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R.E.M.'s Reveal Doesn't

LListening to R.E.M.'s new album Reveal has been a frustrating experience. On the one hand, I feel the need to support them. The state of quality pop rock is so dire that to attack the field's pre-eminent statesmen is certainly contradictory. On the other hand, R.E.M. is in a noticeable state of decline. Reveal is better than most other current pop rock albums, but it's not what an R.E.M. album used to be.

It's common critical currency to hold R.E.M.'s early 1990s albums as pop masterpieces. Out of Time (1990) and Automatic for the People (1993) are serious, somber, acoustic songwriting showcases; they're mature and well-crafted music that hold out the possibility of a more artful rock for the new decade. "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" are examples of R.E.M.'s overplayed singles. The R.E.M. of the mid 1990s, however, is complicated and controversial. Some hated the glam trash of 1995's Monster, while others saw it as expressing a sexy, sly sense of humor that was refreshing and exhilarating. The 1997 New Adventures in Hi-fi was the perfect culmination of this evolution; the hard-edged rock of Monster could be found in "The Wake-Up Bomb" and "Leave", while the quiet pop perfection of Automatic for the People shone through in "Electrolite" and "E-Bow the Letter".

But with Up in 1998, R.E.M. seemed lost. The album is drowned in a wash of keyboards and strings and sappy, morose songwriting. R.E.M became a singles band in the Pet Sounds-esque beauty of "At My Most Beautiful", the acoustic, Automatic for the People-like simplicity of "Daysleeper", and the audacious electronic rewrite of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" on "Hope". This trend has continued in their second post-Bill Berry album, Reveal. It's a muddy mess of beats, synths, and strings. Despite Stipe's burgeoning friendship with Thom Yorke (Radiohead), someone needs to tell him that R.E.M. was not built on high-level studio technique, but on raw emotion and inventive, quality songwriting.

I don't want to come off like one those arch conservatives that disparages any of the developments of their idols from the early nineties; such as people who stopped listening to Pearl Jam after Vs., Radiohead after The Bends, and R.E.M. after Automatic for the People. But I can't help but feel that R.E.M. has lost their edge. Reveal, like Up, is dominated by mid-tempo semi-quiet, melancholy tracks. I can't follow their studio experimentation on Reveal. "Saturn Returns" is a quiet piano ballad combined with a droning guitar a la Up, and with wobbling synthesizers -- and amazingly -- a cut-up electronic beat punctuated by a shrill whistle a la Pink Floyd's "Money" (the whistle a replacement for the cash register sound in "Money", of course). It's clumsy and pointless. I mean, why have a DJ Shadow-ish beat in this somber piano ballad? It doesn't come off as a cohesive whole, but rather as a failed attempt to integrate the electronic vogue of Air, Stereolab, Auteschere, and Aphex Twin.

At least this album has some strong points. The first four songs are engaging and hopefully signal R.E.M.'s new direction. "The Lifting" is a bright, spacey rocker that uses its electronic influences in an impressive way-think Hi-fi-era R.E.M. plus the French electronic duo, Air. In this song, a heavy piano beats amid the swirl of droning guitars as Stipe belts in his sexy, low baritone, "Grounded, 5 a.m., the nitelite is comforting, but gravity is holding you". It's a peppy, mature rock unlike the so-called "rock" songs on Up. The next track, "I've Been High", is also an impressive step in a new direction. It's a delicate ballad reminiscent of Monster's "Tongue", except that it's covered in a blanket of sleepy synths, organs, and trippy Auteschere-esque beats. It's wonderfully atmospheric, and provides an example of Radiohead's influence on R.E.M. (very much like Kid A's "Everything in its Right Place"). The greatest thing about this song is Stipe's vocal: it's deep, dark, sexy, yet also intimately delicate and gentle. It 's breathtaking when he switches to his lilting falsetto in the chorus singing, "I've been high, I've climbed so high, but life sometimes, it washes over me".

From then on, however, things get a bit spotty. "All the Way to Reno (you're gonna be a star)" would be an OK enough country-ish electronic track of swirling, yawning guitars, strings, and keyboards if it weren't for the annoyingly inane chorus: "You know what you are, you're gonna be a star, you know what you are, you're gonna be a star". This is the first R.E.M. album where I have seriously questioned Stipe's abilities as a lyricist. Take the album's fourth track, "She Just Wants To Be", for example. This is a pretty interesting song. It starts with Stipe singing solo with an acoustic guitar until raucous, thick "Karma Police"-type drums slam in, turning it into a bleak, dark rock track. Stipe sings the chorus in complete earnest, "She just wants to be somewhere, she just wants to be, she just wants to be somewhere, she just wants to be". Changing the meaning of the phrase to heighten its emotional/philosophical impact by removing that one word is just a bit too silly for me. Similarly, there's "I'll Take the Rain," yet another mid-tempo, melancholy piano string ballad with this brilliantly provoking chorus (you guessed it): "I'll take the rain, I'll take the rain, I'll take the rain".

I really hate that R.E.M. has become a singles band. The best track on the album is the single, "Imitation of Life", but only because it could've been on Out of Time. The lyrics, unlike those of "Beat a Drum" or "I'll Take the Rain", are self-consciously coy and full of panache: "That's sugarcane, that tasted good, that's cinnamon, that's Hollywood, c'mon, c'mon, no one can see me cry". Stipe and bassist Mike Mills sing this chorus in full bright harmony over a jangly Peter Buck guitar riff. It's fun, sad, and beautiful. The bittersweet resonance of the final line, "no one can see me cry," is genuinely touching. It's the playful, sad, compelling dialogue between lyric and music in "Imitation of Life" which sets it apart from the rest of the album. It betrays a sharp pop sensibility and inventiveness that R.E.M. only provides in bits and pieces. It's unfortunate that of all the songs from Out of Time, this song most resembles the light-hearted country rock of "Near Wild Heaven" rather than tracks like "Half a World away" or "Country Feedback", which are both beautiful and painful, direct and elusive.