The main peril of writing about R.E.M. is that otherwise rational people tend to form torturously private relationships with this band. I am one of them. As with any long-term engagement, there's a back catalog of injury: some of us felt slighted by R.E.M.'s eager dash to the big leagues; some can't get over "Shiny Happy People"; still others considered the band officially defunct when Bill Berry quit (consider, for a moment, the integrity of a band that makes a drummer's departure seem catastrophic). But now comes the ultimate challenge: helplessly watching R.E.M. sink into the classic-rock Lethe.
The symptoms came on fast: "The One I Love" gets a round of Clear Channel airplay on the flashback circuit, and the next thing you know there's a greatest hits package out there whose chronology begins with the band's seventh record. They're old. We're old. The upside is that I'm less likely to receive any mail telling me SUCK IT YOU PIECE OF SHIT REM R0X0RZ.
Questionable though it may be for these paragons of rock rectitude to milk the vile "two new songs" format for their latter-day hits collection, *In Time, in its own safe way, logically picks up where * Eponymous left off. So discuss the lopsided sequence and the strange curatorial choices ("The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" but no "Drive"?), but let's not forget that R.E.M.'s best tracks come pretty close to the pinnacle of what one can do with a riff, a verse and a chorus.
The obligatory Two New Songs included here are actually a song and a half: "Bad Day" spent about 15 years as a half-completed B-side famous for carrying the germ of "It's the End of the World As We Know It". The lyrics are new-- angry and direct-- but you can still scream "I feel fine" over the chorus, which has retained the original chord progression. "Animal", the other new track, is one of those vaguely Middle Eastern stomps that Buck's Rickenbacker occasionally throws up (see also: "I Could Turn You Inside Out", "You"), and has a great singalong hook, with Stipe gleefully yelping "What's the big deal?" as the harmony slides into a minor key. It would have been right at home on R.E.M.'s most substantive 90s offering, New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
As something of a commercial non-starter, Adventures is represented here by only two tracks: "E-Bow the Letter" and the cutie-pie "Electrolite" (whose space might have been more deserved by "Bittersweet Me"). Monster is, wisely, all but erased from the band's discography-- only "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" made the cut (although sadly not the live Letterman version with vocals by Dan Rather). Up, the band's first album as a trio, is correctly represented by the majestic waltz "Daysleeper" and "At My Most Beautiful", which marks the start of R.E.M.'s current Brian Wilson fixation. The inclusion of "All the Right Friends", off the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, severely stretches the definition of the word "hit," but the song (written in 1979) is baggage-free fun that deserves another shot. Of course, Automatic for the People is the clear winner here, at least by Warner's standards: this disc includes no less than four of its songs, which should make you feel pretty stupid if you a) own it, or b) don't.
The bonus disc on the album's pricier edition promises "rarities and B-sides," but don't get your hopes up; it's long on live performances of hits and short on the kind of drunken studio fuckery that made Dead Letter Office such a blast. The highlights here are a fantastic trip-hop version of "Leave" (less a remix than a rescue operation, really), and a spare demo of Reveal's "The Lifting" that shows the precise moment at which the producers should have stopped fiddling with the material. There is one very welcome Dead Letter Office-esque track, though: "Star Me Kitten" narrated by W.S. Burroughs in a series of depraved howls.
And there you have it: a great album that you probably already own piecemeal, impossible to pan but even harder to endorse. In Time will make a handy proselytizing tool for weaning your niece off Matchbox 20. To you, it's an unintentional reminder that R.E.M. are a classic and still-relevant band not because of, but in spite of, their commercial success.
