R.E.M.'s Albums Ranked: #10 - #6

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.

Alright friends, the is where the rubber hits the road. In my estimation, the ten best records in the R.E.M. canon are something from very good, to great, to downright perfect. Deciding how to rank them was always going to be a difficult task to be sure, but as I got to the top ten, that reality began to hit a bit harder.

Here we go, again.

#10 Up

Up is the first R.E.M. album without drummer and founding member Bill Berry. Upon hearing the album, Berry is alleged to have said “I leave the band and they go and make their best record yet.”

While I wouldn't go so far as to give it top spot in the canon, it’s a damned fine record for certain.

With the band in full reinvention mode and riding high on their massive success throughout the 90’s, R.E.M. brought in producer Nigel Godrich who had worked on Radiohead’s OK Computer. Channeling much of the same aural experimentation and studio manipulation he’d honed with Radiohead, Godrich brought the band into a new era with a new sound.

Album opener ‘Airportman’ sounds more Kraftwerk than Chronic Town. It is a declarative statement from the new R.E.M. that this is no longer the same band. That bravado might seem forced were the songs on the record not so damned great. Lead single ‘Daysleeper’ manages to channel vintage Stipe while charting new sonic territory. While the track might have fit perfectly alongside the other tracks on New Adventures In Hi-Fi, there is a mechanical uncertainty that weaves perfectly with the new millennia paranoia present throughout the album.

‘Walk Unafraid’ touches on what it might have been like if the boys from Athens had been more into goth. ‘At My Most Beautiful’ is a work of beauty that marries ‘Nightswimming’ and Pet Sounds.

If there’s a knock on the record, it runs a shade long. There are no out and out clunkers on the record, but a couple of filler tracks could have been snipped to make a tighter runtime. Still, it’s a helluva way to redefine your band after losing a core member.

#9 Monster

After the contemplative, acoustic double dip of Out Of Time (1991) and Automatic For The People (1992), Monster came as quite a sonic shock when it hit shelves in the Fall of 1994.

R.E.M. had made the decision not to tour in support of Out of Time and Automatic For The People, and somehow they still managed to become the two biggest selling albums of their career. While it would have been simple to keep that train rolling, the band changed course. Drummer Bill Berry was especially excited to play live with the band again. "If we did another record like Out of Time or Automatic for the People, we'd be sitting on stools all night and swapping acoustic instruments, and that would be kind of boring."

The band began recording live to capture a rawer sound with producer Scott Litt. However, the sessions were hampered by health issues, interpersonal struggles within the band, and the deaths of friends of the band River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain. The haunting ‘Let Me In’ was Michael Stipe’s ode to Cobain. Stipe even acknowledged that the band were on the verge of break-up as the sessions ground to a halt, “We reached the point where none of us could speak to each other, and we were in a small room, and we just said 'Fuck off' and that was it.”

The band emerged from that small room and managed not only to survive, but thrive. Opening track ‘What’s The Frequency, Kenneth’ is one of the truly great R.E.M. tracks and perhaps the band’s most arresting opener on any of their fifteen albums. Peter Buck’s tremolo soaked guitar timed perfectly with Berry’s cracking snare drum ushers forth a tune which finds Stipe transcendent.

With a distortion laden gauze at its every edge, Monster remains an elusive work that also contains some of Stipe’s most brilliant and dense lyrical content; Channeling the paranoia of Dan Rather’s attacker on ‘What’s The Frequency, Kenneth, processing grief on ‘Let Me In’, and creating sleazy, unreliable narrators for tracks like ‘Crush With Eyeliner’ and ‘Circus Envy’.

Buck noted of many of the songs on Monster, “When I read the lyrics I thought, all these guys are totally fucked up. I don't know who they are, because they're not Michael. I would say that this was the only time where he's done characters that are creepy, and I don't know if anyone got that.”

#8 Green

For their major label debut, R.E.M. delivered a more polished and poppy album than their previous five long-players. One need look no further than album opener ‘Pop Song 89’ to find what could easily be a tongue-in-cheek response to the inevitable accusation of “selling out”.

Having fulfilled their five record contract with independent label I.R.S., Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe signed a multi-million dollar deal with Warner Bros. Records. Longtime fans worried that the move to a major label might spell the end of a band they loved.

Caught between the expectations of their new corporate overlords and the cynicism of their veteran fans, R.E.M. responded with a middle finger to both parties. ‘Pop Song 89’ is a fun, energetic track that is silly upon first listen, but taken as a mission statement from the band it stands as the perfect opener for an album harkening a new era. Editor: For further discussion on this issue, please see The Replacements major label releases.

Green represents a wide swath of R.E.M.’s musical avenues and a signpost of their future paths. ‘Orange Crush’ and ‘Turn You Inside Out’ could easily reside on Monster if given different production. ‘Stand’ signals the goofy pop of ‘Shiny Happy People’. ‘You Are The Everything’ could sit perfectly amid Automatic For The People.

The only disappointments are the messy ‘The Wrong Child’ which only hints at the acoustic genius ahead of the band; and ‘Hairshirt’, a tepid, monotonous piece of mandolin fluff.

This album is an archive of a band sussing out its itinerate parts and pieces, but remains so vibrant as its own being. ‘World Leader Pretend’ is Americana perfection while delivering a deft political message. Much of the record and its packaging were focused on the issue of environmentalism as the band became more comfortable with using their fame for political action.

Weaving together country, jangle pop, bubblegum college rock, and folk, R.E.M. showed a new world of fans what they were capable of, and what they had in store for the future. Green made good as well on the terrific catalog of work the band had already built. The album also marks the sixth album delivered within a six year span. Quite the run.

What could have been a sellout, or just the next R.E.M. record instead became a political call to action, and a clarion call for the next ten years of the most famous band from Athens, GA.

#7 New Adventures In Hi-Fi

New Adventures In Hi-Fi is a road movie posing as an album. During the massive tour for Monster, the band began working on new material at soundcheck and rehearsals and recording the results. These sessions led to a stockpile of songs that touched on a variety of aural inspirations. As such, the songs feel spontaneous and alive; even the quieter numbers bustle with an unnameable energy.

For his part, Stipe leans into the road movie angle and plays his best cinematic chameleon. Aside from the obvious nods to Jimmy Dean, Steve McQueen, and Martin Sheen on ‘Electrolite’, R.E.M.’s frontman leads us with the panoramic vision of director John Ford with ‘How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us’. He then proceeds to slink through ‘Wake Up Bomb’ and ‘Pinky The Doormat’, like some southern gothic Peter Lorre come to stalk the neighborhood at night.

‘New Test Leper’ is simply one of the most gorgeous songs in the band’s rich history and bridges a wonderful gap between the harsh skank of ‘Wake Up Bomb’ and the softer, more reflective selections on the record. The brilliant ‘Bittersweet Me’ manages to bridge that gap and hop back and forth over it just for fun. In addition to ‘Electrolite’ and ‘New Test Leper’, acoustic tracks like ‘E-Bow The Letter’, and ‘Zither’ round out a staggeringly diverse and engaging batch of songs.

Much of the diversity on the album is a testament to the musicality and versatility of bassist and backing vocalist, Mike Mills. A classically trained pianist, and the man who Peter Buck has said is the only “musician” in R.E.M., Mills plays piano, organ and provides luscious string arrangements all over New Adventures In Hi-Fi.

‘Be Mine’ is one of my favorite 'R.E.M. songs due to its devastating honesty, and intense vulnerability. It is on an ever-growing list of songs by the band that make this author tear up. New Adventures In Hi-Fi stands tall not just on its sonic acumen but also on the back of some of Stipe’s very best lyrical work, meandering between the performative and the personal.

New Adventures In Hi-Fi would mark the last record with Bill Berry as part of the band. Many critics and fans also see the album as the last great R.E.M. record, as well as the end of an era. Mills has said of the album, “It usually takes a good few years for me to decide where an album stands in the pantheon of recorded work we've done. This one may be third behind Murmur and Automatic for the People.”

#6 Document

The fifth and final album for I.R.S., Document is one helluva goodbye note. While it marked the end of their time with their first label, it also marked the beginning of the band’s relationship with producer Scott Litt, who would produce them for the next decade, the most commercially successful section of their career by far.

Litt and the band built upon the anthemic college rock that proliferated Life’s Rich Pageant, which the band had released the previous July. Document seemed also to be an R.E.M. reconstituting itself in the gothic mystery of the American south. Buck’s arpeggiated chimes wrap around the rhythm section of Mills and Berry. Stipe’s elusive tales dance with an archaic, mythical Southern local imagery.

The bounce and subversive pop of ‘Exhuming McCarthy’, the autumnal haunt of ‘Disturbance At The Heron House’, the unrelenting pop of ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ and the anti-love screed ‘The One I Love’ would be among the greatest songs written by most bands to have ever recorded material. Here, they are simply a portion of an opening set of songs that shouts of a band running at full fucking speed. Were it not for the perfectly good, but unnecessary cover of The Wire’s ‘Strange’, the opening seven tracks would be absolutely perfect.

Document was the record that launched R.E.M. to stardom. While their star had been on the rise with each successive record, MTV began playing the videos for ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ and ‘The One I Love’ with some regularity. The album ushered in the official arrival of the college rock boom to mainstream audiences and cemented R.E.M. as bona fide rock stars.

After the initial septet of ‘hits’, R.E.M. swings back with a challenging end to the album. Murky, minor key dirges like ‘Oddfellows Local 151’ and ‘Fireplace’ read like a more mature version of the songs on the opening half of Fables of The Reconstruction. They're very good songs that suffer only from the context of the first batch of amazing tunes. Only the goofy Lightnin’ Hopkins would have been best left on the cutting room floor.

Document marks a band on the cusp of stardom and on the edge of true greatness.

Cheers,
Matty C