New Adventures In Hi Fi - REM (1996)

This is a collection of tracks that were written and built while on the road for the Monster tour. The basic tracks were recorded live from the stage during soundchecks and then finished off in the studio afterwards.

That tour was a hard-fought battle for the band, which included dealing with drummer Bill Berry collapsing onstage in March 1995 from a brain aneurysm. The show eventually went on, and so did the tracking of new material, although Bill would leave at the end of this cycle.

To me, the songs are all excellent, but they’re quite diverse. There’s a lot of the guitar-first Monster-style material they’d been blasting to the masses on tour, but there are a lot of moody and angry side trips, as well as some gorgeous slow songs.

I think we’ll wait til sometime in the new year to tackle the post-Aventures (and more importantly the post-Bill Berry) REM catalog. This is a good stopping point for now.

Tracks I Liked

How the West Was Won And Where It got us - a great opener with a “doom shuffle” feel

Wake-Up Bomb - could easily be a Monster outtake

New Test Leper - Stipe at his best

E-bow The Letter - a mournful tune made more mournful by Patti Smith backing vocals

Bittersweet Me - kind of an older-era-sounding tune that works really well with the more modern trappings.