R.E.M.’s Monster was a true WTF album. Following the mega-success of the warm, elegant pop albums Out of Time (1991) and Automatic For the People (1992), this 1994 release hit fans like a bucket of cold water.
Steeped in grunge and drowning in reverb and feedback, Monster was the loudest and least pretty collection R.E.M. ever recorded. But listening to it 22 years later, it doesn’t seem all that scary.
Yesterday we got our second random Barenaked Ladies song in a week and today we get our second R.E.M. song in two weeks.
In the previous post, I described the band’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi — the last album to feature drummer Bill Berry — as their swan song. Indeed, they were never the same and never as good after that record.
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.
Anybody who took a peek at notable releases from 1992 won’t be surprised to see R.E.M.’s Automatic For the People at the top of my list of that year’s best new music. This is arguably the best album by one of my very favorite bands.
It also framed the summer I met my wife and became the unofficial soundtrack to our budding romance, so it has that going for it.
Meet Me In Montauk 