by Tom Demi and Bryce Napier, first published December 21, 2015
Up
released October 27, 1998
Warner Bros. Records
“Over the years... I began to notice a certain luminous glow about the album that gives it a strange and compelling serenity.”
Up was the album that—one might say—brought them back down to earth. There was much less media attention surrounding them by this time, and the little there was mainly focused on their new configuration as a trio, following Bill Berry's departure. The first time I heard "Daysleeper," it struck me that they chose a single that would sound immediately identifiable as R.E.M., and I was a bit trepidatious that perhaps they had decided to rely on tried-and-true styles from the past instead of move ahead. On that second count, I was certainly wrong, but "Daysleeper" failed to reignite their commercial fire in the U.S.
In our last post, Bryce recounted how that post's album, New Adventures In Hi-Fi, slipped between his fingers at first, only to be rediscovered and reassessed years later. Similarly, for me with Up, I found the sadness and stillness of the album off-putting, and the hardest rocking track, "Lotus," seemed too similar to rockers from the last couple of albums. And Michael Stipe sounded alone and disconnected, with much less emphasis on Mike Mills's voice and Peter Buck's guitar in favor of more electronics (I can still remember the hype that 1998 was going to be "the year of electronica"—that turned out to be about a decade and a half premature, but apparently R.E.M. got that memo and ran with it). Plus, the absence of Berry was just kind of a bummer.
Over the years, though, every time I came back to this album, I began to notice a certain luminous glow about the album that gives it a strange and compelling serenity. Stipe has said that every song on the album concerns a protagonist at some kind of crossroads, or experiencing some kind of epiphany or realization, and I think he handled that theme expertly. I should note that this was the first R.E.M. album that included printed lyrics for every song, and they were nice to have for this one. Even though I found an awkwardness creeping into Stipe's language around the edges, his grip on narrative was still secure for most of the songs.
Since Bryce has already revealed this album to be one of his top choices in the pantheon, I'll turn it over to him here to get into some of his thoughts.
"I'm outta here." Those are the last words uttered on "Electrolite," the closing track on New Adventures In Hi-Fi. They couldn't have known how precipitous the sales decline between Monster and Adventures would be at the time those words were recorded, but delivering the last album on their contract, was there any sense that they were ready to bow out? Drummer Bill Berry himself had long ago pitched the idea of playing a big show on December 31, 1999, then promptly announcing their retirement. Meanwhile, the band had also long claimed they would never continue if not as the original foursome. How strange a limbo must it have been, then, to negotiate a new contract prior to the release of Adventures for five more albums only to find that Berry, in his post-aneurysm soul-searching, had lost his taste for the rock and roll lifestyle and wanted out? And, further, that he wouldn't leave if leaving meant the band would break up, but would instead continue on like a loveless marriage? All in order to make an album for a rapidly dwindling number of fans under conditions that they vowed they would never permit? Such were the unenviable circumstances surrounding Up's creation.
For many people who saw R.E.M. as the indivisible line-up of Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, the story of this band was now over—for some, to the point of denying any of the final third of the discography, beginning with Up, even counted as R.E.M. albums; that they were as much a sacrilege as when the Velvet Underground released Squeeze in a configuration that included neither John Cale nor Lou Reed. I scoffed a little when Tom previously suggested that the extraordinary terms they got Warner Bros. to swallow in order to retain them as label artists might have cost them fans. For a band that traded heavily on their credibility, though, Berry's departure was the perfect opportunity to go out in a manner resembling that which they'd always professed to want. Pressing on was easily perceived as a slap in the face to those loyalists who had long held them up as a paragon of integrity; easily interpreted as though they were in it for the money, and had well and truly sold out. (Full disclosure: I read an excerpt from the R.E.M. bio "Perfect Circle" during the interim between our previous entry and this one, and the fuller picture it provided of all the turbulence going at this exact moment, both at Warner Bros. and within the R.E.M. organization, is illuminating, and makes the idea of the revolt by deeply passionate fans much more understandable. While the viewpoint above is all my own, it is based, in part, on specific information that was not known to me before the past few days, and seemed worth noting here.)
Myself, I was never such a devoted fan that I was crushed by the news Berry had quit the band; in fact, the only thing I remember clearly about that time period is that R.E.M. and Peter Gabriel had both announced around the same time that their respective new albums would be entitled Up (though it would take an additional four years for the perfectionist Gabriel to stop twiddling the knobs long enough to release his album). What did I care? After two disappointing albums (or so I felt at the time), I was done with R.E.M. anyway.
But damn if "Daysleeper" didn't get me. For me, it was their best single since "End Of The World As We Know It." It straddles the line of character sketch and grand statement, using a loose picture of a trader who works nights to follow markets on the far side of the world to ponder a particular brand of modern isolation—the bleary, vague awareness of being profoundly out-of-sync with your world. It's a pretty song, too. It probably helped that I was a daysleeper myself during this time period. I worked at a big book store in Pentagon City, in Virginia, leading a small crew of shelvers who would straighten and restock the store overnight. We'd show up as the store was closing each night. Each of us would bring a CD or two to put in the 5-disc changer that provided the in-store music, hit shuffle, and go to work. There was a kind of camaraderie, but minimal conversation. It was very much a peaceful, sad, languid, otherworldly existence, captured beautifully by the song. I bought the new album almost in spite of myself and, as it turned it out, absolutely loved it.
At that time, I was also a "daysleeper" in my habits, as I was working a 3–11pm shift and often going out with coworkers afterwards. I mentioned earlier that the song initially struck me as a step backward but, as with "Fall On Me" twelve years earlier, it ingratiated itself and became a favorite. An immediate "grabber" for me was "Falls To Climb," which ends the album. It's yet another hopeful sign-off from Michael Stipe, awash in a sea of electronics and martial drums. "Walk Unafraid" became a live staple and really thrived in that context, but the album version itself is energetic, profound, and resolute. The song that took the longest to worm its way into my brain, though, was "Suspicion"—at first, I found it too spare in its instrumentation, but then I realized how apt the atmosphere was in building up the tension suggested in the lyrics.
I think it's very cool that Bryce's top three R.E.M. albums and mine are completely different from each other (Lifes Rich Pageant, Green, and Up for him; New Adventures, Murmur, and Automatic For The People for me). It's certainly evidence that this is a band that is both deeply loved and deeply respected, not to mention consistent over a long period. For me, though, the hour-plus-long Up has a few too many songs that just kind of sit there ("Diminished," "Parakeet") for it to be anywhere near the top of my list.
Maybe you can tell I've got some preemptive defensiveness over naming this as a favorite over the likes of Murmur and the rest. "Airportman" is a jarring way to signal the new sonic direction. All repetitive atmosphere and no hook, it plays a little like the aural equivalent of lying to your parents that you were kicked out of school, to soften (by comparison) your real news, which is that you're failing math. Because the rest of the album isn't that radical a departure from the R.E.M. sound. And yes, "Lotus" is a lot like a Monster outtake without the all-out assault on the senses—which is still an improvement, in my book.
The meat of this album, for me, is in the middle stretch, from "Suspicion" to "Diminished" (which does go on too long, costing the album its momentum—especially with the weird, long, freestanding coda—but is redeemed for me in the gorgeous "sing along" sections). The subdued prettiness of "Daysleeper" permeates this whole run, and this may indeed be their prettiest album. The delicate vocal harmonies of "At My Most Beautiful" recall a bittersweet Beach Boys song (and its simple piano-based arrangement makes me think of Ben Folds as well). "Hope" is delirious and buzzy (and an early standout for me). "You're In The Air" includes a eerily unmoored string arrangement. I confidently proclaimed that "Walk Unafraid," with its twitchy urgency and insistence that you let your freak flag fly, was the single that would reinvigorate their Billboard chart fortunes. However, like Tom's earlier certainty that "Revolution" would prove an asset to their portfolio (when in actuality it became a catalogue also-ran), my bold prediction was severely undermined by the fact that they did not issue it as a single.
Stylistically, the protracted sameness of Monster reappears on Up. Thematically, though, that pummeling sameness struck me as a liability on Monster, while it works for me on Up, as the woozily meditative mood helps me unplug from the world. It's good music for when I want something more than background noise, but want to give it something less than my full attention. I don't mind if it's cribbing from the Beach Boys, or from Leonard Cohen, or from Radiohead (whose longtime producer, Nigel Godrich, is here doing the mixing on about half of the tracks), or whomever else. I lose myself in it as one track hazily drifts into the next.
Somehow I forgot to mention "At My Most Beautiful," which truly is one of their sweetest songs ever. Perhaps I blocked it out because I was in an office job at one point that had music piped in, and I believe I heard that song almost every single day for a few years running. Notable to me is that this album's launch coincided with Stipe's definitive "coming out," ensuring that no one automatically assumed a female gender for the object of the song. And besides the presence of Nigel Godrich, this album featured a producer other than Scott Litt for the first time in twelve years (Pat McCarthy).
An addendum of sorts to the Up sessions (which I never realized were so fraught with bitterness and dispute until years later) was the late 1999 release of "The Great Beyond," from the soundtrack of Man On The Moon, the movie inspired by the R.E.M. song of the same name. It actually does function as a sequel to that song, and it features a similarly soaring chorus; while it didn't hit big on the American charts, it was all over the radio (and another mainstay of their live show), and it was a Top 10 success in the U.K. and elsewhere, further prompting R.E.M.'s migration to heavier touring overseas than at home. By the time of that song's release, my life had flipped around, as I was now working the day shift (and sleeping at night) and I had entered into a relationship with the man I'm married to today. He's not particularly an R.E.M. fan, but I figured that's a small price to pay for happiness.