new introductory bit here.

This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.

note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input.

There's no denying R.E.M.'s huge impact on American music, but, as a transplanted Athenian, I've always found it damn hard to write about them and I'm more interested in their own music, so I'll skip right to it.

Following a single release on Hib-Tone, R.E.M. signed to indie IRS for the five-song "Chronic Town" mini-album in 1982, which impressed critics nationwide, and then blew the roofs off houses with the jangly pop masterpiece Murmur, which is probably the best American album of the 80s. Murmur doesn't have a bum note on it, and I change my mind about which song is my favorite every time I listen. (As of April 2001, I'm leaning towards "Laughing.") They proved their moxie with aggressive touring for four years, releasing an annual album for the next several years.

1984's Reckoning certainly suffered from sequel-itis, being a very good record unfairly compared to a stronger predecessor. Fables of the Reconstruction was dismissed by many who missed out on Michael Stipe's strongest lyrics yet, full of deep Southern mystery and references to small, insular communities and local myths. Some of the mixing is muddy, but Pete Buck's guitar chimes beautifully when needed. However, neither these nor 1986's Life's Rich Pageant could break them beyond the level of a cult college act.

Things changed with their fifth studio LP, Document. This was their commercial breakthrough, containing the nasty top ten hit "The One I Love." Like everything else they had done, it was steeped in oblique lyrics, masked by an excellent pop backdrop and wrapped in a sleeve whose art totally flew in the face with every music cliche.

Their IRS contract up just as they were hitting it huge, Warners came calling and finally offered the band what they were more than worth. Many of their more boring hardcore followers, who, not entirely unlike myself, descended on Athens, G.A. like Mecca looking for such lyrical references as the Oddfellows Local 151 behind the Firehouse (...Package store on Broad Street), called them sellouts at that time and turned their attention to the legions of other unsigned Athens acts instead. They missed out on Green, which was, apart from the hopeless-but-wonderful "Stand," another truly original and excellent effort. "World Leader Pretend" and "Hairshirt" are great, and the untitled 11th song is one of the best of their career.

After six albums and two compilations in six years, the band took a couple of years off before returning with Out of Time in 1991, which the local media treated as nothing less than the Second Coming. Time isn't wearing as well. "Losing My Religion" and "Half a World Away" remain triumphant, but most of the rest sounds half-finished. Even "Belong," probably the other real success here, doesn't have quite as much emotion behind it as it should. It's very surprising how weak this one sounds in comparison to the rest of their catalog. "Shiny Happy People" doesn't help, but they were very much back on form with 1992's Automatic for the People, which took its name from Weaver D's frankly overrated restaurant. It contains the triumphant anthem "Everybody Hurts," which could have closed their career on an impossibly high note if they'd let it. Other crucial tracks include the beautifully silly "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite," "Man on the Moon" and the not-at-all political "Ignoreland." It's a really important album, and particularly beloved by English critics.

Two years later, R.E.M. took a massive stumble with the bombastic and noisy Monster, which cost them some of their good press but generated an eternally long tour and a million bootlegs. It also sparked some of the songs on the weird, schizophrenic and compelling New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Quietening the Monster bombast, this features studio recordings teamed with one-take efforts recorded at soundchecks. The result isn't very unified or cohesive, sounding like a bootleg collection of demos and alternate recordings, but each individual song has a lot of warmth and beauty behind it. Key tracks include "The Wake-Up Bomb," "Be Mine" and "Electrolite."

After Hi-Fi, drummer Bill Berry left the band and, now as a trio, they released the weird, slow, downbeat and beautiful Up, which was their best work in some time. "Hope," "At My Most Beautiful," "Walk Unafraid" and "Why Not Smile" are welcome, powerful additions to their catalog, but radio ignored the new singles "Daysleeper" and "Lotus" in favor of playing "Orange Crush" some more. It was soon followed by the single "The Great Beyond" from the film Man on the Moon, which the band scored.

R.E.M. were out of the public eye for most of 2000, but played a few shows in early 2001 in preparation for their twelfth album, Reveal.

R.E.M.: Dead Letter Office (1987, UK #62, US #60, ****)
15 B-sides and demos, all of them "a must." Key points include covers of Pylon's "Crazy" and the Velvet Underground's "There She Goes Again," "Pale Blue Eyes" and a sublime "Femme Fatale." On the other end of the spectrum, there's a drunken stumble through "King of the Road" and the hysterical "Voice of Harold," in which Stipe sings the liner notes from a gospel album. The CD issue also adds, in its entirety, the band's five-song 1982 EP, Chronic Town, which is very good indeed.

R.E.M.: Eponymous (1988, UK #69, US #44, ***)
A chronological compilation of their six years with IRS, this contains three rare remixes and a soundtrack song called "Romance," making this a perfectly acceptable career-to-date retrospective, though it could have used another few songs to fill out the CD running length. The liner notes make great reading.

R.E.M.: R.E.M. in the Attic: Alternative Recordings 1985-1989 (1997, ***)
Part of EMI's "essential" series of compilations, this is a limited edition look-in to 15 rare, live or unavailable songs or different mixes. Only two are available on another LP -- Dead Letter Office -- making this great value for money.