it's always a magical day when a new rem album is released. i've been able to experience this four times now - out of time, automatic for the people, monster and, now, new adventures in hi-fi. you don't know me, though, so let's start at the beginning...
it was actually leonard cohen that wrote the song that i liked - first we take manhatten. i realized this after the fact. but, i misunderstood the radio announcer, who must have been referring to the song that played previous to it. so, i went to the public library looking for the rem record with this song on it. this was in 1989, when i was eight years old, and two years before rem would, ironically, actually perform a cover of this tune for a benefit.
i checked out all of the cassettes that they had at the public library - murmur, document and green. none of them had the track i wanted, but i liked the latter two enough that i dubbed copies of them onto a 90 minute tape before i brought them back (at eight years old, i found murmur to be a little bit too opaque). they both got massive play on my basement ghetto blaster for the next several years.
the initial reason that i found myself attracted to these records is that they seemed to transmit something to me that i was lacking in my life, which was a kind of intellectual guidance. i don't mean in terms of the lyrical content, which i did not understand well or at all, so much as i mean in terms of the aesthetic. i was an aloof child - bookish, introverted and very distant. i was naturally curious, but what i'd learned - even at that age - was that the people around me were not of much use in answering my questions. i was the kind of kid that knew the capital city of every country in africa, and the name of every moon of saturn. the reality is that the people around me couldn't even name the planets in order. they were constantly disappointing me in their inabilities to answer my questions, and in their own disinterest in the answers to them. so, i longed to be a part of something that would quench my curiosity. my aunt, who was then of university age, happened to overhear me listening to them (to her surprise) and she told me that this was what university students listened to. i grasped on to that. it was a way to connect with what i perceived was a higher culture.
to put it another way, i might not have understood everything that they said, but i knew they were smart and i knew that smart people liked them and so it made me feel smart to listen to them. you'll have to forgive the pretensions of an eight, nine, ten year-old child.
of course, the fact that these are very fun records, through and through, helped a lot, as well.
out of time dropped when i was ten, and i actually found it really disappointing because it seemed to shatter my perceptions. losing my religion was such a smash hit that everybody knew the song, which burst my bubble around them. worse, the band seemed to be being silly on purpose. it didn't seem nearly as smart anymore. i've gotten to know the record better since then, but i've never dropped my preconceptions - i've always ranked this near the bottom of their discography. it's funny how often a band's biggest hits are on their weakest records, isn't it?
when automatic for the people came out the next year, i had found some new favourite bands and had developed somewhat of a distance from rem as something i liked when i was younger. however, i gave the record a very careful listen and ended up absolutely smitten by it. i still didn't fully understand the themes explored, but the music captured me in ways that rem hadn't been able to, previously. few records have been more influential on me than this one.
by the time monster was released, i'd gone through the alternative rock portal and come out a pretty different kid. i had initially taken a pass on nirvana, although i did come around to it near the end of the nevermind cycle (i greatly preferred come as you are to teen spirit). rather, it was actually siamese dream that pulled me through the gates and turned me into a proper teenager (speaking of which, i'm going to see the smashing pumpkins tomorrow night. first concert ever!). that sounds like a perfect confluence, right? except that something seemed amiss about the record. it was just so glossy, so distant. after the raw, honest delivery of automatic, monster seemed like they'd retreated behind a thousand walls of emotional deflection. monster is by no means a poor record, but it is a very contrived one. it's almost not an rem record so much as it is a record by rem pretending to be another band - like it's their sgt peppers moment, but without bothering to tell us about the charade. i think i admired it more than i actually enjoyed it.
i intuitively look for patterns in everything, and so i was expecting them to bounce back on the new record. the single raised expectations, for sure. i've now spent the better part of the last two days listening to it, and what do i think?
well, i do think this record is a return to a more organic approach and that is very much welcome. the production is a lot more real, which is probably what i missed more than anything else. apparently, the tracks were mostly recorded at sound check. however, this is offset by two complementary tendencies. the first is that stipe is writing from a further distance than he did in the past, as though he wasn't able to completely drop the experiences of writing monster in character. the difference is that his new character is himself. this is kind of meta. but, he actually does a good job of explaining this, himself, throughout the course of the record; this analysis is actually broadly interpretive. the second is that the record picks up an experimental strain that they had previously left somewhere in the 80s and that i'm actually glad to hear them pick back up as it gives the record a much broader palette of sound. purists should really embrace the evolution, rather than complain, as it's actually an ideological throwback and return-to-basics. this record manages to do what almost nobody else has ever managed to do, which is to return to basics and artistically evolve at the same time.
it's hard for me to say how this record will be viewed in the long run. if it doesn't have the kind of smash hit that the last few have had, it may get overshadowed by the more successful records. that said, serious fans may also come to see it as their absolute pinnacle. perhaps a good historical parallel is to pink floyd's animals - a record that is often referred to as "lost" but that core fans almost universally see as their best record.
it's very early in the morning, and i've been up all night again. right now, i need to get ready to go to school; then, i need to find a way to get some sleep when i get home. i'm totally psyched about the pumpkins show tomorrow night.
but, i had to say something about rem this morning. the legacy of this record is not clear to me, and may ultimately depend on whether the history is written by fans or by sales figures.
