R.E.M. spent the majority of their 31-year career putting out top-quality albums, while a chunk of their audience wished they would just break up already. Though some of this was a bit reactionary and a by-product of their roots in the nascent indie rock scene of the 1980s, it was mainly a consequence of one of the band's most admirable qualities-- a restless desire to reinvent themselves with each record and create a discography in which each new entry had a distinct character. This much was clear by 1984: R.E.M. could have mined indefinitely the fascinating blend of murky atmosphere and crystal clear chiming guitar parts on their debut, Murmur-- lord knows many other bands of the era tried-- but they took a left turn into the sunnier, more lyrically direct Reckoning and kept throwing curveballs at their audience from that point onward.
This tendency yielded a rich body of work spanning 15 studio albums, but the creative shifts-- however organic they may seem in context-- gave listeners valid reasons to jump ship along the way. It makes just as much sense to enjoy all their records as it does for someone who favors Peter Buck's early jangle-centric guitar style to recoil at his flamboyantly distorted tone on Monster, or for fans of their immensely popular chamber pop records Out of Time and Automatic for the People to shrug off the skewed, highly politicized arena rock of their late 80s records. This isn't even factoring in the uneven albums they made following the departure of original drummer and songwriter Bill Berry, which spanned from the tentative lounge pop of Up to the often dreary melodrama of Around the Sun and the "back to basics" rock of Accelerate.
With this in mind, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011-- the band's first career-spanning anthology-- does an exceptional job of presenting this body of work as a chronological survey that neatly summarizes their major themes and artistic tangents while being highly listenable. The song selection is exceptional-- a few relatively minor singles didn't make the cut, but every major hit is here, presented alongside crucial album tracks such as "Country Feedback", "Begin the Begin", and "Life and How to Live It". The quality of the material up through at least the middle of the second disc is unimpeachable; the sheer concentration of classic tunes makes a strong case for the band ranking among the 20th century's greatest songwriting partnerships. The set handles the band's leaner years with grace and minimal revisionism, though the electronic and ambient textures of Up are sidelined in favor of that album's delicate Beach Boys homage "At My Most Beautiful". A few wild card selections from their more recent records, such as Accelerate's "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" and "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" from Collapse Into Now, shine in this context.
Nearly every hits set must include previously unreleased material, and this one is no different. The three new tracks featured here are the final completed songs of the band's career and serve as a coda of sorts for their recorded output. The single "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" is the keeper; a wistful ballad with a delightfully schmaltzy Burt Bacharach-like arrangement that barely conceals its subtext of basically being about the end of R.E.M. The other two cuts sound like a band crossing a few ideas off their bucket list before calling it a day: "Hallelujah" comes off like them giving one last attempt at nailing the hazy sophisti-pop they explored on Reveal, while the dreadful "A Month of Saturdays" meets the title's "garbage" requirement by sounding as though they realized at the last moment that they never wrote a song about loving the weekend and scrambled to remedy that with only a few minutes of studio time.
Though R.E.M.'s dissolution is not necessarily a cause for celebration, having a clearly defined end point makes it much easier to grasp the scope of their achievements. Part of a collective anxiety about R.E.M.'s ongoing existence up until this year was based in a desire on the part of the audience to impose a manageable narrative on their career. Now that they have disbanded, it's much easier to understand the trajectory of their post-Berry output in particular: Basically, they spent some time in the 2000s trying out new sounds and ways of working, but they eventually reconnected with their rock'n'roll roots before wrapping up their career with Collapse Into Now, a set of songs that revisited their creative strengths. Those records are never going to as beloved as their first 10 brilliant and remarkably consistent albums with Berry, but Part Lies makes a good case that their later period has value too, and that the group had raised the bar so high for themselves that merely being very good could be interpreted as a failure.
