Conventional wisdom sez the Athens institution should’ve called it quits after drummer/crucial songwriter Bill Berry skedaddled in 1996, and while my friends across the pond disagree — 2001’s Reveal debuted at #1 to robust sales at the same time the album lingered less than months domestically — I accept this CW. Floppy, confident about threading its wanderlust through its erotic road politics, New Adventures in Hi-Fi would’ve been a helluva swan song as opposed to a swan swan hummingbird.
As a result, most of R.E.M.’s least distinguished songwriting appeared on their last five albums. Not many problems on the early work, the worst of which were strands of greying kudzu: “We Walk,” the interminable “Camera,” “Good Advice.” Well, an exception, “Can’t Get There From Here,” demonstrates why R.E.M. never hired Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. No missteps on Out of Time (“Radio Song,” a terrible way to start the album, isn’t terrible, not anymore). Or Automatic for the People, whose “Ignoreland” sounds spiteful like Joe Biden isn’t.
1. Swan Swan H
2. Can’t Get There From Here
3. Camera
4. Beachball
5. Lightnin’ Hopkins
6. Parakeet
7. Good Advice
8. We Walk
9. I’ll Take the Rain
10. Around the Sun
11. So Fast, So Numb
12. Saturn Returns
13. Chorus and the Ring
14. Sing for the Submarine
15. Just a Touch
16. The Wrong Child
Humanizing The Vacuum 