Reveal>Accelerate>>>Collapse

This makes me kinda forgive your general opinion about R.E.M.

Yeah, not so much for me.

Reveal is the only REM album that I had to turn off and stop listening to when I bought it. That album grates on me. I really don't like it. Outside of like 2 songs, it's totally forgettable.

And we've already talked about my feelings regarding Collapse.

Of course LV prefers post-Up REM.

It's noisier

I like the retrack but Id replace Sing for the Submarine for Until the Day is Done.

I'd have to do a kind of LAL-esque science experiment to determine where I rank it in relation to other records. After my top 3-4, most of REM's records are on a similar level for me. But I love "Accelerate" -- I think it's one of the best "return to form!" albums ever.

Maybe that's why it can't quite get there for me. I'm not sure that REM's "form" is what registered in the first place. So a return to that isn't as satisfying to me? Maybe?

In calling "Accelerate" a return to form I'm really just trying to speak in RM/PJ vernacular. All I mean to say is that it succeeded at what it tried to do musically, not that a throwback to past glories was a necessary corrective action for REM at the time. I'm a huge fan of "Up," "Reveal," etc.

I think there definitely was a feel, particularly from the band at that point, that some sort of course correction was needed after Around the Sun; I think over time they were unsatisfied with that record and seemed to respond to it by doing everything in the opposite fashion on the following record (workshopping the songs over a week's time in Dublin, a quick recording process). I think there definitely was a feeling that the band portrayed at the time (I'm sure, in part, because it was a simple kind of storyline) that Accelerate was them finding their way back after losing the plot a bit on the previous record.

I'll never understand the widespread distaste for "Around the Sun." It has has so many good songs on it.

As has been discussed in the Random Artist Top Tens thread, I've been listening to a lot of CCR. One album I have some problems with is Cosmo's Factory. It's a frustrating one for me, because I think most of it is some of the band's best output. But it's too long. And the sequencing is a disaster. Sticking the useless, boring, bordering-on-novelty filler tracks "Before You Accuse Me", "Travelin' Band", and "Ooby Dooby" right up front just kills any chance of the album gaining any momentum. I hate those songs. I hate how this album is laid out.

So this is the version I'll be listening to from now on:

Side A:
1. Run Through the Jungle
2. I Heard It Through the Grapevine
3. Lookin' out My Back Door
4. Who'll Stop the Rain
Side B:
5. Long as I Can See the Light
6. My Baby Left Me
7. Ramble Tamble
8. Up Around the Bend

Man, what a great list of songs. "Long As I Can See the Light" is devastating.

I like "Travelin' Band" too, though. Fogerty shreds on it.

Oh man I love "Travelin Band" so much, probably one of my favorite CCR songs. The performance owns me.

It sounds exactly the same as that Little Richard song except it has like half the energy. Pass.

Version of The Rolling Stones' Aftermath I've been listening to:

Side A:
1. Mother's Little Helper
2. Under My Thumb
3. I am Waiting
4. Think
5. Flight 505
Side B:
6. Out of Time
7. It's Not Easy
8. Doncha Bother Me
9. Take It or Leave It