TS: R.E.M.'s "Life's Rich Pageant" vs "Document"

They were a little short of material going into both of these albums, weren't they? Resorting to using two of their old songs on LRP and, as you say, the weakness of side two of Document.

And Life's Rich Pageant has "Just a Touch" on it, which rules (despite the Patti Smith homage), so it wins.

Dude, "King of Birds"!!

The proof: I didn't even have to repeat any of the tracks Alfred namechecked. Plus, is that a triangle on "Cuyahoga"?

Document doesn't suck though. I'll big-up "Disturbance At The Heron House" for badassitude, lyrical silliness, a solo that burns bright and brief, great vocal overdubs, and "Fireplace" for spinning millenial menace from Shaker simplicity.

I'd say minor-key leadfooted elegy. Until "So Fast, So Numb," their worst song.

LRP has my all-time favorite REM track - "Fall On Me." Document has my second favorite - "Welcome To The Occupation."

I viscerally hate two songs on LRP - "Hyena" and "These Days." I also hate two songs on Document - "Fireplace" and "Oddfellows Local 151."

But I like the LRP drum sound more, so LRP wins on a technicality.

there is some mythical construction wherein this album is the breaking point for early fans. but i'm not sure if it's true.

No, because Fables was so damn slow and boring. It was good that they started rocking again.

TS: "Rain On The Scarecrow" vs "I Believe"

All that said, it was Lifes that I listened to over and over this year. Although "King of Birds" is awful compelling.

green is the record that broke the spirit of a lot of "older" fans, but it's actually fantastic and they are crazy.

Mitya, Green is my favorite! (xxxpost, ;)

Also, I will fight for "End of the World as We Know It" any day of the week!

I've always loved 'Disturbance At The Heron House' .. and yes.. Oddfellows - something perverse about it.. The album has held up better than I might have expected.. I only have patience for about 12 REM songs anymore, and two or three of them are from Document, which is a pretty good record.

(xposts .. Fables .. I'll save that for another thread...)

No, no, this is totally OTM. It would be even more OTM if you could swap Monster for Out of Time.

And it's LRP 6-4 + whatever credit attaches to Underneath the Bunker. Very gratified to see so much love here for "Just a Touch" -- the one song I'd really have liked to see them play.

LRP and Document were probably my two favorite R.E.M. records in 1991, but "The One I Love" and "End of the World" haven't aged as well as some of the other hitzzzz (though the great ending of EotW sneaks it past Amanita still.) I think Murmur beats both of these.

But with time, I came to see it as what it is: a - may I say this? - tour de force of R.E.M.'s strengths. It's like a showcase of their considerable powers. "Fall on Me" (Michael's favorite, as you may know) is essence of R.E.M., with Mike Mills harmonies and jangling (I'm a rock critic!) guitars. And the rest of the songs already cited showed how R.E.M. could swing from folk to rock and back again.

So yeah, it's an odd little album. It's weird, because its perfection somehow, oddly, makes it forgotten. It seems like it's universally acclaimed, yet rarely discussed. Almost taken for granted.

But that may just be me.

it augurs a rather uneven period from which they didn't emerge until the release of Out of Time

green is better than both of these and out of time.

TS: "Rain On The Scarecrow" vs "I Believe"

"Rain on the Scarecrow" kicks just about any song's ass up, down and sideways.

I might agree with this. Actually, I think Fables WOULD HAVE been their best album if it had been produced better.

So Alfred are you saying it's only almost-great because some of the lyrics are opaque? Might have been full-on great if he'd been saying something more explicit?

I saw them do it live a couple of years ago and he was talking about how he never gets to catch his breath in the song and (goofing) fell down when it was over.

Do it sound to anyone like a different take punched in when he gets to the line "Trust in your calling?"

Lifes Rich Pageant, though I've burned out on bits of it a little, and NEVER liked What If We Give It Away, is just packed with great songs that SOUND great. No contest.

always thought it was "i believe the poles are shifting"

But yes, LRP is pretty much perfect - great songs, lots of variety, stellar lead and backing vox and a really punchy, garagey sound. No duff tracks, in comparison with the wretched 'It's the End Of The World', and the dull Fireplace and Lightnin' Hopkins. I'm not sure about Exhuming McCarthy either. I hated it at first, but now I think it's a half-written curio, perhaps not bad, but sub-standard definitely. I've always loved Welcome To The Occupation - great vocals on that, especially near the end : 'Listen To Meee, LISTEN to MEEE'.

I also think that Fables might be the best of the lot though.

It's his enunciation that's imprecise.

Sax solo on “Fireplace” is so good.

Document is a slight dip on the preceding 4 for me, and Fables is probly still my default favourite, but on the whole i think they're all great records that have a couple of duff tracks each maybe but people can't agree on which tracks those are

Murmur will always be my favourite R.E.M. album, hearing it after only knowing Automatic + Monster + various hits was such a revelation to me but LRP is a close second and probably the one I listen to the most. Lyric-wise it's definitely one of their most memorable for me (caveat: I'm not a huge lyrics person), lines like "I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract" pop into my head a lot. But yeah really none of the IRS records are less than great.

a mean idea to call my own
a hundred million birds fly away

a meager thing, recognition

I miss the days when there were so many R.E.M. threads we were bored of them.

fly to carry each his burden

that's great, it starts with

happy throngs, take this joy wherever
wherever the tax returns are

Offering the educated
Primitive and loyal

Our father's father's father tried
Erased the parts he didn't like

What the heck is going on at the beginning of “Superman”?

The scratchy spoken intro is attributed to a Japanese pull-string Godzilla doll.[3] Translated loosely from the Japanese, it says, "This is a special news report. Godzilla has been sighted in Tokyo Bay. The attack on it by the Self-Defense Force has been useless. He is heading towards the city. Aaaaaaaaagh...."

Oh yeah, I do hear the word “Gojira” now

I think 'Disturbance At The Heron House' might be one of his finest vocal melodies, I often wonder if it was difficult to replicate in a live setting because he always used a slightly lower, less vaulting melody.

Not my favourite R.E.M. era. Picking "Life's Right Pageant" because "Fall On Me".

Life's Rich Pageant is gorgeous, but I dunno it was a more vulnerable time for me and I can't listen to it. At the time I liked it more, but now that I'm a mean crusty old fart, I prefer Document 'cos it's louder and darker.

Fables > LRP > Document

I think. I love it all but Document seems a little... icy?

Icy? It's literally the one they told you to "File Under Fire"!

document has a hell of a side two cf. "fireplace". i prob prefer it to both fables and lrp at this point, it's so endearingly odd and transitional

I was actually just listening to Document straight through for the first time in a couple of years and "fire" is the right word for it. "Finest Worksong" sounds to me like a band that's just absolutely GOING for it, straining to throw every possible sound at the problem.

also forever thankful to r.e.m. for introducing me to wire. great cover too

That cover is probably the best representation in their official recorded output of the insanely great house party band they were in 1980-81

good point! you can hear a twisted version of that party on "Lightnin' Hopkins" too.

side 2 of Document is brittle spooky forest music, like let's rub ourselves in mud and run through the jungle, way past the Heron House

OTM Brad. I think side 2 of Document is a career highlight. If LRP was a tentative exploration of how they could pursue a more direct sound and remain eccentric, Document is a band fully at home in it's new sound, finding out it's still a pretty weird place anyway.

I adore Document.

you're not yet young
there's time to teach

Swan Swan H < King of Birds (close)

I no longer thing this is close, King of Birds by a wide margin (but both are great)

I've always been and remain a Lifes Rich Pageant fan, I think it's their best album. But I also think I've undervalued Document, it's really pretty good. Listening to it now. It's another one of their murkier albums, like Fables. But was also their actual commercial breakout, their first platinum album and first top 10 album and single.

Aside from the hits, Document is a pretty weird album. It's good, but LRP was the album that pulled me into REM. Swan Swan H and Superman being on the same tape blew me away.

Document came out my freshman year of college, I'm sure I bought it the day it was released. That tour was the first time I saw them, which was great. I was at the time kind of disappointed in the album, it definitely didn't grab me like LRP had. But on its own merits, it has a lot of good songs and also yeah just a generally weird and kind of dark vibe.

despite one or two shiny pop hits each most of their middle period albums have weird and dark vibes!

Speaking of weird dark vibes, I never understood the lack of enthusiasm for Fables. Sometimes it’s my favorite.

I don’t like the mix or guitar parts on Fables, me. Murmur and Reckoning and Pageant are my big ones— but I never “got” Green or Out Of Time— then on Automatic and Hi-Fi, Stipe started REALLY singing and I love it. Special shout to the second half of Accelerate, a ray of light in their long sundown

LRP blows Document out of the water. I have tried so many times with Document but it never clicks. The songs are fine but I feel like it’s the first album where the production got so airy and clear that it demands a different style of songwriting, which doesn’t really start to kick in until parts of Green and then fully on OOT.

I do like King of Birds a lot though

fgti i think we’re are similar REM fans, at least i agree with just about everything you just wrote although I rate Fables a bit more

god I love Fireplace

Great song, I’d probably love it if it were produced like either the era before or after this one

fgti perfectly otm on this topic

Finest Worksong is a fucking jam

I was too young for the early stuff. My brother, who was seven years older, was obsessed with them, but all the singles from that era kind of annoyed me.

I started digging through the early recently and made an “early REM” playlist and “Country Geedback” was probably the biggest revelation.

AFTP came out when I was in middle school and I loved it. It was my only REM album. I later ate at Weaver D’s once a week for like 2 years straight and got to hear “automatic!” every time my food was ready.

Feedback

It's interesting how much my taste was affected by economics (my tape-buying budget) as well as happenstance.

In those days I could afford a collection (Eponymous for example) but jot necessarily every previous record that fed it. Owning every full album was out of the question; one had to choose.

In those instances you would miss out on album tracks that had not been chosen for the collection, giving a distorted lens.

(This is also shaped by what was available in stores and also what one could copy from friends.)

Long way of saying I had Fables, LRP, Greeen, and some other odds and ends* But a full listening of Document didn't reach my ears until later. And Murmur and DLO still later.

* "Losing my Religion" was a muthaflippin CASSINGLE, yo.

oh yeah, that resonates. i had Out of Time on cassette, then Automatic as one of the first 20 or 30 CDs I ever bought. Somewhere around there I went back and got Eponymous but didn't actually hear the full IRS albums until years later.

My cassette of Automatic had some kind of tape issue, and it had this soft thump every few seconds - although strangely it always kept in time with the songs. Obviously it wasn't meant to be there, but pre-interent I kept wondering "is this deliberate?!?"

Now when I hear it on streaming I miss the thump.

I like Document a lot, although it's very metallic and oppressive! Their most "indie" record? In my head it kind of slots into Warehouse: Songs and Stories and Candy Apple Grey.

*pre-internet

I love Document and think it’s one of their very best albums.

Re: Document, I noticed a lot of later reissues really boost the upper frequencies which brings out a metallic (and I would add harsh, clangy and bright) sound, but I always preferred the original releases, including CD, which mastered it pretty well - you get that metallic quality without going too overboard with it, and it's more about muscle that the ear-bleeding highs.

I love both of these albums myself, though I love all of their I.R.S. albums. LRP I'm guessing was a surprising turn - getting John Mellencamp's producer was probably an unexpected choice, and it turned out brilliant.

(And IIRC Mills and/or Buck said they got Gehman specifically because they loved the sound he got on Mellencamp's records.)

I don’t like the mix or guitar parts on Fables

I love the PARTS, but they went from great guitar and amp sounds on the early records to who knows what in the London studio with Boyd.