R.E.M.
Up

“Dear readers, my apologies.
I’m drifting in and out of sleep.
Long silence presents the tragedies of love.
Note the age.
Get afraid.
The surface hazy with attendant thoughts.
A lazy eye metaphor on the rocks.”
(Sad Professor)

The poetry.
Once again.
Beautiful and hermetic.
For the first time in the discography of R.E.M., the words that forge Michael Stipe's songs appear in black and white, squeezed inside a booklet.

This is R.E.M.'s most experimental album, certainly the one with the most electronics and desire for new.

Out of necessity: in some way, they needed to make sure Bill Berry's drums were not missed.
Out of will: they needed to bring the band's sound to new territories, to earn the esteem of other people and to avoid the implosion that was seriously risking to shut down the band.
What begins as a transitional record, meant to “ferry the band” towards perhaps calmer and safer territory, becomes itself a blazing beacon.

The album is full of smog, stress, infernal life rhythms.
It’s the metropolitan album of the band from Athens.
The 21st century invades rock music and clouds it with toxic gases: hence the slow, sad, deep bass lines, reflecting Stipe's voice and his desperate lyrics.

It requires a long period of digestion, especially for people who had just become fond of Electrolite and the “new adventures in hi-fi.”
From what was a nucleus on the brink of the most melancholic end births a small masterpiece that makes music magazines worldwide rediscover that there is a band that, when it truly desires, can take center stage like very few others in the world.

A record full of solitude, dated 1998.
The last great thing to remember in the discography of R.E.M.
For the moment.