goddammit

AL

On the most recent pod they talked about how The Scary One is going to get a 25th anniversary reissue. I like that record more than a lot of people seem to.

Lots of dumb, ugly opinions about early REM the last couple of pages.

Murmur is terrible, Pete.

Murmur is a great album and Reckoning is their best.

I'm so completely blown away that REM became REM at all given how underwhelming and uninteresting Murmur is. Legit. I'll revisit Reckoning after I listen to the pod episode about it. But Murmur is like an album by a bad They Might Be Giants cover band with no personality.

Top tier REM right here:

Radio Free Europe, Talk About the Passion and Shaking Through are the only three songs that I even kind of like. Talk About the Passion is probably the best of the three and it's B-.

Jefferson, I think we're lost.

yeah, even if its not my favorite Murmur is such a great album. Its amazing they were already writing songs like that.

If We Walk was a They Might Be Giants song it would be good. But it isn't and so it isn't.

It's not amazing. It's gross.

Its a manual on how to write great indie post punk pop songs.

Go clinky-clinky-clinky-clinky on the guitar, then go bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum on the base and then go tkkkkkkkkkk on the drums an then have a guy angry-shit-mumble lyrics that wouldn't make sense even if you could understand the words but just make sure the melodies are indecipherable from track to track.

Instant success!

I'm not going to really bother reading the last few pages, but Pete's almost certainly right about whatever you guys are talking about regarding REM's early 80's output.

Reckoning is definitely better than Murmur, yeah.

Finster's art, and titles to match:
South Central Rain, Don't Go Back To Rockville,
Harbourcoat, Pretty Persuasion,
You were born to be a camera,
Time After Time was my least favorite song

Pavement is an idiot.

Time After Time is one of the two best songs on either of their first two records.

I make this recommendation knowing that at least two of the people in this thread with early-REM aversions to an extent also have live album aversions, but the "Live at the Olympia" album from 2007, when they were road-testing the "Accelerate" songs, is a great showcase for much of their IRS-era material (though not much from "Murmur"), casting it in a light that is much more sonically and aesthetically consistent with their major label stuff -- better-oiled performances, and more clearly defined vocal melodies. I took a while to warm to the IRS albums -- never hated them, but initially felt they were clearly inferior to more radio-friendly stuff I grew up with -- but even after "getting" it, there were a handful of songs that I didn't feel like I truly heard until that live record (some of the deep tracks from "Reckoning" and "Fables," and almost everything from "Chronic Town"). See also "Perfect Circle" from the 1991 MTV Unplugged.

The early albums are full of excellent songs, but I can appreciate that they're presented in a way that sometimes hides it.