Getty ImagesR
.E.M.’s precipitous
late-1980s ascent into
the rock stratosphere
was a charming,
off-kilter pop miracle.
They were the left-
fi eld college-rock
band who went off
and fi lled stadia: the
nerdy outsiders who
somehow got the girl and
became the school cool kids.
Originally released on CD
and very limited-edition vinyl
in 2003, this compilation,
now reissued on double vinyl,
gathers key singles from
1988’s Green album through
to 2001’s Reveal. It thus
straddles both their golden
days as a four-piece and the
slow decline after drummerR.E.M.
THE BEST OF R.E.M.
IN TIME 1988–2003
CRAFT RECORDINGS★
XxxxxxREISSUESyears on, the giddy delirium of
The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
thrills as infectiously as the fi rst
time you heard it: Stand is still
a swig of sheer pop elixir.
All facets of prime R.E.M.
are on show here, whether
your bag is the yearning
whimsy of Man On The Moon
or the short-arm jabs to the
solar plexus of 1994’s What’s
The Frequency, Kenneth?
when Buck took the band in a
rockier direction on Monster.
Both pale next to album closer
Nightswimming, an existential
wonder in itself.
The hit-and-miss tracklisting,
though, will deter completists.
Nothing here is dreadful, but
there are glaring omissions: no
Drive, no Crush With Eyeliner,
no Radio Song. Also absent
is the sparkle and shimmer of
Shiny Happy People, which the
band (i.e. the reliably snotty
Stipe) came to disdain as
“mere” bubblegum pop.
Sporadically glorious as
it is, ultimately In Time is
like listening to a random
fan’s R.E.M. Spotify
playlist on shuffl e mode. To
paraphrase the late, great Eric
Morecambe: it’s most of the
right songs, but not necessarily
in the right order. IGthe years can be disorienting
when the juxtapositions are too
jarring. All The Right Friends,
a contribution to 2001 movie
Vanilla Sky, is a footnote,
R.E.M.-by-rote
from a fallow
period: its
failings are
laid all the
more bare by
being followed
by the aching
Everybody
Hurts.
Of course,
when it works,
when Michael Stipe’s spectral,
tangential poetry and musings
on mortality quiver atop Peter
Buck’s celestial jangle, it is
utterly wonderful. Twenty-sevenand co-songwriter Bill Berry quit
in 1997.
It’s a curious collection
which, like R.E.M. themselves,
is alternately charming,
idiosyncratic
and oddly
frustrating.
Tracks are
quixotically
thrown
together, as
if the concept
of chronology
is bourgeois:
2001’s All The
Way To Reno
heads into Losing My Religion
from a decade before, then it’s
on to 1996’s thrumming E-Bow
The Letter.
This back-and-forth acrossTHE FINEST THAT ATHENS, GEORGIA, HAS TO OFFER DESERVE
A DEFINITIVE CAREER-SPANNING BEST OF. SADLY, THIS ISN’T IT...© Anton Corbijn