Unlike most canonical, highly celebrated artists with a large catalog of albums, there is no generally accepted entry point to the R.E.M. discography. They don't have a Daydream Nation, a Bee Thousand, an Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), or a Thriller. The band has a large number of classic albums, and each is distinct enough to have its own passionate partisans and detractors. Except for the most hardcore fans, most anyone with a love for R.E.M. seems to have some cut-off point where their interest falls off dramatically. For older fans, it's often the bombastic arena fodder of Lifes Rich Pageant and Document. If you fell for the group at the height of "college rock" in the late 1980s, there is a good chance that you either tuned out during that strange cultural moment when they achieved their greatest commercial success as a morbid chamber pop outfit, or the even weirder abrasive day-glo glam-rock phase that came immediately afterward. More obviously, the departure of the band's original drummer and co-songwriter Bill Berry practically gave a large chunk of their audience permission to jump ship and/or casually dismiss their post-Berry material.
Part of the problem in how people understand the band's catalog is that there is no adequate career-spanning retrospective for R.E.M., and, almost as if by design, their body of work does not fit comfortably into a tidy narrative spanning from 1982's Chronic Town on through the present day. The three existing collections that focus on their IRS Records albums service that period well, but at this point those releases amount to only the first act of the band's story. The only hits collection focused on their Warner Bros. output is an unfortunate mess that omits songs like "Shiny Happy People", "Drive", and "Bang and Blame" in favor of less popular singles and lackluster bonus tracks that needlessly distort chronology.
Whereas artists with similarly sprawling discographies with multiple peaks, such as David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and Prince, have anthologies and singles compilations that satisfy casual listeners and provide a useful starting point for new fans, the hit-centric approach has a perverse way of underselling R.E.M. and their legacy. "Shiny Happy People", "Stand", and "Everybody Hurts" may be excellent songs, but they are not particularly representative of the band's core identity as a folk-tinged rock band.
Live at the Olympia, a 39-song live album recorded over a five-night public rehearsal at a small venue in Dublin in 2007, is not the ideal gateway collection the band needs, but it does a provide an intriguing tour through the band's body of work that avoids obvious selections and highlights deep cuts and forgotten favorites. About a third of the set is comprised of raw and/or unfinished drafts of songs that would later turn up on 2008's Accelerate. The rest comes across like an alternate universe version of R.E.M. that made all the same records as in our world, but never had a significant hit after 1985's "Driver 8", and thus do not feel pressure to perform anything but whatever feels best in the moment.
The tracklisting is heavy on early-80s material-- five tunes from Fables of the Reconstruction, just over half of Reckoning, all but one cut off of Chronic Town. From there on out, they play at least one song from every album aside from Green, Out of Time, and Up. Their choices are often surprising, and a large chunk of the selections had not been performed in well over a decade, in some cases nearly 20 years. Michael Stipe's stage banter is self-deprecating, calling to attention how long it had been since revisiting some of the songs, and commenting on the crudeness and opacity of his early lyrics. There's a bit of nostalgia at play here, for sure, but it's very clear that this is not a desperate attempt to ingratiate themselves to older fans but instead a healthy reexamination of previous work in an attempt to reconnect with the essence of being a rock'n'roll band after nearly a decade of being more of a studio ensemble.
Despite their longevity and numerous live concert films, Live at the Olympia is only R.E.M.'s second full-length live record. Their previous live album (which doubled as a DVD set) was released only a few months after the recording of these rehearsal concerts in 2007, and the difference between the two releases is quite stark. R.E.M. Live was tight, polished, and context-free, and as such was rather boring, even if it included several top-notch performances. Though nothing on Live at the Olympia matches or surpasses the group's studio recordings, the loose, playful, and occasionally sloppy performances are far more listenable. Sitting through all 39 tracks is hardly a chore if you already like most or all of the songs, and only the previously unreleased Accelerate outtake "On the Fly" and the Around the Sun dud "The Worst Joke Ever" drag at the momentum of the sequencing. The band sounds casual but charged with urgency and purpose as it attempts to rejuvenate itself and work its way out of the bad habits that yielded the sterility of Reveal and Around the Sun. Muscle memory guides them through spirited takes on "Harborcoat", "Circus Envy", "Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)", and "These Days", while hunger for relevance and enmity directed toward the Bush administration give Accelerate numbers like "Living Well Is the Best Revenge", "Horse to Water", and "Man-Sized Wreath" a rush of vibrancy and vitality.
The remarkable thing about Live at the Olympia is that, despite all appearances to the contrary, it actually has utility for people other than R.E.M. completists. The notion of a 2xCD set of rehearsal recordings smacks of unnecessary indulgence, but whether you take this as an alternative canon of R.E.M. music or a document of a band working hard to find its future by revisiting its past, the album is successful in providing a new perspective on a classic group desperately in need of a new narrative thread. Though it's doubtful that many uninitiated listeners or lapsed fans will find their way to this record, it does serve as a compelling argument in favor of a staggering body of work that is too often dismissed or outright ignored by modern indie audiences simply because the group had the nerve to keep making new material rather than retiring with a neat, easily digestible discography. This is definitely not the accessible, carefully curated survey their catalog deserves, but it's close enough for now.
