Grogg listens to music

[grogg]

Conference Of The Birds by Dave Holland

It's 4:30am on the last day of our Christmas visit at the in-law's house. A cat just woke me up by meowing at the window; he wanted to be let in because it's cold as balls outside. I'm now that cat's hero and I'm going to celebrate my newfound popularity by listening to this extremely avante-garde record until I fall back asleep. I'm really happy ECM decided to finally put their stuff on Spotify. Now I can make wise decisions about which albums I pick up on eBay instead of getting burned by blind-buys.

[grogg]

Murmur by R.E.M.

Think I'm going to run through and listen to all of the R.E.M. albums. I have quite a few on vinyl, but I'm going to start tonight using Spotify because I'm trying to knock some work out and need some familiar music. This is the album of theirs that I know the best and I feel like it's a solid 95/100. It's so comfortable and consistent that all the tracks sort of flow together for me. I'll be surprised if this isn't at the top of my list at the end of my run; that's quite an accomplishment for a debut album from a band with staying power.

[grogg]

Chronic Town by R.E.M.

It's sort of interesting to listen to a band's first album and then realize you made a mistake and go back and listen to their debut EP. Especially in this case, because you can really hear how the sound on here is a less less refined than Murmur. It's not necessarily bad, in fact Wolves Lower & Boxcars would fit in just fine, but this is definitely the lesser of the two works. Makes you wonder why more bands don't follow this route instead of spilling all their ideas into their first record with nowhere to go from there. This is a 70/100 in my impromptu ratings.

Murmur - 95/100
Chronic Town - 70/100

[FelixC]

[grogg]

[grogg]

Reckoning by R.E.M.



Spinning this one on vinyl as I'm working from home today. I've always thought the IRS labels were cool because of the guy in the hat. Reading up on this album informed me that the original plan for this was a water-themed concept album, and you can certainly see the traces of that in the artwork, song titles, and lyrics. The haze that wrapped itself around Murmur is gone here, replaced with definite transitions between tracks; you can tell when you're moving from So. Central Rain to Pretty Persuasion. This isn't a bad thing, it's completely reasonable, really, but I can't deny that a collection of (good) songs has less impact on me than the rainy cold day vibe of the predecessor. Maybe that's the metaphor I'm looking for; the sun is out and reflecting off the water. I hope I don't spend the next week comparing everything I hear to Murmur.

The structure of this record does make it easier to notice that no one can possibly have any idea what Michael Stipe is saying. If he sang notes instead of lyrics between choruses of Time After Time it'd be the exact same song.

Side one seems markedly stronger than side two, but I still dig this overall. 75/100.

Murmur (1983) - 95/100
Reckoning (1984) - 75/100
Chronic Town (1982) - 70/100

[grogg]

Fables Of The Reconstruction by R.E.M.

I think I've only heard this once before and after a second listen I probably won't ever listen to it again. Drive 8 and Can't Get There From Here (those horns!) are highlights, but otherwise it's merely melodic background music.. I guess this is what the debut would have sounded like with C- material. 60/100.

Murmur (1983) - 95/100
Reckoning (1984) - 75/100
Chronic Town (1982) - 70/100
Fables of the Reconstruction (1985) - 60/100

[grogg]

Document by R.E.M.

After nearly driving off the road into the boring ditch with their previous release Michael and the boys jerked the steering wheel hard left all the way into the pop lane. There are some definite hits here that have stood the test of time and yet I'm sure there are some folks that lament this and the label move that came after it as the band selling out. These well-intentioned strawmen are entitled to their opinion, but when you hear Wendell Gee and Finest Worksong back to back it should be pretty obvious which version of the band has more going for it. Hell, there's even some enunciation going on here. It'd be easy to talk about the hits now, but even a deep cut like Strange has a lot going for it; it's short, to the point, and nearly angry... a great lead-in to the song that you memorized the lyrics to in high school to impress all your nerdy friends. 85/100.

Murmur (1983) - 95/100
Document (1987) - 85/100
Reckoning (1984) - 75/100
Chronic Town (1982) - 70/100
Fables of the Reconstruction (1985) - 60/100

[grogg]

Wow, I was so excited to get to Document that I skipped right over Life's Rich Pageant. I'll circle back around to it next week.

[Repo]