Five New R.E.M. Tunes, Live From Dublin
R.E.M.'s concert year is underway in Dublin, as the band has dug into the city's Olympia Theater for a five night run of waaay sold-out shows. If you can't be there, well, you won't be seeing the band this year; those are the only shows slated for '07. But the good news is that these shows are a "Working Rehearsal" for the band's forthcoming, fourteenth studio album, meaning we can all look forward to poring over varying degrees of shitty YouTubes as track previews. And so here's an assemblage of the tunes, starting with new track "Until The Day Is Done."
Four more (two with titles!) after the jump.
"Living Well's The Best Revenge"
"Horse To Water"
(Title Unknown)
Another Title Unknown
Posted at 11:14 AM in Video
Tags: R.E.M.
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Sounds like they're trying to produce the "old" sound again. By "old", I mean better...
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not crazy about the first one...I hope someone in their studio lights a fire under their ass this time...their last one was dreadful and I consider myself a very easy to please REM fan.
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With every new release REM chips away at their past...and not in a good way...they should have broken up when Bill quit or at the very least do a farewell tour with him and end this charade..
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Over at MOG we had a writer attend the first live rehearsal. You can check out his post about it here:
http://mog.com/John_Madden/blog_post/91406
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Geez talk about hipsters being tough nuts to crack... Personally i think it's the best REM have been in damn long time. Better than... whatever that last album was called and arguably as good as their pre-Monster output.
First song's superb on first listen and has one of those pure magic REM jangling chord progressions. Reminds me of late 80's/early 90's indie rock melodicism at it's best. They seem to be really enjoying the letting go on the heavy tunes, Stipe's vocals are back being gritty and biting and heck even the drummer is a pleasing addition to the "new" sound (whomever he is?)! And hey I would have been the first to agree that REM was a proverbial hot rod lincoln without the engine since Bill Berry left. But that was yesterday.
Glad to see they've found some of that fire again. Let's hope it doesn't fade in the studio.
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My parents went across to Ireland and had tickets to the Friday show. Haven't heard back from them since, but my mum's a bit of an obsessive. She wasn't overly looking forward to a set of just new material though.
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REM = one of the extraordinarilly few times a departed drummer acutally kills a band. And don't you say Thompson Twins, they were already dead.
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I'm happy with these songs, at first listen at least. It sounds more like the REM of the late '80s than the '00s.
In my mind, you can chart the band slipping both by Bill Berry's departure and the disappearance of REM B-Sides. With Monster and since, it seemed that anything they recorded made the album (one exception being "Revolution" which they overproduced and held for the "Batman & Robin" soundtrack). The albums became bloated, and purchasing singles became pointless. "Reveal" and "Up" offered diminishing returns. The last studio album was their most cohesive since Monster, and best since New Adventurs in Hi-Fi, but those are low bars compared to the early catalog.
Berry's departure definitely had its impact, much like the one Jimmy Chamberlain-less Smashing Pumkins album.
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Bill Berry leaving didn't kill REM - Up is a great record, even if a lot of people have problems with the electronic textures (seriously, if you dismissed it back when it came out, go listen to it again), and Reveal had a handful of great things on it. The most recent one definately was a slide several rungs down the ladder but I think any band that's been around as long as they have is entitled to one or two howlers. Here's hoping they rediscover what made them great with the new one.
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I've rarely disliked a thing REM have recorded and it sounds like these will be no exception to that. These tunes seem to represent an assortment of old and new REM styles, which is great. Nice to have them back...soon anyway!
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that first tune is fantastic
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Try to judge a band's new material on it's own merit! I have been a fan since Life's Rich Pageant. I really dislike Green but enjoy Reveal, and it took me a long time to warm up to Fables. That being said, I am really excited about these new songs after hearing them live. The youtube clips do not do them justice!
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I ran into Scott McCaughey (R.E.M.'s tour/studio guitarist) when I was in Dublin for these shows. He said that what we were hearing live should be pretty close to what ends up on the record. This sort of live energy is exactly what they need to put on their next album.
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I have enjoy just about every single R.E.M. song and R.E.M. album ever done from start to finish with the exception of New Adventures, as most of the songs were less of the sound I enjoy.
My favorite albums are the newer slow and howling ones that everyone seems to hate.
Each album is extremely unique and very much appreciated additions to my very small music collection. Heck, if R.E.M. never became a band, I might just not listen to any music at all as most of the stuff I like by other bands might never had exsisted if it weren't for the influences of the once mighty R.E.M.
Everything that I hear these days just plain sucks.
Screw all you people who like the rockier stuff better...we have too much of that kinda crap these days!
My two cents (like it or not),
Soul_Traveller
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