R.E.M.'s Albums Ranked: #15 - #11

Dissecting the discography of America's greatest rock band

Author, producer, and regular WAIM pod guest Matt Berenson recently published his ranked list of the R.E.M. discography. Much like me, Matt is an R.E.M. fanatic, so I was fascinated by his list.

Of course, it made me consider how my list would stack up. So what the hell? Let’s do it. Here we go.

#15: Around The Sun

This record is incredibly boring. It’s not really a shock this was the era where I lost interest in the band’s new material. The production feels stuck in 2004, and failed to seem fresh even when it was released.

Rapper Q-Tip makes an awkward appearance that is not as goofy as KRS One’s cameo on ‘Radio Song’, but it still feels forced, and harks of an idea better left unfinished. The songs are all workmanlike mid-tempo compositions without anything memorable or engaging to bring the listener back.

14. Reveal

With Up in 1998, R.E.M. proved that they were capable of making an excellent record without original drummer and founding member, Bill Berry. If that album waylaid the fears of longtime fans who worried about Berry’s retirement, Reveal brought those fears back in spades.

Implementing many of the same turn of the 21st century studio techniques that Up incorporated, the band failed to bring the same calibre of songs on the sessions to Up’s follow up. Much like Around The Sun, large swaths of Reveal are uninteresting and seem to plod on for days.

There are highlights like ‘All The Way To Reno (I Wanna Be A Star)’ and ‘Imitation of Life’ but they suffer from studio sounds of the day. Reveal is a record that will always stand as much more of an example of some of the mediocre production techniques of its era than for the quality of its songs.

13. Accelerate

This album rocks. I had largely stopped paying attention to new R.E.M. albums at this point, so I did not appreciate its full merits upon its release. What I heard at the time I first heard it, was a band attempting to get back to the clatter and clang of Monster. This record is good, but it’s no Monster.

The absolute jam on this album is ‘Supernatural Superserious’. It features the patented sound of Peter Buck’s shimmering guitars, the angelic backing vocals of bassist Mike Mills, and a sing along chorus that brings goosebumps upon first listen. It’s pure R.E.M., and it’s glorious.

‘Until The Day Is Done’, with its resplendent 12 string acoustic sounds like a fitting outtake from Automatic For The People. Album opener, ‘Living Well Is The Best Revenge’ is filled with urgent drumming and powerful guitars led by Michael Stipe’s anthemic, snarling lead vocals. The highlights on Accelerate are high, but the consistency of the top half of the band’s records is still missing a bit.

12. Collapse Into Now

The swan song album from R.E.M. was a return to form after a rough run that encompassed the three records listed above. Made after a three year break, and the final record of the band’s catalog, Collapse Into Now has aged better than any post Bill Berry R.E.M. album. It is not the acme of the post-Berry version of the band, but it showcases all of the things that had made them great since their inception.

There is an ambitious variety to the album. The record opens with the powerful, fantastic track ‘Discoverer’. Full rock band mode continues forth with ‘All The Best’ before falling back into the contemplative beauty of ‘Überlin’. ‘Mine Smell Like Honey’ is a very bright spot on a disappointing second half of the album. Still, the album feels like a fuller, more genuine version of R.E.M. than we had been privy to for a decade. It felt good to have them back even if that feeling was short-lived when they announced their break-up after the release of this album.

11. Out Of Time

With the removal or replacement of a couple of songs on this record, it could be in the top five R.E.M. albums. Sadly, side openers ‘Radio Song’ and the unlistenable ‘Shiny Happy People’ are not just clunkers, they detract significantly from the entirety of the album.

Brilliant moments like the massive hit ‘Losing My Religion’, the elegiac ‘Half A World Away’ and the bubbly ‘Near Wild Heaven’ exhibit a band at the peak of its powers. At this moment, R.E.M. were a band firing on all creative cylinders and could seemingly do no wrong. That confidence forged into hubris and led to a massy pastiche of instrumentation ideas and production choices.

The resulting album contains gems listed above and a handful of other very good or great songs. This collection of terrific material cannot make up for the offensive filler of ‘Radio’ and ‘Shiny' and a couple of other unnecessary tunes like the instrumental ‘Endgame’, which is fine but wholly superfluous.

Stay tuned for Part Two coming soon.

Cheers,
Matty C