R.E.M. Listening Club

  1. New Adventures In Hi Fi
  2. Automatic For The People
  3. Lifes Rich Pageant
  4. Green
  5. Chronic Town
  6. Reckoning
  7. Murmur
  8. Out Of Time
  9. Fables Of The Reconstruction
  10. Document
  11. Collapse Into Now
  12. Accelerate
  13. Up
  14. Monster
  15. Reveal
  16. Around The Sun
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and top ten songs…

Find The River
Nightswimming
E-Bow The Letter
Begin The Begin
Electrolite
Country Feedback
Leave
Harborcoat
Texarkana
Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcar)

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Can’t believe Around The Sun made it to no. 15 on your list when Automatic was a measly 29.

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I’m glad for all the New Adventures Love. For years I had it level pegging at no1 with Murmur but no-one I knew could care for it. Relistening to it a couple of months ago here only reinforced my view of it. It’s bloody great

Are we all just going to stop being so coy and Stipean at stage and say it? Best band ever.

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I’ll briefly say BEST BAND EVER now, and when I’m back from hols I’ll bring the rankings and stats to prove it.

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Frankly, nobody else even comes close.

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Still learning cool stuff on a daily basis

https://twitter.com/m_millsey/status/1110326427851915266?s=19

The one and only @Billyshears of @woweezowee 's R.E.M. Listening Club Baaaaaaaannnnnddddd.

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Mills is great on twitter. Always giving out little bits.

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Aye every day there’s great wee facts and him tackling right wing nuts.
Great lad!

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Surprisingly, he is a massive golf fan. I don’t know why i find that surprising, but there is just something about REM and golf that doesn’t go together. I seem to remember Peter Buck would occasionally take the piss out of him for it.

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  1. Murmur
  2. Reckoning
  3. Lifes Rich Pageant
  4. New Adventures
  5. Automatic for the People
  6. Fables of the Reconstruction
    6.5. Chronic Town
  7. Monster
  8. Up
  9. Out of Time
  10. Green
  11. Document
  12. Collapse Into Now
  13. Accelerate
  14. Around The Sun
  15. Reveal

I can very easily group the records into three upper/mid/lower bands, but within that they become surprisingly tough to rank individually. I baulk a little at putting Murmur at No. 1 because it suggests that the band peaked right at the outset and never bettered it. Not the case, but ultimately it probably is the album of theirs I love the most, so that’s where it is.

Mrs Z fell asleep early last night, so I had a quick listen again through most of the IRS era as a refresher. I know I heard it all relatively recently, but I’ve been so conditioned by their later records of late that it was thrilling to hear the band like this again.

Automatic got a last minute promotion after listening to it again earlier. It’s easy to feel jaded by and overfamiliar with…until you play it again and remember how good it actually is.

Positions 8-10 are kind of interchangeable and all have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Document should consider itself lucky it’s as high as it is as that got a last minute bump too. I had to weigh up whether the worst album from their best era was better than their best album from their worst. Still not totally sure…

Accelerate – I do like you, but you can’t dislodge anything above you I’m afraid.

14-15 Looks like I’m the first to break ranks and be the exception to prove @Billyshears rule regarding last place. Although Around The Sun is frequently dreadful, it does have a couple of saving graces here and there. Reveal however has almost none (bar I’ll Take The Rain, and even that still has the same horrible production as the rest) and so I can’t put it anywhere other than bottom of the pile. Won’t be returning to either.

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Fables has been the great revelation for me - a gnarly little fucker of a record that I finally cracked in the listening club after years of trying.

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Thanks mate, quite the mantle to take on - I’m very much the Clive Myrie to your Huw Edwards.

Despite not having taken part much in this thread, it’s been good reading everyone’s opinions - hopefully the Yo La Tengo club lives up to it!

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  1. Fall On Me
  2. (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville
  3. Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)
  4. Driver 8
  5. Shaking Through
  6. Country Feedback
  7. You Are The Everything
  8. E-Bow The Letter
  9. Nightswimming
  10. What’s The Frequency Kenneth?

Aargh!!!

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Just heard a dance version of losing my religion in the gym, blew my mind just didn’t suit it at all

2-5 were all under serious consideration for my list, so tough to cut it at 10.

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  1. Lifes Rich Pageant
  2. Green
  3. Automatic
  4. Monster
  5. New Adventures
  6. Murmur
  7. Reckoning
  8. Chronic Town
  9. Document
  10. Fables
  11. Out Of Time
  12. Up
  13. Accelerate
  14. Collapse
  15. Reveal
  16. ATS

Seems weird to not include Dead Letter Office.

It’s been a fun journey. Not had much to offer on the last few records but I did note an improvement on the last two compared to the Reveal and ATS.

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A brief take on Collapse Into Now, which I originally posted elsewhere in the forum:

Collapse Into Now is utterly ruined by that brickwalled mushy smear of a “production” job Jacknife Lee inflicted. There’s some genuinely great songs on that album, but none get the space to soar like they should. Imagine the epic vocal outro of ‘It Happened Today’ recorded, produced and mixed with the space and depth and clarity of (say) ‘Belong’; it would sound incredible

Anyway, time to rank the albums. The following scores are “R.E.M. Relative Scores”, i.e. I’m only comparing them with each other and not the rest of music:

  1. Murmur (10)
  2. Fables Of The Reconstruction (10)
  3. Green (10)
  4. Chronic Town (9.5)
  5. Lifes Rich Pageant (9.5)
  6. Reckoning (9.5)
  7. Automatic For The People (9)
  8. New Adventures In Hi-Fi (9)
  9. Monster (8)
  10. Out Of Time (7.5)
  11. Up (7)
  12. Document (7)
  13. Accelerate (6.5)
  14. Collapse Into Now (4)
  15. Reveal (3)
  16. Around The Sun (1)

Trouble is, R.E.M are so consistently amazing it’s hard to differentiate the albums in terms of ranking - on a different day, the top 7-8 could easily be in a different order.

I ranked them relative to each other because if I compared them to the rest of popular music, the entire top ten would get awarded a 10/10, and even Up and Document would get 9s :see_no_evil:. Accelerate might scrape an 8, and the rest would be a good bit lower.

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