R.E.M. officially broke up five years ago, but in my book the band’s real end came 15 years before that. New Adventures in Hi-Fi, released in September of 1996, was the last R.E.M. album to feature drummer Bill Berry and the last to sound completely like the band I loved.
Subsequent releases had their moments. 1998’s Up, the first post-Berry record, was the high water mark for that era, fueled by the band’s uncertainty about their identity as a trio. Reveal, Accelerate and Collapse Into Now had some high spots but weren’t memorable overall.
Only 2004’s Around the Sun was a complete disaster, one guitarist Peter Buck dismissed as unlistenable, “because it sounds like what it is, a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can’t stand it anymore.”
But New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which turns 20 this year, was a fitting swan song. Just hearing the brash confidence of today’s random iTunes selection, ‘The Wake-Up Bomb,’ brings me right back to that fall, when I was thrilled to devour a brand-new R.E.M. album and blissfully unaware that it would essentially be their last.
I look good and mean
I look good in metallic sick wraparound blackout tease
I scud along the horizon, I drink some sweet tree tea
I get high in my low-ass boot-cut jean
I like being seen
I look good with my drink-eat-no-sleep, take-a-leap longevity
I get high on my attitude, latitude, 1973
I’m in deep
My head’s on fire and high esteem
Carry my dead, bored, been there, done that, anything
Oh, the wake-up bomb
Oh, the wake-up bomb
Oh, the wake-up bomb
Oh, the wake-up bomb
My head’s on fire and high esteem
Get drunk and sing along to Queen
Practice my T-Rex moves and make the scene
Carry my dead, bored, been there, done that, anything
I had to knock a few buildings over
I make an ugly mess
I had to blow a gasket
Drop transmission
I had to decompress
I had to write the great American novel
I had a neutron bomb
I had to teach the world to sing by the age of 21
I wake up (I wake up)
I wake up (I wake up)
I threw up when I saw what I’d done
Oh, the wake-up bomb
Oh, the wake-up bomb
My head’s on fire and high esteem
Get drunk and sing along to Queen
Practice my T-Rex moves and make the scene
Yeah, I’d rather be anywhere doing anything
I’ve had enough, I’ve seen enough, I’ve had it all, I’m giving up
I won the race, I broke the cup, I drank it all, I spit it up
I’ve had enough, I’ve seen enough, I’ve had it all, I’m giving up
I won the race, I broke the cup, I drank it all, I spit it up
Yeah, atomic, Supersonic
What a joke, I’m dumb
See ya, don’t wanna be you
Lunch meat, Pond scum
My head’s on fire in high esteem
Get drunk and sing along to Queen
Practice my T-Rex moves and make the scene
Yeah, I’d rather be anywhere doing anything
Yeah, I’d rather be anywhere doing anything
Yeah, I’d rather be anywhere doing anything
Meet Me In Montauk 
I never really warmed up to this album. For me, the high water mark came years earlier with Automatic for the People.
Now this is a song I can dance to 🙂