R.E.M

New Adventures In Hi-Fi

SONGCRAFT AT ITS' FINEST, INSPIRATION AT ITS' WEAKEST

Review Score:

(6/10)
When this album was first released I played it for weeks. The album appearred to seemlessly blend some of the harder-rocking noisy elements of Monster, the songcraft of Automatic and Out of Time, the experimentation of Green and Document, and the unapologetic rock of Lifes Rich Pageant. It was - and remains - the most diverse set of REM's career - the longest playing collection in their catalog, and featuring their longest song. New Adventures also finally saw REM free themselves from the constraints of making albums that are thematically unified - in fact, the theme of this album seems to be its' very diversity.

Do I listen to it much anymore? Nope. And that's saying a lot - I still listen to a great deal of their back catalog - and remain impressed and still learn things from those albums. On New Adventures, though the songcraft, arrangements, and production are excellent, the x-factor that made REM unique is gone. They are simply a rock band, with Stipe doing his job as a traditional frontman. The lyrics are the least mysterious and most inconsequential in REM's catalog. Is "The Wake-Up Bomb" a better song than "Second Guessing"? On paper, yes. Is "Bittersweet Me" a stronger lyric than "Good Advices"? Ask any music professor and they'll say it's irrefutably so. Is "Electrolyte" more accessible than "Hairshirt"? Undeniably.

But all of those other examples are more compelling than the material here. Stipe's lyrics used to have a vitality, sometimes simply because of their indecipherablilty - either through his performance or his earlier evocative and impressionistic lyrics. In some ways, you could say his earlier style was influenced by his own unique creativity and shyness, here the influences seem to be more from his own celebrity, playing arenas and the lead singer of the Stone Temple Pilots.

Can I see why the band feel it's their best? Yeah, sorta. Do I agree? No. Is this the place to start yr REM collection? Absolutely not.

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