File Under Water

It's the end of the show as we know it (and we feel fine). This has been a great deal of fun, revisiting one of our favorite bands and thinking long and hard about what makes them special. We found new favorite songs and learned about the lives and stories of some truly great artists. This finale is a variety episode. We answer a few letters, name our favorite songs from R.E.M.'s catalog, and even bring you a special surprise... but you have to listen to find out what it is.

R.E.M. goes out on a high note with Collapse Into Now, an album that takes a bit of a tour through the band's various styles over the years. It's impossible to say that the upward trend in the quality of their records would continue, but it's fitting that the group busted their ass to make their last effort their best in years.

R.E.M. pulls out of its nosedive with an album whose title also serves as its mission statement. It was lauded as a return to form for the band, compared to Lifes Rich Pageant, and talked up as the album that Monster was supposed to be. But does it stand up on its own merits, or does it only succeed because it follows Around the Sun?

Well, this is it. The nadir. If you're thinking R.E.M. couldn't release an album as bad as Around the Sun's reputation would indicate, then we're sorry to tell you that they can. Up might have had a daysleeper, but this one's a sleepwalker. It's hard to recommend listening to this album, but maybe dip into a few songs to get a feel for what we're talking about. The good news is that this album stunk so bad that the band got their shit together and made two good and fun albums after it.

R.E.M. set out to make an idyllic album about summer, but instead made a product that showed the world just how comfortable they'd gotten. The highs are still high, but the search for what R.E.M.'s voice would be would continue.

After the Bill Berry left the band, R.E.M. had to make the biggest adjustment of their 18 year career. Previous reinventions happened on their own time, and at their own discretion. The shifts into clearer lyrics, into softer instrumentation, and into cocky rock were nothing compared to losing 1/4 of their band. The album that resulted from this labor, Up, nearly broke them up. But it shifted their sound into something more electronic and more produced. Does it stick the landing, or is it twisting in the wind?

Our second letters episode also looks at two MTV Unplugged performances, separated by a decade.

One last hurrah for the boys as we knew them. Hot off the Monster tour with some recordings in hand, R.E.M. was ready to make their best album in years. New Adventures in Hi-Fi meanders in all the right ways, keeping you on your toes with new ideas and unconventional choices. "E-bow the Letter" as the lead single? Great. "How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us" as the opening track? Hell yeah. But it's not all happy... stick around to the end to hear the sad tale of Bill Berry's departure from the band.

Bigger, dumber, more inconsistent. Hot off the heels of their biggest success ever, R.E.M. was ready to tour again. And concurrently, Bill Berry gave the band an ultimatum: no more soft acoustic jams. The result was an album that reveled in its confidence, and changed the band into an act that would fill arenas. Problem is, the risks they took didn't always pay off, leaving us with our most inconsistent outing yet.

Two cars in every garage, and a copy of "Automatic for the People" on every media shelf. The R.E.M. rocket is about to reach its apex, as our boys from Athens are riding high after "Out of Time" and about to release their most successful album ever. What kind of album does a touring band make when they don't tour anymore? A softer, weirder, more morbid album that landed with a bang in its time but lands with a thud now.

It took seven albums and 11 years, but R.E.M. finally got their breakthrough in 1991 with Out of Time. The overall album heads in the same direction as Green, but goes even further into mandolin weirdness. Freed from the constraints of touring, Peter, Mike, Bill, and Michael had every opportunity to make exactly the album they wanted... but the result is oddly inconsistent. This episode features a brief appearance by Brayton Cameron of Teenage Dirtbags to discuss "Radio Song".

Warner Bros. signed R.E.M. at the height of their popularity as an alternative rock band. Imagine their surprise when the R.E.M. they got sounded nothing like the R.E.M. that released Document just a couple of years earlier. Peter, Mike, Michael, and Bill had decided to swap instruments around. Peter picked up the mandolin, and a few folk ballads made their way into the mix. Given all of this upheaval, it's surprising that Green is one of the most solid R.E.M. albums, front to back.

Their first platinum record. Their first top ten single. Their first kinda bad album? It was 1987 and R.E.M. was staring down their last album with IRS. Continuing the trend from Lifes Rich Pageant, they wanted it to be loud and political. That may have been the right move commercially, but we come down on the side that Document is, overall, no great shakes. Listen to our 30 year old hot takes today!

We've already talked about most of the B-sides, so instead we turn to the mail bag to read your R.E.M. thoughts.

The top half is R.E.M. at the top of their game, and the bottom half is, appropriately, some bullshit. After the misery of recording Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M. wanted a win. So they headed to Indiana to record with John Cougar Mellencamp's producer, with the express goal of making a big dumb rocker. The result is one half of a very good album. Political, clear, resonant. And one half of a shambling mess.

The band didn't like it. The critics didn't like it. But we do. R.E.M.'s story so far has been one of effortless creativity. They worked very hard to make good things happen, but they also had the right friends and creative partners to be truly prolific with their work. This changed with Fables of the Reconstruction, when the band traded Mitch Easter and the southern U.S. for a new producer and frigid London. The result is an album that has a reputation for being dark and weird, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's also not entirely true.

The members of R.E.M. were anxious about creating a followup to Murmur, so instead they created a masterpiece. Reckoning is all over the map when it comes to style and production, but it provides evidence of how prolific and creative the band was from 1980 to 1984. It opens with the sublime "Harborcoat", wanders through "Don't Go Back to Rockville", and closes on a straight up protest song in "Little America". It's hard to say if this is the best possible place to start with R.E.M., but it's absolutely not the worst. The next episode will be about Fables of the Reconstruction.

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross begin their journey through R.E.M.'s full-length discography in earnest, by discussing the deeply earnest album Murmur. Quiet, dark, and weird, it was unlike anything people had heard. It sold like gangbusters, took Rolling Stone's "Album of the Year" over Michael Jackson's Thriller and U2's War, and gave our four boys a seat at the table. The links below are a comprehensive listening list, and we encourage you to listen to them before, alongside, and after the podcast. The next episode will be about Reckoning (http://amzn.to/2mFa6qt).

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross discuss the music and production history of R.E.M.'s debut EP, "Chronic Town". It's an opening salvo that contains bits and pieces of everything the band would eventually become. The links below are a comprehensive listening list, and we encourage you to listen to them before, alongside, and after the podcast. The next episode will be about Murmur (http://amzn.to/2ljW5k2).

Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross discuss the biographies of R.E.M.'s members, and the earliest years of the formation of the band. The links below are a comprehensive listening list, and we encourage you to listen to them before, alongside, and after the podcast. The next episode will be about the Chronic Town EP (http://amzn.to/2jXzRmC).