It's somehow comforting that REM is still making quality albums after all these years and all these trials. True, boy bands ran off Billy Corgan last year, but nearly twenty years and one less drummer later, the genre-creators from Athens are still alive and kicking with a refreshingly mature, self-assured album that likely won't outsell any of its trendy, good-looking contemporaries, but is a gem for anyone within earshot.
Reveal isn't as jangly, energetic, or immediately engaging as the band's monster albums of the 90's. In fact, the album isn't that far off from the slow genius of 1998's Up. It runs along the same lines: relying less on pop hooks than on cryptic poeticisms and slow-developing rolling acoustic landscapes paired with curious digital and programmed effects.
Not that any of these stylistic nuances really have any detrimental effect at all. Michael Stipe has a voice that could make an encyclopedia entry on amoebic dysentery seem both elegant and poignant, and the collective death of the band's playing ability has been greatly exaggerated. Mills, Buck, and Stipe haven't really lost anything, and with Reveal the trio displays a comfort level with their present situation that is reflected in songs which, much like those U2 placed on their brilliant return album of last fall, are less in-the-moment and spring more from somewhere deep inside.
The musical landscape of Reveal is classically ambient and subtly modern, with Buck's signature guitar work featured prominently, but it's what is done with the arrangements that's truly inventive. "The Lifting" is choppy piano strokes wrapped in swirling guitars, and "All the Way to Reno" is a slow cowboy drawl of a song. "I'll Take the Rain" could function as the emotional and musical counterpoint to the mega-ballad "Everybody Hurts," as tender and winning in its melancholy as the hit single was in its encouragement. "Beachball" rounds out the album with its slow charming shuffle. These are songs brimming with contradictions and complexities. The album's biggest pop single, "Imitation of Life," a commentary on the effects being a celebrity has on the one writing big pop singles is actually one of the album's more straightforward numbers. But, come on, this is Stipe and Co. at their best, so irony and sensitivity are always in fashion. Despite the mixed messages, the album's chief mantra is surprisingly optimistic, along the lines of "Don't settle for the here-and-now crap, grit your teeth and pull yourself through to something better on the other side." Interesting because this is what fans of R.E.M. must have been saying after sitting through the past decade's worth of acoustic folk imitators. Relax, shiny happy people, Stipe's in his corner and all is right with the world!
3.5 tocks
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2001Reviewed by Brian A. SmithReveal is an album that should have been released before REM's last release, Up. It would have been a much more logical progression from New Adventures in Hi-Fi. The group has almost returned to an old form, with lyrical pictures and stories set to music, with Michael Stipe portraying obscure movies ("Imitation of Life"), yearning ("I've Been High"), and themes of summer ("Imitation of Life,"…The Phantom Tollbooth 2001Reviewed by Megan LenzThere's probably an experimental animal lurking somewhere in R.E.M., but this always innovative band never goes off the deep end in Reveal, their latest album. This album still has old-fashioned things like melodies, choruses, and verses. Stagnant it isn't, though. R.E.M.'s music always seems to float off somewhere, in the best way possible. Their latest collection of songs is a group of…Similar sounding releases
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