Amazon.co.uk Review
After REM's somewhat ambitious 1996 album,
New Adventures in Hi-Fi, failed to light up the charts, you might have figured the band would return to the rock-solid bombast of
Monster or the consumer-friendly pop of
Green. But REM have enough cash not to worry about commercial failure, and they've already been to the top of the mountain, so for now they'd rather explore its lush valleys and secret caves.
Up is an atmospheric journey as impressionistic as Enya and as evocative as John Barry. Some critics have compared it with the band's delicate and emotionally revealing gem
Automatic for the People, but
Up is more ambitious and creative. Sure, most of the songs are pastoral, but they're undercut with drama and sonic experimentation. The melodies are generally spare, the beats sparse. Guitars flicker in and out, providing tension and dynamics, while quivering strings, layered keyboards, and washes of feedback colour the songs like textured lines of paint in an oil portrait. The only blatant pop song is the single "Daysleeper". The rest of the album ebbs and flows, each song a separate component of a complete artistic expression. The sound may be influenced by guitarist Peter Buck's cinematic jazz side project Tuatara or by Michael Stipe's celluloid excursions, but its source doesn't matter. What's important is that more than a decade after their sell-by date, REM continue to challenge and inspire. Things are definitely looking up.
--Jon Wiederhorn
CD Description
The departure of drummer Bill Berry in 1997 no doubt unsettled his former R.E.M.-mates, who found themselves straddlingnot only creative, but personal crossroads. Rather than giving up, the remaining members of R.E.M. reinvented themselves and released UP, a stunning, eloquent album of dark vulnerability and experimentalism. The emotional disquiet Stipe evokes is nearly shocking in its plainspoken lyricism. Songs like the agonised "Sad Professor" and the wary, hypnotic "Suspicion" seem almost too naked for Stipe, who spent years cloaking his words in mumbles and misnomers. For the first time, lyrics are even included in the packaging.
"Hope" is a breathless, galloping piece of pseudo-electronica that raises the ghost of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" before ending in a heady roar of noise. The gorgeous jangle of "At My Most Beautiful" is pure poetry, an unabashed disclosure of Buck's giddy reverence for Brian Wilson. Although a drum machine is used at times (Beck drummer Joey Waronker and Tuatara percussionist Barrett Martin also guest on many tracks), an array ofdisparate sounds, from vibes to violin, infuses the songs with a newfound expressiveness. UP is unlike any other album in the band's long catalogue--a bold, brilliant spark of musical genius and genuine empathetic revelation.
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