15 studio albums reviewed – with clear recommendations for beginners and fans.
They developed from a cult-revered college rock band into megastars of the MTV age – and still turned a nose at the mainstream. They constantly revised their sound, and that’s rare in this category: although they eventually became a “three-legged dog”, REM didn’t release a really bad album.
All the best
Reckoning (1984)
Driven by twee, folk and a kind of punk, the songs push forward. “Pretty Persuasion”, “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville” and “7 Chinese Bros” combine melancholy and drive in a way that the band rarely achieved again later. Perhaps the album on which REM most resolutely balance feeling and direct message.
– Five and a half stars
Document (1987)
For the first time, REM reach the top 10 of the US album charts – and for the first time they are working with producer Scott Litt, who will accompany them for the next nine years. Maybe that’s why: The first REM album that is no longer college rock in the sense of bands like the Replacements, but marches firmly into the mainstream. This is difficult to accept because, alongside hits like “The One I Love” and “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”, there is room for musical expansion – such as the use of a dulcimer in the wonderful “King Of Birds”.
– Five and a half stars
Out Of Time (1991)
In the early 1990s, REM played perfect music at the moment. The songs on this album follow the ennui and doubts of Generation X, but also meet all the requirements that MTV sets for the new alternative mainstream. Some may therefore say that the album shows slight signs of wear and tear – but they are wrong. From the introductory “Radio Song” to the sandy “Country Feedback”, from KRS-ONE to the B-52’s: This work contains everything that makes REM so special. You just have to break the surface.
– Six stars
Automatic For The People (1992)
It’s not just Michael Stipe who creates the melting effect here. Scott Litt’s production and John Paul Jones’ string arrangements give this music an otherworldly gravity without ever becoming sentimental. From “Drive” to “Man On The Moon” to “Nightswimming”, the album proves to be a perfect cycle about transience and melancholy, which finally elevates the band beyond the indie cosmos.
– Six stars
New Adventures In Hi-Fi (1996)
The last album with Bill Berry seems like a conscious farewell to the classic formation: eclectic, harsh in expression and full of unexpected twists. Recorded during the Monster tour, it breathes live energy and joy of experimentation without ever seeming arbitrary. “Leave”, “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us” and “Be Mine” stretch in all directions once again. The album reaches heaven in the string-heavy “E-Bow The Letter” with Patti Smith.
– Five stars
Accelerate (2008)
Old work? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. Songs like “Living Well Is The Best Revenge” and “Supernatural Superserious” show REM angry, compact and surprisingly vital. Above all – and this is certainly thanks to producer Jacknife Lee – the band is not afraid of greatness. The result: 35 minutes of peak performance.
– Four and a half stars
Finest work songs
Murmur (1983)
The debut becomes vague in some places. But it is precisely in this lack of grip that there is an astonishing power that shows what is to come: later incarnations have already been laid out in the shadowy “Perfect Circle” and in “Pilgrimage” with its straight beat.
– Four and a half stars
Fables Of The Reconstruction (1985)
Their darkest album – a Southern Gothic journey that tells of bygone times, of strange places and the ways to get there. To record, REM left the USA and worked with Joe Boyd in London. He gave the guitars a lot of twang and invited strings, which the band only partially appreciated. “Driver 8” is still their best song of the early years.
– Four stars
Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)
A year later the step towards a bigger, more universal sound. Don Gehman’s production gives the songs power without questioning their fragile poetry – which can be heard in the perfectly layered “Fall On Me”. Plus, Stipe’s voice is more prominent than ever before.
– Four and a half stars
Green (1988)
Should they talk about the weather? Or through the government? REM don’t seem to really know where they want to go. The entry into the major era oscillates between impetuous single candidates like “Pop Song 89” and more sober pieces. The album hardly settles down – that’s not a bad thing.
– Four stars
Monsters (1994)
The big glam rock ride: loud, distorted and ironic. “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Star 69” show a band playing with their own iconography and that of the rock star. Conscious self-distancing – because Stipe’s friends River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain die at the same time.
– Four and a half stars
Up (1998)
Bill Berry is gone. The electronic pluckiness of “Airportman” is picked up elsewhere, for example in the touching chamber pop of “At My Most Beautiful” or “Daysleeper”. Stipe described the drummer-less REM as a “three-legged dog.” It may be that he had to learn to walk again. He could still bark.
– Four stars
Collapse Into Now (2011)
In “Discoverer” the guitars ring like on Out Of Time. REM wallow in their own work; The last chapter comes confidently with a farewell greeting in “All The Best”: “Let’s sing it and rhyme / Let’s give it one more time / Let’s show the kids how to do it fine.”
– Four stars
Ignoreland
Reveal (2001)
A sunny, shimmering update of the Up sound. “Imitation Of Life” is a hit, “All The Way To Reno” is a worthy entry in the list of songs about the “Little Big City”. Overall, however, the album lacks drive and urgency.
– Three and a half stars
Around The Sun (2004)
Her only work that was in danger of being irrelevant. Apart from the singles and “The Outsiders”, everything rushes through. According to Stipe, they had “lost focus”. True.
– Three stars