More Reflections from 2011, the R.E.M. Edition: Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011

I hesitate to start off by committing assault and battery on a dead horse but, honestly, digression has never been my strong suit.

The manner in which R.E.M. broke up earlier this year has yet to cease shocking and amazing me but, more to the point, it horrifies me beyond belief. It's the music nerd equivalent to the existential crisis that is watching one of your parents die peacefully after a long and happy life. As opposed to the usual acrimony that is a band's breakup, this is not the long and drawn out divorce that takes place long after the homefires have cooled and the knives have been drawn. Even in the face of diminishing sales, we always assume that our most beloved of bands will simply fade into the ether at some point, returning only to release a new album once or twice a decade before they trot out "Satisfaction" for the umpteenth time on the road.

The truth is, it never even occurred to me that bands can amicably shake hands, call it a day and have dinner later without the impetus of a business disguised as music. It's a gutsy thing, to be sure, and all the more daring because it doesn't involve holding out to the last breath when nobody cares and everybody hates each other. But more than that, it sets a troubling precedent for this fan who likes a number of bands with longer careers behind them than in front. One can only imagine that U2 is somewhere in Dublin releasing a huge sigh of relief.

"That's it," Larry Mullen is exclaiming as he wipes the sweat from his brow, "They've done it. We can quit now!"

Admittedly, R.E.M. failed to pack the punch they used to both commercially and creatively. But even their duff albums had more gems than most and it's a sad reality now that I can no longer look forward to discovering them. As sad as I feel about this, the far reaching implications are even more grim. R.E.M. paved a number of paths in their career. People forget that they're the band that made it cool to be indie, made it okay to sell out and made sense out of touring only when they wanted to. Now, they're the band that have made it okay to call it a day for no reason other than wanting to. Could U2, who have blazed a very parallel path, be far behind? Could Radiohead and Pearl Jam, both bands that took notes on the self determination of the Athens Four, also see the point in calling it quits? As a music fan who came of age in the Alternative market boom, R.E.M.'s retirement looms apocalyptically large over my record collection.

As a lovely parting gift, however, they've left us with Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage 1982-2011. It spans forty tracks, thirty-seven of which have been previously released and three that have not. It follows them from their independent days at I.R.S. to their last hurrahs at Warner Bros. And as hard as it is to sum up their career succinctly, seeing the YouTube promo alone gave me hope. All the familiar guitar riffs, drum fills and hooks are there with the appropriately iconic imagery. As such, the respective collection turns out to be a well rounded look back at a career full of hits, near misses and left turns.

What follows are forty thoughts for forty songs. Numbers respectively represent tracklisting placement and disc one or two.

Part Lies
7/1. "Driver 8" - Fables of the Reconstruction has long been reputed to be an album of Southern legends. Recorded in London by a homesick R.E.M., this song proves it to be less Dixie mythology and more the sound of a band lost at sea.
9/1. "Begin the Begin" - Singing "the insurgency began and you missed it," Stipe may as well have been addressing audiences which were beginning to swell beyond their college demographic. Truth was, with producer Don Gehman's mainstream studio polish, the insurgency was just beginning.
10/1. "Fall on Me" - Accompanied by a video in heavy rotation, this was often credited as the first big environmental song. This is most likely apocryphal, even if global warming is just the new acid rain.
11/1. "Finest Worksong" - Known mainly for the jangly sound of his early playing, Peter Buck turned in a heroic punk rock effort with the neo-liberal angst that filled Document. As manifestos go, few bands could do better and this was the first shot fired across the boughs.
13/1. "The One I Love" - Proving that people don't actually listen to lyrics, this was a wedding reception staple for years. I'm guessing they missed that part where Stipe refers to his love as "a simple prop to occupy my time." Or maybe people did listen to they lyrics, you never know.
18/1. "Losing My Religion" - Universally misunderstood, conventional wisdom pegged this song as a crisis of faith. Apparently, it's just a southern expression for an infatuation so bad that it seems to test your faith.
19/1. "Country Feedback" - The sour that defines the sweet on R.E.M.'s true mainstream breakthrough, Out of Time. Layered in waves of pedal steel guitar, Stipe's sublime and mellifluous voice rings through with the desperate exasperation of love's failings.
20/1. "Shiny Happy People" - Long since dismissed by the band as a fluffy piece of pop naff, I endured childhood through the Reagan eighties and still refuse to frame it in my mind as anything other than a riposte to such superficial times.
2/2. "Man on the Moon" - Forget the drummer jokes, Bill Berry was a large contributor to R.E.M.'s songwriting process. Both "Man on the Moon" and "Everybody Hurts" were said to be instigated by Berry and his departure in '98 made reinvention essential, not preferable.
9/2. "Imitation of Life" - Imitation of R.E.M. was more like it. Building off of the classic formula set by "the Great Beyond," this was the obvious single for Reveal. In retrospect, the album bore more sonic resemblence to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds than anything in R.E.M.'s catalog. And as obvious as this single was, there's still a gloriously symphonic beauty to all the electronic bells and whistles added here, especially that low synth sound in the bridge.

Part Heart
3/1. "Talk About the Passion" - Curious after Out of Time and hooked after Automatic for the People, I became obsessed after my best friend in mid-school gave me the I.R.S. retrospective Eponymous. I gorged on it during a visit to my grandparents place not long after. As a result, this song always sounds like traveling through the Ozark countryside of Arkansas to me- it sounds like a distant home.
5/1. "So. Central Rain" - Even though the rest of the song makes little to no sense for me, there's that chorus of "I'm sorry" that comes through clear as day. Like most angst filled teenagers, I'm sure I felt that deeply even without any idea of what I had to be sorry for. Kids.
6/1. "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" - We used to cover this in one of my old bands years ago. We replaced the honkytonk piano with a dirty Social D sorta guitar sound, so I guess our redneck requirements were met. Which means, for a few years, friends thought we wrote it. I wish.
8/1. "Life and How to Live It" - One Christmas, shortly after Automatic had come out, my brother gave me a copy of Fables of the Reconstruction. Good thing, too, as I'm not sure my high school self would have bought it. And then I would have missed out on this and "Wendell Gee."
1/2. "Everybody Hurts" - Based on the video for this song alone, this song quickly became parody bait. But still, it was a sweet thought from Stipe to generation angst and, lest you forget, John Paul Jones (the bloke from Led Zeppelin that didn't play guitar, sing or die) arranged the strings for this.
3/2. "Nightswimming" - Haunting, beautiful and simple, this song dwells on the threshold of the past. Listening to it always creates a sense of phantom nostalgia for me and I really wish, a band or two ago, we'd learned to cover it.
5/2. "New Test Leper" - This song, which revolves around love, decency and hypocrisy, sums up every anxiety and personal conflict I've ever felt about being religious (or not) that I've felt in thirty plus years. And it does so gorgeously in five and a half minutes.
11/2. "Leaving New York" - An ode to post 9/11 New York City, there's a mournful quality here that recognizes grieving, even in the face of futility. And even more brilliantly, it does so without mentioning 9/11. This song came to me at a time when I really needed it.
13/2. "Supernatural Superserious" - Between those bare Joe Strummer-like guitar chords and Stipe's lyrical waxing, it's too easy to think of this song as the sound of adolescence. But really, it's the sound of how we wished were in adolescence- articulate, heartfelt and hungry.
14/2. "Uberlin" - One of my favorite songs to come out this last year. Period. And I'm very glad they chose to include it here. I'm not sure if the narrator in this song is falling apart from the inside or just needs a nap, but I imagine the sight of his exhausted reflection in the mirror before he heads out into the world for the day.

Part Truth
1/1. "Gardening at Night" - People forget, assuming they knew in the first place, that R.E.M. carried the torch for American music in the eighties. Of course, there was always Bruce, Madonna and Prince but they were the emphatic part of the eighties. R.E.M. was the part that inspired a bazillion garage bands with jangly guitars and poor enunciation. That starts here with this song.
2/1. "Radio Free Europe" - Along with "Gardening at Night," this was the face that launched a thousand ships. More than any other song in their catalog, this brought R.E.M. as close to actual punk as they would ever be. At the same time, this also solidified numerous characteristics that became synonomous with R.E.M.: indecipherable lyrics, Byrds on speed guitars and staccato bass lines.
12/1. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)" - Like every other high schooler who was an R.E.M. fan, I knew every single word of this at one point. It didn't help me in karaoke, though. They had the wrong words! Still, I never change the radio when this comes on.
17/1. "Orange Crush" - Using a call and response vocal attack, they took what could have another one of Green's memorable pop songs and dipped it in menace. This was the end result: an agit pop indictment of the military industrial complex that poisoned its own forces with Agent Orange. Of course, I'm not sure how many people remember that now.
4/2. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" - I remember the first time I heard a backwards guitar solo. It was in "London Calling" and I found myself wondering what the hell had just happened to my ears. A close friend explained that the guitar solo had been written and then recorded in reverse. That way, when they flipped the recording, it sounded like an underwater missile. Knowing that, I still find myself wondering what's happened to me every time I hear this song and. that. solo.
6/2. "Electrolite" - As the closing song on New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Stipe's last refrain of "I'm outta here" always seemed more cheeky than prophetic (drummer Bill Berry would not return for the next album). Still, that little moment has always been one of my favorite vocal moments ever and was my voice mail greeting for a good year or so.
12/2. "Living Well is the Best Revenge" - After Up's sullen ambience and the midtempo sunshine of Reveal, surely the arrival of Bill Rieflin (of Ministry fame) on Around the Sun meant a rockin' record, right? Well, at least they got there on Accelerate and nowhere was that more apparent than this opening shot. Still a thrill to hear, even amongst all these other hits.
15/2. "Oh My Heart" - Apocalyptic landscapes have long been a recurring theme in Stipe's lyrics. It wasn't until Hurricane Katrina that he had a real one to write about. And he hardly seems fine.
18/2. "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" - A look back filled with memories, dreams and other imaginings. It's unclear if this is simply reminiscence or an actual parting of ways but Stipe's voice is so sweet it hardly matters.
19/2. "Hallelujah" - It would be all too easy to record another version of Leonard Cohen's classic via Jeff Buckley via Rufus Wainwright. Instead, the band throws everything they have (acoustic and electric guitar, strings, Mike Mills' backing vocals and whatever other weird sounds they can find) before one final chorus that soars. "Amen" is more like it.

Part Garbage
4/1. "Sitting Still" - Due, I'm sure, to the numerous qualities they share, this song has always seemed to be eclipsed by "Radio Free Europe." That being said, I still get caught up on that chorus of "Up to par and katie bar."
14/1. "Stand" - I was still a few years away from being a fan when I first heard this and I remember, even then, finding it quite odd. Even at that age, I could recognize something different taking place. By the time they used it as the theme song for a Chris Elliott sitcom, I was devoted. But I still regret it's association with Chris Elliott in my mind.
15/1. "Pop Song 89" - This tests even my love for R.E.M. cheese. It's so embarassingly catchy it makes me uncomfortable. But I guarantee you'll still catch me singing along if I'm not thinking about it.
16/1. "Get Up" - Another one of their unabashed pop songs, this one seems to somehow skirt the cheese factor. I'm not sure if its the way Peter Buck counterbalances his guitar hits against the backing vocals or the deliriously daft chimes in the bridge. Either way, this song has always seemed criminally underrated next other singles off of Green, such as "Stand" or "Orange Crush."
21/1. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" - Featuring one of the band's more interesting chord progressions as Stipe apes the classic "Lion Sleeps Tonight." There's talk of black eyed peas, the cat in the hat and a phone booth and... wha...? The sidewinder is a homeless woman?
7/2. "At My Most Beautiful" - Off the incredibly underrated and unfairly maligned Up. Had that album been by a new band, it would have been huge. This is the one song I skip when I listen to that album as it's straighforward arrangement makes it a little out of place on a lo-fi electronic record. But here, it fits in perfectly.
8/2. "The Great Beyond" - A redux of Automatic's "Man on the Moon," this was written for the Andy Kaufman bio-pic of the same name. As such, they straddled the line between Up's ambient beauty and Reveal's sunny melodicism. In doing so, they defined a "classic R.E.M." sound that many found lacking from the rest of their output at the time. To their credit, however, it would have been easy to write a dozen of these every four years and cash in on the tour but the band resisted.
10/2. "Bad Day" - As a throw-away single for their Warner Bros. retrospective In Time, this gave fans hope that the next album would be all furious fists and memorable hooks. Sadly, that was not the case but it was fun for the four minutes that this song lasted.
16/2. "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" - One last blast of the whirling dervish word vomit that R.E.M. did so well, with Peaches on the backing vocals no less. If they'd been this much fun on Monster seventeen years prior, I would not be explaining to younger friends why this band is such a treasure.
38/2. "A Month of Saturdays" - Sometimes, the sillier this band is, the more I love them. Their silliest song since "Chance," an Automatic for the People era b-side. When Stipe sings "I wanna take all the Saturdays, I wanna stay up late," I imagine this is the sound of retirement and it sounds like fun.

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Dynamite Steps/Live in New York by the Twilight Singers

Long gone are the days when the Twilight Singers seemed like a consolation prize to fans distraught over the dissolution of the Afghan Whigs. Originally conceived as an outlet for Greg Dulli between records, it became the singer songwriter's focal point immediately following the breakup of the Whigs. Five albums in now, Dynamite Steps presents a seemingly small but significant shift in artistic vision. If Dulli's modus operandi has been, up to this point, to create audio equivalents to indie crime flicks, then this is his most accessible effort yet. It's popcorn Dulli writ large: a widescreen cinematic vision that's everything you ever loved about the Twilights and then some.

Elements from throughout their multi-faceted career can be found here: the smoky electronic ambiance of Twilight as played by..., the bleak nihilism of Blackberry Belle, the reeling introspection of Powder Burns. More than any of that, however, there' s the virtuostic soulman swagger of She Loves You. Dulli's trouble man punk rock persona is pushed up to eleven here but only for affectation. Instead of being the usual clearinghouse for Dulli's demons, Dynamite Steps really comes off much more as a celebratory showcase for his band. Road tested, rock hard and true, a genuine band seems to have emerged after years of going out and touring these songs night after night. Even though the usual suspects (Mark Lanegan, Petra Haden and Ani Difranco) all still abide, the true glory belongs to this crack team of musicians that have evolved into a fit and trim fighting unit over the last decade.

And while Dynamite Steps is a vastly effective diorama of the Twilight's strong points, their road tested cohesion translates better to Live in New York. Unlike the smouldering to incendiary performances that backed 2006's Powder Burns, this is a band on fire. Punching like a boxer running out of time, they play as if their lives depend on it with the knowledge that any fight may be their last. If Dynamite Steps was an implied threat then Live in New York is their roiling suckerpunch.

"Whenever you're here you're alive," Dulli coos over the simple piano refrain that starts the album, "the devil says you can do what you like." It's "the Last Night in Town" and the simplest sort of exhortation that lies at the heart of his career: do what you want, damn the consequences, damn the torpedoes. And like that, they're off for the next nineteen tracks. It's a marathon sprint through their career, played with more ferocity and deftness than most young bands muster these days. Almost as if to say, they're the motherfucking Twilight Singers and they're not above reminding you every chance they get.

Such self assuredness hardly comes as a shock to anyone familiar with Dulli's career but here it carries over to more than the recording. The sound quality, raw and lacking studio polish, brings a feeling of actually being in the club. And while the lack of overdubs guarantees that flubs are preserved forever, there is a more genuine feeling of who this band is- blemishes and all. That is the epitome of self assuredness.


essential listening:

Dynamite Steps-
Last Night in Town
Blackbird and the Fox
The Beginning of the End

Live in New York-
She Was Stolen
Candy Cane Crawl
Teenage Wristband

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Sky Full of Holes by Fountains of Wayne

Bruce will always have Nebraska. Bowie will always have Berlin. But Fountains of Wayne have always seemed to be perpetually stuck in suburban America. 2007's Traffic & Weather lingered on protagonists who tragically rushed through their lives without ever getting anywhere. 2003's Welcome Interstate Managers was an ode to suburbanites trapped in the cubicleland of middlemanagement hell. Sky Full of Holes, however, is a new and novel take for this band on the subject: it's the suburban disseration on mortality. Tuneful but passingly morbid, it's their rumination on life, death and all the rest. It's their own American Prayer; a reimagining in which Jim Morrison wears short sleeved button down shirts for his accounting job. It's a powerpop Automatic for the People that trades the gothic austerity of Athens, Georgia, for the simple pleasures of Jersey Shore.

Which is not to say that Sky Full of Holes is a glum affair. It's still a FOW album, after all, and nobody makes the mundane more spectacular than Fountains of Wayne. Their brilliance has always been their ability to find the humanity of a song skirted between the accelerated delivery of comedy and the nuanced languor of tragedy. Sky Full of Holes, their most straighforward effort since 1999's Utopia Parkway, has plenty of characters that offer both.

There's the hare brained losers of "Richie and Ruben," the roadsick musician of "Roadsong," and the despondent girlfriend in "Hate to See You Like This." At first glance, there aren't a lot of thoughts here on the surface that linger towards morbid fascination. But spread across the whole album, there is a a pervasive unease that comes with the realization that time is oppressively encroaching upon all of us. "Workingman's Hands" concerns itself with saving money "for a hole in the ground, a black car and a long wall of roses" while "Cold Comfort Flowers," with it's psychadelic harmonies, states it's affair much more plainly with the chorus of "cold comfort flowers will bloom and decay."

Given this newfound morbidity, it's not hard to understand the mordant ennui of the the girlfriend in "Hate to See You Like This." The haplessly bored sister of "The Summer Place" feels it, too. She daydreams about feeling half as alive as she felt when she was a shoplifting teen. The Walter Mitty-esque protagonist of "Action Hero" finds himself in the midst of a medical scare that's soon to be an existential crisis. "Cemetary Guns" is a sermon for the "blue war widow in the grey raincoat." Bloom and decay, indeed.

Lacking the Steve Miller-esque sheen of their last album or the new wave hooks that propelled "Stacy's Mom" to public consciousness, it would be all too easy to write off Sky Full of Holes as an excercise in solemnity. But FOW keep the arrangements simple and let singer Chris Collingwood's vocals do the heavy lifting. Their typical snarky flare is traded for a more subtle delivery as they let their impeccable songwriting and nuanced melodicism do all the talking. The end result is still unmistakably Fountains of Wayne: even with the softer touch and slower delivery, everybody still sings along.


essential listening:

Action Hero
Cold Comfort Flowers
Cemetary Guns
*the Story in Your Eyes (amazon exclusive)

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Ceremonials by Florence + the Machine

As a group, Florence + the Machine's sound could best be described in one word: elemental. Singer Florence Welch's voice was a hurricane amongst the ethereal atmospherics of their debut album Lungs. Ceremonials, on the other hand, is delivered with an earthiness only hinted at in prior efforts. With it's solid piano hits and bombastic drumming, it's an album that revolves around the tasteful reserve of the band's musicianship versus the release of Welch's full throated vocal throttle.

Given the oversize melodies and theatrics of the songs, it's easy to reimagine Welch as a mainstream hook laden diva in another life. But with such a powerful voice at her command, it's inane to campare her to any of her female contemporaries. Forget Britney, Christina or any of their clonified proteges. Welch is a supernatural talent who bears more resemblance to mythical creatures of lore- think sirens and banshees. One banshee, in particular, comes to mind: Siouxsie Sioux.

Whereas the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O always conveyed more of Sioux's vocal DNA as unrestrained id, Welch flips the coin by instead appropriating her deft sense of glamour and restrained elegance. It's there in the anthemic chorus of "Only If For a Night." It's there in the hushed melody of "Breaking Down." It's there in the haunting anguish of "Seven Devils." Welch's voice, a supernatural wonder of massive destruction and beauty, is a lethal alterna-punk sleeper amongst the soft mainstream divas.

But the real challenge for Florence + the Machine has got to be finding songs that allow the band to define their singer as much as she defines them. Lungs suffered from a severe case of debuitis in which the young band threw everything, possibly including the kitchen sink, at arrangements. But Ceremonials, with it's diverse offerings, is a more tasteful display. There's a strong sense of deliberation at play here- they allow the arrangements more room to breathe while the supporting cast choses the best moments to reveal their best parts. This allows them to shine instead of crowding the picture as the songs luxuriate in the ambiance they've created.


essential listening:
Breaking Down
Shake It Out
Lover to Lover

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Hanna Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

As composed by the Chemical Brothers, there is a remarkable amount of music box whimsy that accompanies the original motion picture soundtrack to Hanna. Laced especially through "Hanna's Theme," "the Devil is in the Details" and their respective variations, it's the perfect sound for the youthful naivete that comes with the protracted and protective isolation of childhood. Alternately, action scenes are delivered with digital loop de loops where layer upon layers of synth sounds spiral into kaleidoscopic new sounds.

As a score, it brings the Chemical Brothers to an arena in which they can explore dynamic shifts and ambient subtleties usually disallowed within the realm of techno. Scenes such as "Car Chase (Arp Worship)" fire off with a contained urgency and an appropriate amount of time to build tension before spilling over with an arena ready drum sound and then suddenly coaslescing into a hushed breath of a bridge. As it's own musical entity, it's compelling. As a score, it's so strong that it just comes short of overpowering the movie it was written for.

None of which is to say that the Chemical Brothers have completely abandoned form. "Escape Wavefold"s swaggering bass is a phenomenal reminder of where these composer's originally hail from. And "Container Park" shows the Chemical Brothers digging deep into their bag of techno tricks as the music lulls in and out of time and phase.

As an independent piece of work, Hanna stops just short of being a true album. There are too many snippets that stop short of being true songs. Additionally, there are also themes that bear repeated variations (though none so good as the demented electro clash "the Devil is in the Beats"). But as a score, it's undeniably captivating. It's an audio equivalent to Alice in Wonderland: a Dali-esque melting slideshow of childhood's journey as it's informed by the treacherous shadows of adulthood's lingering expectations and the surreality of a world formed beyond one's control or influence.


essential listening:
the Devil is in the Beats
Container Park
Escape Wavefold

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: 100 Lovers by Devotchka

Opening with the gently swelling strings and piano of "the Alley," 100 Lovers arrives like the gently sweeping sands of a desert oasis. It's exudes a feeling so calm and serene that it's almost impossible not to imagine the majestic expanse of the desert in its still and silent beauty. It's not until the propulsive opening bars of the second song, "All the Sand in All the Sea," that the album starts to feel more like the center of a dust devil.

Welcome to Devotchka's sixth studio album. It's an album rich with inspired visions of the desert, tastefully impressive musicianship and a production sense so epic that its cinematic. It's an album that sounds like a Lorca play scored by Ennio Morricone and spiked with red wine.

It's also probable that it's the most romantic piece of work you'll hear all year. Whistfully poppy at turns, elegantly strident at others, their usual blend of ambitious world music is bolstered here by a production ethic that enhances it's accessibility without sacrificing it's diversity. They veer effortlessly from flamenco ("Bad Luck Heels") to spaghetti western bombast ("the Man From San Sebastion") while still managing to cover all points points in between. The success of this approach, whether it's the infectiously breezy pop of "100 Other Lovers" and "Exhaustible" or the arena ready urgency of "All the Sand in All the Sea" and "The Common Good," is self evident.

Musically, Devotchka tower. And even though the songs don't sound like it, they are deceptively straightforward. They live within the simple skeleton framework of pop music songwriting (verse chorus verse and so on) but every devilish little deatil, whether it's Thomas Hagerman's violin work or Nick Urata's double duty with the theramin, take the songwriting from dependable to spellbinding. It wouldn't be hard to argue that Devotchka may be the most literate band out there but this is still a helluva ruckus for four musicians who look more like a book club.

essential listening:

All the Sand in All the Sea
100 Other Lovers
the Common Good

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Collapse Into Now by R.E.M.

How simple it all seems with time. Collapse Into Now, R.E.M.'s final album on contract with Warner Brothers, was declared by many as a return to form and the band's most listenable effort in more than a decade and a half. What a bittersweet affair, then, that this record has turned out to be now that they've announced their retirement, effective immediately. Using Collapse as their exit strategy, they knowingly crafted a love letter of an album. It's a fond farewell to each other, to their legacy as a band and more than anything, to their (some would say long-suffering) fans. And in the process, they reminded us why we all loved them so much to begin with and why, ultimately, we'll miss them so much down the road.

And all they had to do was sound like R.E.M.

All facets of R.E.M. are on display here: the elegiac beauty of Automatic for the People, the up-tempo strumminess of Out of Time, the anarchic fuzzbox glee of Monster. Stipe's vocals are worth the price of admission alone as he veers from personality to personality with ease. He goes from mournful crooning to ecstatic wordplay (word vomit as he's called it in past interviews) to defiant pronouncements as if he's covering the whole of his career in just one disc.

Unlike a lot of bands, R.E.M. has never successfully recouped on tensions within the group. At their best, they defined themselves with a cohesive artistic vision- whether it was the acoustic Out of Time or the 90's glam Monster. And while past efforts may have seemed chronically laborious for both the band and listeners, this album feels more like a joyuous rediscovery of all the best that the band has always had to offer. They sound at ease with themselves, as though they're unburdened of the baggage of being R.E.M. and finally able to just enjoy it for what it is.

It's almost as if they're finally throwing themselves that apocalyptic party they've always wanted to.


essential listening:
Uberlin
All the Best
Mine Smell Like Honey

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: I Am Very Far by Okkervil River

I Am Very Fary, Okkervil River's sixth album, is a Mad Max dystopia of a record. Unlike Okkervil's past efforts, which is marked by a languid sort of patience, this record surges with an unprecedented menace that's oppressively urgent at one moment and dreadfully quiet the next. It's a record of extremes- a controlled descent into madness where every ray of sunlight is defined by the shadows that grow dark around them. It's littered with wide open soundscapes populated by every doom and gloom pronouncement lead singer Will Sheff can make.

The majority of I Am Very Far is akin to releasing a beast of an Okkervil River that's only been hinted at on prior releases. It makes a move away from the band's usual high minded works of literate deliberation and towards a more freewheeling sound where the id runs rampant for better or worse. Only on "Lay of the Last Survivor" do we get truly close to a traditional Okkervil sound: quiet, reflective and reserved with more than a little sadness for its subject. The rest of the album is shot through with rampant paranoia and desparation as it goes places that one knows better but can't resist.

Which isn't to say that this is a wholly brand new model for the band. A lot of the intent here is the same. It's just the palette of colors that isn't. The ideas here, musical or otherwise, are still grandiose and deceptively expansive in ways not often found in the typical rock canon. "We Need a Myth" sees the band shifting dynamics and instrumentation in a manner akin to 2007's "John Allyn Smith Sails" while "Rider" features an up-tempo dynamic that would not have been out of place on the Stand Ins. It just takes a song like "White Shadow Waltz" to see that this is still the same Okkervil, it just happens to be through Brian Wilson's acid tinted lenses.


essential listening:
The Valley
Your Past Life as a Blast
The Rise

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: Past Life Martyred Saints by EMA

Past Life Martyred Saints is not so much an album as it is a sound collage with occasional bursts of melody, rhythm and harmony. As artistic statements go, it's a piece of work so histrionic in it's honesty that it becomes epic fiction. Much of this is due to EMA's almost Reznorian taste for lo-fi white noise production. The songs range from industrial stomp rave-ups ("Milkman") to pulpit bullyings ("California") but really, most of the songs here are just the fevered beginnings of incredible imaginings. They start off gently before before unspooling into epochal sonic journeys to the afterlife and back. The opening "Grey Ship" alone is enough to start garnering comparisons to a post modern Dark Side of the Moon.

Coupled with a dash of Karen O's vocal verve, EMA shows a keen instinct for attacking a song while at the same time abandoning traditional song structure in ways that only a young person can. The lyrics convey an artist who's not just in conflict with herself- she's at war. She covers with a frighteningly stark and emotional honesty the goalposts of affection, obsession and all points in between: second chances gone wrong, substance abuse, depression, mutilation and every other source of angst out there.

"You were goth in high school," she sings, as if self immolation ever really goes out of style. Not only is it still fashionable here, it's an act of defiant, conflicted beauty. Especially when tempered by the longing in lyrics like "If this time through, we don't get it right, I'll come back to you in another life."

Past Life Martyred Saints is not the easiest album you'll hear this year (or ever for that matter). There are moments that veer from choral to atonal before haphazardly embracing both elements. There aren't many hooks. And there isn't a lot of leeway for casual listeners. It demands proper attention and respect from listeners in the hopes that they'll take the time to really take in the tragic beauty of the burn that's happening before their ears. In short, it's the sort of record that makes one wish they'd never heard music before just so they could obsessively fall in love with music for the first time... again.


Essential listening:
Grey Ship
California
Milkman

The Story Thus Far 2011 Edition: King of Limbs by Radiohead

Long past the guitar histrionics of Radiohead's 90's output, every new release becomes an excercise in Schrodinger's rock: all albums are possible until it's finally released. Their latest, King of Limbs, alludes to ghostly trees and Eurocentric mythology but the sound is more akin to Japanese horror-pop cinema.

Not only are the songs here ghosts in the machine- they are the machine. They're cold, detached and methodically haunting. Sounds creep in and out of familiarity before contorting into hyperpixelated landscapes of ghostly melodies and rhythms. At one moment, they're a spectral glimpse of a song waiting to happen. Then, they're melting into inside out shapes of themselves like a glitchy sample stuck on repeat. Lost amid the stir of echoes here is Thom Yorke's crooning falsetto. Here, he sounds at home swept away in a stream of sounds equivalent to some seriously corrupted signal.

And then something really confusing happens. Starting with "Lotus Flower," the album's midway point, conventional songs start to appear. A more commercial artist would have used this material to sequence a hushed meditative album that melts into a Dali-esque slice of audio acid. Instead, the rhythms straighten themselves out and melodies start to cohere. "Codex" and "Give up the Ghost" bring a welcomed but unexpected quality to the album: hushed codas. "Separator" is as straighforward a song as Radiohead makes these days and an excellent send off that leaves the listener perplexed as to what comes next.


Essential Listening:
Morning Mr Magpie
Lotus Flower
Give Up the Ghost