Up and Away: R.E.M. Walks On

"It's the all-new R.E.M."--this phrase has repeatedly been used to describe the nearly twenty-year-old band since the release of Monster in 1994. After the departure of Bill Berry, R.E.M.'s drummer for the past 18 years, the idea of another "new" R.E.M. seemed inevitable. The departure left Mike Mills, Peter Buck, and Michael Stipe as the remaining core of '80s indie-rock's greatest band, despite their previous promises that the band would break up if one of the members left. The absence of a real-life drummer has opened the band up to critics who have ragged on the new album for using a drum machine, a faux pas for any true rock and roll band, as Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins learned earlier this year with the mixed reception of Adore.

The media attention circulating around Up makes this a make or break album for the band as it enters the next millennium. Some argue that R.E.M.'s power has continued to grow, leading to the group's apparent autonomy from the shifty nature of the music industry. Still, executives at Warner Bros. had to worry just a little after the low sales of New Adventures in Hi-Fi in 1996, especially after the band was re-signed to a lucrative contract a few years ago.

I braced myself for the first single "Daysleeper," thinking it would be some sort of techno-rock mix with Michael Stipe's cross-gendered tendencies accentuated. But to my surprise, a very melodic track with an intricate acoustic feel rose from the ashes of R.E.M.'s past two albums, and captured me as "Everybody Hurts" had all the way back in 1992. This is a good song--a really good song. Even more surprising is that Up is a really, maybe even really, really good album.

R.E.M.'s 11th CD in 18 years opens with a mysterious blend of overlapped keyboards with a low, pulsating bass in "Airportman," giving the album its mellow feel right off the bat. The overbearing power chords grizzly feedback and odd dissonance are gone, and the listener is left with more R.E.M. tunes to put on his "R.E.M.'s Greatest Hits" tape. "Daysleeper" exhibits commercial potential, but the music scene has changed so much that "Daysleeper" may be deemed just another good R.E.M. song by the listening public, rather than a big hit like it would've been in 1992.

"Daysleeper" is reminiscent of "Try Not To Breathe" from Automatic For The People, and the entire album seems to lament lost love even in its most upbeat moments, just like in Automatic For The People. Stipe's upbeat chorus on "Walk Unafraid" challenges love with the words "I'll trip, fall, pick myself up and/walk unafraid/I'll be clumsy instead/hold my love me or leave me/high." Stipe even goes into obsessive love on "Hope" with lyrics like "At my most beautiful I count your eyelashes secretly."

It would be misleading to say that R.E.M. has simply reverted to Automatic For The People. The band continues to have some of the eerieness found in Hi-Fi, with echoes and added effects sprinkled into the background and a low, raw bass at times. Up seems to take a lot of the positives from New Adventures in Hi-Fi and combines them with traditional R.E.M. The absence of Berry, who left as the result of a brain aneurysm during the Monster Tour, translates itself into an exotic mixture of spacey beats on several tracks. Screaming Trees drummer Barret Martin and Beck's Joey Waronker add occasional human drumming, but in reality, the drumming doesn't play too major a role in the guitar and vocal-driven group.

"Daysleeper" proves the album's number one hit, but some songs come out of the woodwork after casual listening. The keyboard riff in "Lotus" gives the feel of a sixties song with the almost chanted lyrics of Stipe, with his lower voice dubbed over kind of like "Drive" from Automatic. The descending guitar gives a raw edge that shows the change over the course of the past two albums, but unlike their previous raw guitar pieces, "Lotus" blends the raw sound into the fabric of the song in a way that neither accents it nor leaves it too far in the background. "Lotus" seems to resolve R.E.M.'s conflicts with the hard and distorted guitar that took the world of popular music out of their hands and into the grunge era's clutches.

The aforementioned "Hope" and "Walk Unafraid" will undoubtedly become favorites within the cult of R.E.M. fanatics, but the true test will come with radio airplay. "Hope" has the most "hope," because its upbeat style gets the legs moving with the beat, but the lyrics are actually supposedly about an AIDS patient. The somber topics raised in the song seem to clash with the actual tune, but this proves to be one of Stipe's lasting characteristics which surfaced on the group's first hit "The One I Love."

"Walk Unafraid" takes awhile to develop, butthe chorus engages the listener much like "Man onthe Moon" from Automatic For The People. The pianoand the ghostly rhythm of the backup vocals painta complete picture of deep thought with a catchychorus that may translate into popular success.The real victory of Up cannot be expressed in anyone song. The album speaks as a whole and tellsthe story that listeners have been waiting so longto hear.

R.E.M. at its best is a band that you sleepwith playing on your stereo, that you have in thebackground when a couple friends are over justhanging out or that you sing with when the sky isclear and the stars are low. Even R.E.M.'s "happy"songs like "Shiny Happy People" and "Stand" seemto cross over the line of carefree pop into amulti-faceted festival. Up proves that R.E.M.hasn't lost it; "it" just went on vacation overthe past six years or so. The band is different,but they've recaptured their old glory and that iswhy "the all-new R.E.M." is a misnomer. It shouldbe "the all-new, good old R.E.M.

"Walk Unafraid" takes awhile to develop, butthe chorus engages the listener much like "Man onthe Moon" from Automatic For The People. The pianoand the ghostly rhythm of the backup vocals painta complete picture of deep thought with a catchychorus that may translate into popular success.The real victory of Up cannot be expressed in anyone song. The album speaks as a whole and tellsthe story that listeners have been waiting so longto hear.

R.E.M. at its best is a band that you sleepwith playing on your stereo, that you have in thebackground when a couple friends are over justhanging out or that you sing with when the sky isclear and the stars are low. Even R.E.M.'s "happy"songs like "Shiny Happy People" and "Stand" seemto cross over the line of carefree pop into amulti-faceted festival. Up proves that R.E.M.hasn't lost it; "it" just went on vacation overthe past six years or so. The band is different,but they've recaptured their old glory and that iswhy "the all-new R.E.M." is a misnomer. It shouldbe "the all-new, good old R.E.M.