R.E.M.
Up [25th Anniversary Edition]
CRAFT
“A three-legged dog is still a dog. It just has to learn how to run differently.” Those were the words of Michael Stipe, in the October 30, 1997 press release that R.E.M. issued announcing the retirement of drummer Bill Berry. Just three days shy of a year later, the band released Up—their first record as a trio on which Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills worked with drum machines, as well as session drummers Joey Waronker and Barrett Martin, to fill the void left by Berry. It seems weird now to think that more time has passed since Berry left the iconic Athens-based outfit than the amount of time he was in the band—by nearly a decade, at that—but then it’s also been 12 years since R.E.M. called it a day. Time, as time always does, has marched on.
And yet, listening to Up now, it doesn’t feel like even one second has passed, so perfectly in tune with the world—both musically and lyrically—this album is. Newly remastered for this reissue, Up still begins tentatively with “Airportman,” an almost non-song that seems to exist to serve as a transitional moment between the four-piece version of the band and the three-piece. While it does have lyrics and a melody, it’s more a composition of ambient noise than a song, an uncertain bridge between a rich and deeply successful past and a future shrouded in uncertainty—a dog indeed learning to run differently.
But then “Lotus” kicks in, and the album begins in earnest with that song’s spiky, croaky, almost punky attitude. It recalls a side the band had showcased both in its immediate past—on 1994’s Monster and 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi—but also harks back to the band’s wild and rambunctious early days in the early ’80s before they’d honed the sound that most people tend to associate with them. That’s here too, though, notably in “Suspicion” and “Daysleeper,” the most typically “R.E.M.” R.E.M. song on this album. But there are also signs of the band trying to escape the inevitable trappings of their own legacy, most noticeably on “Hope,” an electronically and spiritually updated vision of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”—something the band only noticed in retrospect and felt compelled to give him a songwriting credit for.
Elsewhere, the tender “At My Most Beautiful” is, musically, a more deliberate homage to The Beach Boys that also serves as one of R.E.M.’s purest, most heart-on-sleeve love songs, “The Apologist” and “Walk Unafraid” demonstrate that they were still incredibly capable of writing darkly uplifting rock songs, “You’re in the Air” highlights the incredible range and versatility of Stipe’s vocals, and “Diminished” is a harrowing journey inside the mind of someone who’s just committed murder and doesn’t know what to do. It ends with two of R.E.M.’s finest songs: the summer sigh of “Parakeet” (even more resplendent with this new remastering) and the heroic resignation and capitulation of “Falls to Climb,” the latter of which could well be one the band’s saddest-ever songs, as well as one of their most haunting.
While this reissue might have felt more complete had its demos (widely bootlegged at the time) been included, the two-CD version does come with the band’s previously (officially) unreleased 1999 recording from their performance on the set of Fox’s family drama Party of Five. That’s just a bonus, however. The real joy is the triumphant spirit that, “Airportman” excluded, permeated Up. The band didn’t just learn how to run again. They soared.
