Monthly Archives: June 2010

by

Josh Rouse – El Turista

It’s fascinating to watch artists follow their muse to unexpected places.

Earlier this year, Rufus Wainwright released a collection of mournful chamber pieces featuring just his piano and vocals. And now we have masterful pop songwriter Josh Rouse, born and raised in the Midwest, putting out a new album sung half in Spanish.

I mention these two albums together because both artists have proved themselves eminently capable of smart, crowd-friendly pop music but neither appears all that interested in selling CDs. They’d rather stretch their musical muscles into new and unexpected directions — an opera here, a bossa nova there — and trust their loyal fans to follow.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #684: ‘I Don’t Sleep, I Dream’ – R.E.M.

Automatic For the People was one of the hardest of hard acts to follow, so when R.E.M. released Monster two years later, in 1994, they went in a completely different direction.

Here was the “hard” album they’d been talking about recording for years, and then some. The acoustic flavors of Out of Time and Automatic For the People were replaced by distorted, grungy guitars and processed vocals.

Because of the marked contrast from its classic predecessor, it’s tempting to look at Monster as a let-down for the band — in fact, I was prepared to describe it as one of their more underrated albums — but the truth is it was a big hit commercially and received very good reviews.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #683: ‘Star Me Kitten’ – R.E.M.

R.E.M. unquestionably reached their commercial peak with Out of Time, but I’d argue that they reached their artistic pinnacle on their following album, 1992’s Automatic For the People.

Though the band initially planned to follow Out of Time with an album of hard rockers, they instead wound up producing a collection of dark, moody songs about death and uncertainty. This is a fine example of a collective artistic muse at work… despite their intentions, the music on Automatic For the People simply found its way out.

‘Ignoreland’ is the one broadly up-tempo song on the album and, not coincidentally, it’s the worst track here. In fact, though I like the song well enough, I’d say it’s pretty much the one thing that keeps this album from being perfect.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #682: ‘Country Feedback’ – R.E.M.

Three years after the success of Green, R.E.M. became superstars with the release of 1991’s Out of Time. Propelled by the runaway success of unlikely single ‘Losing My Religion’ (how many #1 songs feature a lead mandolin?) the album went quadruple platinum in the U.S.

[Note: Sorry, mom, but ‘Losing My Religion’ isn’t my featured song from this album… I’ll post it someday soon just for you.]

Out of Time would prove to be R.E.M.’s pinnacle commercially, if not creatively. The band’s trajectory had been on the rise since their debut and this album helped them punch through the stratosphere. It also marked an interesting turning point for R.E.M.’s sound.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #681: ‘World Leader Pretend’ – R.E.M.

I mentioned last week that Fables of the Reconstruction was my introduction to R.E.M. Well, now we arrive at the first album of theirs to be released after I was a big fan.

1988’s Green was their first release for Warner Bros. Records and became their biggest hit yet. It featured the ubiquitous (and let’s face it, annoying) single ‘Stand’ as well as the hard rocker ‘Orange Crush.’

And while it has its moments, which I’ll get to, I consider Green one of the band’s worst albums.

Continue reading →