October 8, 2004 | Posted by David B. at 4:13 PM

You might have hidden the frown

R.E.M.

Sorry I haven't written too much lately, gang. The main reason is that I haven't been buying music at all because of a severe lack of employment. This is also the reason I haven't yet bought R.E.M.'s new album Behind the Sun. "But Robot Dave," you're saying, "R.E.M. hasn't put out anything good since that time in high school I spent my Friday nights watching the My So-Called Life marathons on MTV." Not true, say I! While I could rattle off many moments of my teenage existence that I remember solely because of the R.E.M. songs playing in the background at the time, I will also stress that - as I wrote on this page a few months ago - they've still got it. I saw them live on the Vote For Change tour the other night, and they were very, very good. (By the way, click here to see what it looks like when Bruce Springsteen sings "Man on the Moon." Weird.) Their recent best-of, In Time, not only proved that they were one of the most important bands of the nineties, but that they're still capable of coming out with singles people should be listening to ("Bad Day"). Anyway, I haven't bought the new album but you can hear it here. I'm personally rather skeptical. I think the new single, "Leaving New York", is catchy but pretty soggy in terms of tempo and production. I'm interested to hear what people think of these tracks. (They'll start streaming once you load the site; move the cursor to the end of the track to move on to the next.) Buy Around the Sun here.

Comments

as a longtime REM fan, it hurts to say that around the sun is very disappointing. i've streamed it a few times and nothing is growing on me. it's just bland and uninspired-sounding...at this point i doubt i'll even pick it up. sniff.

Posted by: Ambrose Chapel at October 8, 2004 5:09 PM

i always like to hear people defend r.e.m.'s 90s output even though i'm not quite prepared to do so myself. some of the later songs are good, but not as many and not as much as on the earlier records, i think. but i had something more particular to mention. i think "bad day" is a really decent song, but it can only partly be used as an example of high-quality recent work of theirs. i first heard it years ago on a bootleg from the eighties, when it was called "psa" and sounded more like "it's the end of the world as we know it..." than it does in its more recent incarnation. i think it's valid for a band to continue interpreting old songs, especially ones like "psa" that were never put on an album. but that would mean i could only judge the more recent changes and additions to the original, and in this case i actually preferred the older version.

Posted by: karen at October 8, 2004 5:13 PM

p.s. i miss bill.

Posted by: karen at October 8, 2004 5:13 PM

It just feels like they're not really trying very hard on this album. I'll probably buy simply because I always have, buy they stopped being relevant as a band a long time ago. They don't overtly influence or inspire anyone anymore, which doesn't mean much considering how much they did contribute when they were producing their best work. I'm a fan but it feels like they're phoning it in.

Posted by: P Funk at October 8, 2004 7:20 PM

David Cavanagh wrote a really good piece about how R.E.M. once meant so much to him,but hoe he can't get excited by what they're doing now,and I know exactly what he means.I'll never dislike them,but I'm not in a hurry to buy 'Around The Sun'...which is the opposite of when 'Automatic For The People' came out and I managed to get hold of it a couple of days before the official release date.I love 'Monster',but i started to get disappointed with 'New Adventures In Hi-Fi' (although that has grown on me since),and 'Up' would have been great if it had been 3 or 4 songs shorter.But 'Reveal' just passed me by completely.

Posted by: the cap'n at October 9, 2004 2:52 PM
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