I can't help but just LOVE it.

Standing above all for me, though, is the Andy Kaufman tribute that is Man on the Moon. It's as if, in the midst of the sessions for this album, the band just one day decided that they needed to make the perfect early 90's pop anthem, and actually had the ability to do it. What can I say, I adore the melody, I adore the efficient guitar work in the breaks, I adore the "Hey Baby" done as an Elvis impersonation, I just adore everything about this song. If every song on the album grabbed me as firmly as does this one, then I'd have no problem seeing this as the awesome accomplishment so many others view it as.

Unfortunately, that's not really the case. Try Not to Breathe and Monty Got a Raw Deal are both fine additions to the "generic late 80's-early 90's R.E.M." canon, yes, and the infamous Nightswimming is a good enough piano ballad (though to be honest, it doesn't really accomplish much moodwise and emotionwise that wasn't achieved with Gardening at Night, in my opinion). However, I'm not exactly sold on the idea of R.E.M. doing instrumentals (New Orleans Instrumental No. 1 is pleasant enough when on, but it doesn't really go beyond that), and I'm definitely not sold on Star Me Kitten, which is one of the least interesting things I've ever heard R.E.M. do.

There's a couple of other songs, and they're ok enough, I suppose. In the end, though, they're not enough to significantly drive up this album in my eyes. Actually, truth be told, when looking at this review, I'm not even really sure why it is I'm giving this as high a grade as I am. On the other hand, though, the album is *extremely* easy to listen to (and not completely in a bad way) when you're not listening extremely closely, and there's quite a few excellent songs, and the maturity is completely sincere and effective ... Yeah, it's a really good album. An excellent album, even. Maybe I'd love it more if I had grown up with the band, who knows.

PS: There's a badly needed addendum required here, years after the original review was written. I failed to mention Find the River in the original review, as it never had really jumped out at me. However, it's a major, MAJOR grower, and I now consider it one of the best songs on the album. Plus, when I had to do the mother-son dance at my wedding reception, it was the song I chose for the occasion.

Well, I was wrong. No, it's not one of the worst albums I've ever heard in my life, but it is one of the least enjoyable listening experiences I've had in a good while. As you probably know, after going so mellow in the last two albums, the band (particularly Buck) decided they wanted to "get back to their rock roots" on their next album, which is somewhat odd given that they were never much of a 'rock' band (aside from Begin the Begin and a couple of others; for my money, Ignoreland rocked a zillion times harder than anything on this album). Predictably, Monster showed that the band, at this point, had no idea what was actually required for a band to rock. Like, say, a strong rhythm section, which had once been one of the band's major strengths. This album has virtually none of the mobile, driving power in the rhythm section that was so crucial to making me like Murmur and Pageant as much as I did. No, all of the "rock" aspects come from Buck and Stipe, and they don't really work. Buck is actually more or less the de facto star of the album, but this isn't because he came up with a lot of good riffs. Instead, it's just because he seemingly discovered all the unused knobs and switches on his guitar, and a few pedals lying around, and decided to abuse them into the ground on this album. If you like a lot of grunge posturing surrounded by a lot of chorus in the guitar sound, this is the album for you.

As for Stipe, well ... he decided he wanted to be a punk (see: Bang and Blame, a song that I vaguely remembered from when I was younger but didn't realize was R.E.M. until I heard it here. I wanted to cry, it was such a rotten Losing My Religion ripoff). And a glam rocker (see: Crush with Eyeliner). And a bunch of other things he doesn't do well either. Yes, I know that the falsetto vocals (the whole song!) of Tongue are because Michael is singing as an abused woman, but that doesn't change that he sounds TERRIBLE singing falsetto! I Don't Sleep, I Dream may be reasonably ok in the verses, but when it hits the chorus with that plinky keyboards and Michael singing the title in falsetto, I have to fight to keep myself from skipping the track.

Anyway, I don't want to get into a track-by-track deal with this album, because it simply doesn't deserve it. The opening What's the Frequency, Kenneth has a nice anthemic set of riffage, and Star 69 is interesting because it's so fast and has so many vocals on top of each other. Besides those two, and possibly the enjoyably Kinkish simplicity of Circus Envy, though, I can't say I like any songs on this album. I like parts of some of them, and there's only a few tracks that I actively despise, but that's as far as my praises go. This gets a low 4, and if I weren't such an idiotic stickler about keeping my albums no matter how lame they are, this would get sold for the same $1 that I was able to get it off the internet.

The main reason this album gets a lower grade than any R.E.M. album to this point (barring Monster), though, is not for lack of polish, but for a shortage of songs that I like. Note, though, that I said shortage and not lack (which would be pretty close to the truth on Monster). The song I love the most is also the longest, the seven-minute Leave, which combines a wonderfully somber guitar melody with a nonstop blaring car alarm in the background to wonderful effect, with Stipe throwing in an awesome vocal melody for good measure. The three tracks coming after this are all quite nice as well: Departure is a terrific grungey rocker (miles above most of Monster), Bittersweet Me does a good job of combining the mature sound of Automatic with the aforementioned grunge elements, and Be Mine is a quality song-of-longing with amusing lyrics like "I want to be your Easter Bunny, I want to be your Christmas tree."

So that's 4 songs. A fifth is The Wake-Up Bomb, which does the gritty glam-rock thing much better than any of the Monster attempts (I just love the chord sequence in the chorus, not to mention the well-placed organ), and a sixth is the closing Electrolite, a beautiful piano-based ballad in the Automatic style. And a seventh ... no, wait, my count stopped at six. The rest of the album, to my ears, ranges from unnoticable background noise to stuff that wants to sound modern and "experimental" but falls totally flat. The biggest offender opens the album, unfortunately, in the form of How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us, which sounds to me less like R.E.M. and more like a solo Mick Jagger attempt at sounding like Beck (especially when Stipe is trying to sound quiet and mysterious at the beginning). In other words, totally ridiculous.

Most of the rest more or less falls into the other category. New Test Leper is probably the most promising of all of these, but were I to go back in time and somehow get a piece of the band's creative control, I'd make it a 3-minute song instead of a 5-minute one. Otherwise, I'm just not that interested in stuff like the ugliness of Undertow, or the Patti Smith cameo in E-Bow the Letter, or in an instrumental like Zither that doesn't showcase R.E.M.'s beauty talents well at all, or ... whatever.

Basically, the problem comes down to a usual one for albums made in the CD-age; thinking that just because you *can* put more music on a disc means that you *should*. A version of this album with 10 or so tracks, with some of the lengths cut down a bit (all the songs, boring and not, tend to go on longer than they probably should), would get a much higher grade. As is, I'm disappointed.

And guess what? Despite my initial expectations to find it just kinda decently good (based on a lot of reviews I'd read for it), I love this album. Yes, it gets boring in spots, as most R.E.M. albums tend to at some point or another, and yes, it definitely solidifies R.E.M.'s position of having become creative followers rather than creative leaders (in other words, I can see why some are kinda down on it). But dang it, there are SO MANY songs on here that I like that I end up being able to largely forgive the band for those two flaws. Furthermore, I don't find myself at all bothered by the relatively heavy use of electronica elements on this album; maybe my ears have just gotten used to those things over the years and aren't as immediately bugged by them, but I really never find myself going "grr, I wish they'd do this song more 'naturally'," and that's quite an accomplishment with me. Hence, stuff like the opening Airportman and especially the later Suspicion, which heavily emphasize moody, atmospheric textures (with quiet vocals and low-key guitars), sound friggin' GREAT to my ears; I especially like the way Stipe sings the sultry line, "You're so funny, you're so fine; you're so perfect, you're so mine" in the latter. I can see why longtime fans of the band would be pissed at songs like this, and had I been one of those fans back in '98, I'd probably feel the same way; as is, with Kid A firmly entrenched as my favorite Radiohead album, I dig 'em.

Frankly, though, I don't want to find myself focusing on new stylistic aspects or whatever when I'm assessing this album; I want to focus on the songs, which are great. If there's any significant weakness, it's that the ballads that try to get by on a "traditional" sense of loveliness tend not to jump out at me melodywise, and kinda blend together moodwise. As nice as it is, At My Most Beautiful is still just a nice attempt at aping Pet Sounds soundwise, but one that I cannot easily recall when over. You're in the Air and Diminished (which is novel for having a little ditty called I'm Not Over You tacked onto the end, kinda like the random interludes in the band's first two full-length albums) are moody and enjoyable, but they show the band falling back onto the power of Stipe's voice to save them. Similarly, Why Not Smile never really (to my ears) lives up to the moody first few seconds, as it kinda turns into a relatively normal rambling ballad, albeit one underpinned by a harpsichord and eventually containing some guitar noise to fill it out.

Everything else, though, is very good to great. Yes, this means that I even like the "ugly" rocker Lotus, where old-timey electric piano and occasional discordant guitar lines meet one of the most twisted vocal melodies to hit the mainstream in the late 90's. I hated it at first, of course, but I wouldn't think of it now. As for tracks that I never hated, but liked from the start, exhibit #1 is Hope, which arguably has the greatest lyrics in the entire R.E.M. catalogue. Yeah, the melody sounds like it's been copped from more than a few sources, but when I'm singing along to Stipe's longing to "cross (his) DNA, to cross (his) DNA with something reptile" and other strange turns of phrase, I just cannot care. Few R.E.M. songs leave me feeling happier in their wake, and that matters a lot to me. The Apologist, on the other hand, leaves me feeling more creeped out and guilty than anything in the R.E.M. catalogue, and that's an accomplishment as well. Yes, its main lyrical hook is based off the "I'm sorry" line in So. Central Rain, but it's delivered with so much earnest emotional conviction that the pleas make me like this far more than that great Reckoning track. Besides, the "I'm sorry" pleadings aren't the only attraction here; I'm in particular thinking of treatments like the electric sitar over glum distortion, calling up comparisons to various Velvet Underground moments.

Sad Professor, which follows The Apologist, functions as the album's major downbeat anthem piece, featuring a soaring, distorted chorus of guitars, with Stipe singing lyrics that are only half-discernable yet punch me in the emotional gut. On the flipside, Walk Unafraid functions as the album's major upbeat anthem piece, as it builds into one of the best chorus melodies the band ever conjured up. And ... blast, here I am in formula-writing territory again. I'd better stop, even though there's still a bunch of other songs I like.

In short, Up is almost enough to make me completely forgive the band for Monster. Up shows the band as relevant again, yet without dumbing themselves down in an attempt to pander to a wider audience. If you're looking to get into post-AFTP R.E.M. but are (justifiably) afraid of what you might encounter, this is the place to start.

One difference that really stands out for me between this and Up is that this album actually has a track I can definitely call my favorite. The opener, The Lifting, is arguably one of the best anthemic tracks of the band's career (which says a lot, you know), with a rich set of melodies that all benefit greatly from the various production flourishes. My favorite parts, in order of appearance, are (a) the opening sounds before the singing, (b) the melody to the "you've said the air was singing ..." chunk and (c) the way Michael sings "never, never, never ...," but hey, everything else in the song is great too. It even has a nice, low-key guitar solo in the middle (notable here, as Buck doesn't really get to do that much on this album).

None of the other songs jump out quite so strongly, but they all (except, again, Imitation of Life) have something that I like a lot. I've Been High is about as adult-contemporary as I could possibly imagine R.E.M. getting (at least it was before I heard Around the Sun), especially because of the boring keyboard backing, but doggone it, this melody is waaay more developed and elaborate than 99% of what, I dunno, solo Phil Collins could conjure up. All the Way to Reno would be great if it only had that part where Stipe sings, "You're gonna be a staaaaaaaaaar," but it has lots of other things going for it too (not least of all the high-quality, low-key guitar work). She Just Wants To Be sounds like what a high-quality Hi-fi-style number would sound like if it had adequate production (in other words, it's gorgeous), Saturn Return ends up sounding like a cross of the best aspects of Fables, Time and Up (amazing but true) ... the list goes on.

Like with Up, I don't want to namecheck every track, both because it's hard to come up with innovative ways to say "this is a neat pop song" 10 times, and because I want to leave some surprises for the reader who hasn't yet heard this album. I do just want to say, though, that I'm really shocked that R.E.M. could put out two albums that I'd enjoy this much this late in its career. No, these albums will never live up to Murmur and Pageant in my eyes, but after sitting through Monster and Hi-fi, these albums are just about the best present I could have gotten from the band.

At a glance, Sun is the band continuing down the generic, Adult-Contemporary path they established with Reveal, and as such it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to bash this while praising Reveal, but I really think the situation is more complicated than that. Except for Imitation of Life, every song on Reveal had something that really jumped out at me, that made me want to listen to the song and the album again. Sometimes it was a plain ole quality pop hook, sometimes it was a really nice production flourish, sometimes it was an intriguing mix of styles, and sometimes it was a mood or vibe that really sucked me in. It says something to me that, a few months after writing the review for it, I enjoyed the album just as much as I did when I reviewed it, especially since I was really wondering if I had maybe overreacted to songs that wouldn't actually have any staying power with me (they did, happily enough). On Sun, though, the word of the day is bland; everything is so smoothed over, so devoid of rough edges and so aggravatingly "inoffensive" that it drives me nuts.

I should note, though, that there are a decent number of songs on here that I like quite a bit despite the album's overall sound. Leaving New York is a very lovely ballad, one where the standard minor-key verses/major-key chorus formula works exceedingly well, just the way I would hope a late-period R.E.M. ballad would sound. Final Straw has a noticable low-key anger throughout that pleases me quite a bit, Boy in the Well sounds like it would have made a decent inclusion to AFTP, Aftermath has enough upbeat energy (in a subtle way, like something on Out of Time) to make it a nice contrast to the rest of the album, and the closing title track sounds just like a slightly anthemic album closer should. There's also High Speed Train, which sounds extremely out of place (in a good way); there's actually a bit of abrasion and discomfort that come from listening to this, and that's definitely a nice change of pace.

Unfortunately, this leaves 7 songs, more than half of the album. There are only a couple of really obvious low points (The Outsiders, which tries to milk the Radio Song rap-guest-star formula but fails; The Ascent of Man, which is actually ok until Stipe brings out his "YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH" blarings), but that's not really a compliment. After many a listen, I still cannot remember what happens in these other four songs, the result of everything basically sounding the same. I mean, yes, Up and Reveal each had a pretty samey sound, but there were frequent and noticable changes in mood at least. Meh.

So there's the latest disappointing R.E.M. release as viewed through my eyes and ears. It's actually grown on me a bit lately (I was going to give it a 5(8)), as the songs I mentioned as highlights have really made a decently positive impression on me, but it simply cannot go any higher. Samey is one thing, bland is another.

The psychological effect of listening to the opener, Living Well's the Best Revenge, cannot be understated. I don't demand a guitar-heavy sound from R.E.M. all the time, but when listening to this track, I find myself thinking that this is how the band should have sounded all along for the last two decades. The guitar sound is spectacular, calling up all of the best aspects of Life's Rich Pageant, and Peter pulls out a whole bunch of solid riffs to go with it. Stipe's vocal part doesn't start out having much of a melody, but it has a level of aggression and power that I didn't know he had left in him, and once he actually starts singing something with a discernable melody, the song turns into a stone-cold anthemic classic.

I'm also extremely fond of the title track, a great piece of dark aggression with a good mix of Stipe's straight-forward and engimatic lyrical styles. Call me dumb, but if "I've got to fall in another direction/accelerate" isn't one of the band's strongest and most effective hooks in years, then I just don't get music at all. The rest of the album, then, doesn't have quite the impact of these two tracks, but it's mostly very good. It definitely shows the band falling back into a "generic R.E.M." sound, yet I definitely prefer this kinda of manifestation of that sound than on something like Imitation of Life. Man-Sized Wreath is a rather simplistic number, but it has a strong chorus and effective politcally-oriented lyrics, and I like it a lot. Supernatural Serious and Hollow Man are pretty much the definition of by-numbers R.E.M., but they're catchy without feeling excessively banal, so I won't complain. I also really like the dark, paranoid acoustic ballad Houston, which features lyrics like, "If the storm doesn't kill me the government will/I've gotta get that out of my head" and a melody that can stay in my head as long as it wants.

After the title track, the album simmers down noticably, which makes a higher grade out of the question. Until the Day is Done is another nice dark acoustic number, this time with a strong British folk influence, and Horse to Water is a fun bit of aggressively distorted political jangle rock, but the others don't excite me a lot. The melody to Mr. Richards sounds an awful lot like the one to Hope (from Up), even if the arrangement is totally different, and that bugs me a little bit given how much I love that song. Sing for the Submarine is an okay bit of dark sing-songey typical R.E.M., but it's a little overlong at almost five minutes, and all of the various namedrops of older songs feels awkward. And finally, while the closing I'm Gonna DJ works as a strong live show closer, it sounds more than a little bit dumb on this album.

Still, these tracks don't ruin the overall impression of the album. One major advantage for it is actually short it is; at 11 tracks and 35 minutes, there is none of the feeling of bloat that affected the last few albums. In the end, this isn't one of the very best albums of the band's career, but it's certainly the most pleasant surprise in their catalogue, and the best parts make it essential for any fan.