R.E.M. - Monster

Monster is by far the hardest rocking R.E.M. album, and it seems to be the sort of thing people either love or hate. I tend to love it, but then again I tend to love most things R.E.M. does. It's not my fault if you can't get on the "Bang and Blame" train.

R.E.M. - Automatic For the People

Automatic For the People always makes me slightly depressed. It's not that the entire album is depressing in and of itself (though it certainly is quite dark in places) it's just that there is a tragic memory connected with this album. Back in 1997, I lost a friend to suicide. A couple guys came together to play "Try Not to Breathe" at his graveside. I have since connected that song and this album in general (minus "Nightswimming" for some reason) with the sad days I spent with my friend's family mourning their unexpected loss. So yeah, that's where Automatic For the People fits in my life. I don't think there's any way I could possibly separate the music from my connection with it, so I won't bother to try. One interesting factoid: when this album came out, there were rumors that Michael Stipe was dying of AIDS. Of course the man is still with us, but at the time many saw indications of Michael's declining health in the overarching theme of death on this album. So maybe I'm not crazy for seeing death and a general awareness of the fragility of mortality on this album.

R.E.M. - Out of Time

Now here's where most of the critics in the world are wrong. Most of them see Out of Time as a disappointing album, as R.E.M.'s first major misstep, and as an album that can't hold a candle to the vastly superior Automatic For the People. I'm sorry everybody, you're wrong about this one.

Out of Time is one of my very favorite R.E.M. albums. I've never gotten over how incredible this album sounds. Seriously, "Near Wild Heaven" is one of the greatest things my ears have ever heard. Out of Time features this incredible blend of folk, the fuzzed-out rock of Green, and just a hint of country. It's just a great album and I laugh derisively in the face of anyone who says it isn't.

R.E.M. - Green

Green is R.E.M. at their most fuzzed out and straightforward to this point in their career (of course Green isn't nearly as fuzzed out or straightforward as Monster). It's their first album for Warner, so if you want to call it their sellout album, I shall not say you nay (though I wouldn't really agree).

Green has some great tracks. I really dig the following: "Pop Song 89," "Get Up," "Stand," "World Leader Pretend," "Orange Crush," "Hairshirt," and "I Remember California." If you noticed that that makes over half the album, congrats to you. Most of Green is highly diggable, and I dig it. You betcher bippy I do (I am such a nerd. I just reread the end of this entry and thought I needed to make that statement about myself).

R.E.M. - Eponymous

Eponymous is an album I put off buying until I could find it in the cheap-o bins. If you own all of R.E.M.'s albums from their IRS years, this compilation is highly unnecessary. At most there'll be two songs on it that you don't have (one is an alternate version and the other is from a soundtrack). So yeah, Eponymous gets more and more unnecessary as other R.E.M. compilations spanning their entire career emerge.

R.E.M. - Document

Most of the songs on Document tend to be overshadowed by the album's biggest and most recognizable hit. I won't lie, it's the reason I bought this album. I'm speaking of course of the mega hit, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Most people know how the chorus goes to this song and can generally get a feeling for where to shout "Leonard Berstein!" I reviewed my copy of the 7" single here.

So I'm guessing I don't need to sell you on one of the biggest R.E.M. hits of all time. It's a great song, but it's not the only great song on the album. I love "Finest Worksong." "The One I Love" is a mix tape hit for girls with that one indie haircut where the back of their hair is shorter than the front (I still find that cut attractive though it is a decidedly 90's way to do your hair). There are plenty of good songs on this album. This is R.E.M. right at the beginning of their most commercially successful era, so you've probably heard and enjoyed some of these songs before.

R.E.M. - Lifes Rich Pageant

This is the beginning of the classic R.E.M. sound. The albums before Lifes Rich Pageant feature a little noodling and experimentation with what R.E.M. could be, but this album is where their sound got laid down in concrete. When you think of R.E.M.'s big hits, most of them were written in the style laid out on Lifes Rich Pageant.

Tracks like "Fall on Me" "What if We Give it Away" and "I Am Superman" could just as easily be on any of the 5 albums that come after Lifes Rich Pageant than anywhere else. On this album R.E.M. really found their stance and just started swinging for the fences (the baseball reference is a nod to Peter Buck and the excellent Baseball Project, which is a collaboration with Young Fresh Fellows' Scott McCaughey).

R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction

This album was maddening to me when I bought it. I thought surely the title of the album was Reconstruction of the Fables because that's what it says on the spine. Unfortunately the cover art says Fables of the Reconstruction and by opening the liner notes you'll see Reconstruction of the Fables again. I got that the band was being clever, but I bought this when I was 14 and I wasn't prepared to be messed with like that. Oh, and our text-only internet (back in the BBS days) was no help in settling the matter. It would be a few years before I got a definitive answer.

Anyway, Fables of the Reconstruction is a dark, spiky, and jittery folk rock affair. It's as different from Reckoning as Reckoning was from Murmur. I honestly didn't like it when I got it, because I thought R.E.M. was all about "Stand" and "Shiny Happy People." Although Fables of the Reconstruction is not quite the classic R.E.M. sound, it's still a very good and very interesting album. It shows that R.E.M. is not a one-trick-pony and that they can get a little weird and cryptic if they want to.

R.E.M. - Reckoning

R.E.M. released a new album every single year from 1983 and 1988. More impressive than their prolificacy is the fact that each new release showed marked improvement in the band's songwriting and overall vision.

Reckoning, R.E.M.'s second album, seems like it has a lot more purpose than Murmur. "Harborcoat" kicks off the album with as good a piece of jangle pop as could be had in the entirety of the genre. The next three songs are all good candidates for any R.E.M. greatest hits compilations, and the entire album is a solid chunk of classic R.E.M. Clearly the band was beginning to see just how great they could be, and it shows.

R.E.M. - Murmur

R.E.M. was one of many college rock bands to come out of Athens, Georgia in the 80's. Their debut album was not too dissimilar in sound from their contemporaries such as Pylon and Love Tractor. Murmur has some great songs, but it not necessarily an indicator of the heights R.E.M. would reach as a band. I'm sure that at the time this album came out, there were still people who thought Pylon or Love Tractor would be the bigger band in the long run. What set R.E.M. apart was their incredible gift for songwriting, their lyrical prowess, and the fact that, although not enough people say it, Michael Stipe has one of the best voices in the history of rock.

Of course Murmur only hints at R.E.M.'s eventual greatness. Even so, songs like "Radio Free Europe" and "Talk About the Passion" tell the tale of how far above their peers R.E.M. stood. This is a solid college rock album and a fantastic historical document if you're a die-hard R.E.M. fan, which I am.

Reggie and the Full Effect - Under the Tray

Under the Tray is the last decent Reggie and the Full Effect album before the band started taking itself a little too seriously and the musical quality fell off a cliff. So yeah, there's that.

Under the Tray is half decent. There are a few good songs as well as a few I don't care for at all. As with all Reggie and the Full Effect albums, this is a mixed bag and it's intended to be one. The best cuts on this album are, "Mood 5 Luv" "What Won't Kill You Eats Gas" and "Getting by With It's." The rest of the album is either confusing or subpar. The good cuts are really good, but I could do without the rest of it.

Reggie and the Full Effect - Promotional Copy

I must admit that when I bought this album, I did actually think I was buying a promotional copy of Reggie and the Full Effect's new album. I did buy it at a record store that sold a lot of promotional copies, so I wasn't a complete idiot for not knowing that Reggie and the Full Effect actually named their album Promotional Copy.

Promotional Copy is yet another Reggie and the Full Effect album that is much better in live performance than through headphones. There are some decent laughs on the album with "Gloves" and "Dwarf Invasion" as well as a couple cuts that rock like "Congratulations Matt and Christine" and "Megan 2K." It's not a bad album, it just doesn't live up to the spectacle of the live show.

Reggie and the Full Effect - Greatest Hits 84-87

Reggie and the Full Effect are an elaborate joke. Yes, they have some very good songs, and they are an absolute delight to see in person, but that's because Reggie fans are in on the joke. The unassuming consumer might be lead to believe that Reggie and the Full Effect was around in 1984, which is all in keeping with Lucas' advice to Marc that bands should always mess with their fan's heads (Empire Records reference. Love that movie).

I saw Reggie and the Full Effect because they were headlining a show with Motion City Soundtrack. I wanted to see Motion City Soundtrack because they were the closest heirs to The Rentals at the time (yes, my obsession with The Rentals is going to keep popping up. It was one of the driving forces in my music consumer habits at the time). Motion City was great, and I'll never stop being amused by seeing their keyboardist do flying donkey kicks from his keyboard stand. At the time, I knew nothing about Reggie and the Full Effect, but anything half decent would have been gravy on that night. Little did I know that I would be seeing the greatest small stage show I would ever see.

Here's how Reggie shows worked back then. The band would come out in red suits, black shirts, skinny red neckties, black mustaches (even their female keyboardist wore one), and jet black wigs cut in a Prince Valiant style. They would rock some of the more straightforward Reggie and the Full Effect material in a flamboyant and crazy manner. After that, James Dewees would come out dressed like George Washington on rollerblades (this is his Fluxuation persona) and skate through the crowd as he performed the electronic songs as well as some of the sillier Reggie songs. Then the band would come out in all black as Common Denominator, the pretend Norwegian black metal band. They would blast through some dark material about linking verbs and dwarfs as well as the darker Reggie material. After they were done, the band would come back in their red and black duds and finish out the set as Reggie and the Full Effect. The whole display was both hilarious and completely awesome. I didn't stop being entertained for a single second.

I had never heard Reggie and the Full Effect before that night. Normally seeing a band live makes you predisposed to enjoy their albums, but I find I like Reggie much more in person than I do on the album. The albums, which are constructed like mix-tapes, delve into some genres I don't particularly care for like screamo. Greatest Hits 84-87 is one of the better Reggie releases because it features some of the best songwriting the band has ever delivered. I like the albums, but I love the live shows. They're like Kiss in that regard.

The Refreshments - The Bottle and Fresh Horses

Whereas Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy was a clear cut Refreshments release, The Bottle and Fresh Horses could just as easily been a Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers release (and yes, there is a difference. The Refreshments skew a little more toward rock whereas Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers skew a little more toward country).

Let's get this out of the way: I hate this album art. It's ugly and unappealing. I don't blame The Refreshments much, it's not like they were the only band in the 90's with atrocious album art (I'm looking at you, Dada). I loved The Refreshments' first album, but hesitated to buy this one, mainly because it looks like crap. Thankfully it doesn't sound like it looks. By the time I bought this album (several years after its release and the band's breakup and rebirth as Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers) I was already big on Roger Clyne, so it was absolutely up my alley. It also answered the question of where some of the songs I didn't know were coming from when I went and saw Roger live.

I really love it when The Refreshments make reference to Dead Hot Workshop, which they do on "Tributary Otis," because I feel like it's the only mainstream recognition Dead Hot Workshop ever gets. There are plenty of good Roger Clyne-ish country-rock songs on this album. I recommend "Heaven or the Highway Out of Town," "Buy American." and "Una Soda."

The Refreshments - Wheelie

Wheelie is to The Refreshments as Dusted is to Gin Blossoms. That is to say, this is the self-produced album the band put out back when they were raw and young and before they made it big and got a record deal.

Wheelie finds The Refreshments as energetic up-and-comers. There are plenty of songs on Wheelie that made their way onto The Refreshments big label debut, Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy. On Wheelie these songs have some different lyrics in places, faster tempos, rawer vocals, and much more of a garage band feel. Wheelie is interesting as a historical document, but it's also the only place to find a decent recording of "B.O.B.A." which is a fan favorite among The Refreshments/Roger Clyne crowd. So if you want to hear The Refreshments at their most raw and get a few songs that didn't make the cut for the band's big label releases, Wheelie is for you.