As you've heard, R.E.M. have called it quits after 31 years.

In appreciation, it's time for one final "favorite album" poll. Choose your favorite release and let us know why you chose what you chose.

In addition, we can use this thread to update on what I'm sure will be plenty of vault clearing posthumous releases, starting with the new "Greatest Hits" album being released in November.

Lastly, we can bitch and moan about their late period comeback which may or may not have resulted in some decent albums post Bill Berry.



Other Threads

Rank R.E.M.'s albums from the IRS-era
Rank R.E.M.'s albums from the Warner-era
R.E.M.: Deluxe Edition Reissues Thread


*Yes, I'm aware Chronic Town and Dead Letter Offce aren't actual albums. Don't care.*

New Greatest Hits to be released November 15th and include the final 3 new R.E.M. Songs.



Very shortly after R.E.M. announced that they were disbanding, the band revealed the release of another greatest hits compilation called Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011. Today, more details of the anthology have been revealed.

Part Lies will made up of 40 tracks on two discs, collecting tracks from the band's releases on both IRS Records and Warner Bros. Records. It will include three tracks recorded after the release of their last album, Collapse Into Now: "A Month of Saturdays", "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" and "Hallelujah". They were recorded this summer in Athens, Georgia with Accelerate/Collapse Into Now producer Jacknife Lee.

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011:

Disc 1:

01 Gardening at Night
02 Radio Free Europe
03 Talk About the Passion
04 Sitting Still
05 So. Central Rain
06 (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
07 Driver 8
08 Life and How to Live It
09 Begin the Begin
10 Fall on Me
11 Finest Worksong
12 Its the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine)
13 The One I Love
14 Stand
15 Pop Song 89
16 Get Up
17 Orange Crush
18 Losing My Religion
19 Country Feedback
20 Shiny Happy People

Disc 2

01 The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
02 Everybody Hurts
03 Man on the Moon
04 Nightswimming
05 Whats the Frequency, Kenneth?
06 New Test Leper
07 Electrolite
08 At My Most Beautiful
09 The Great Beyond
10 Imitation of Life
11 Bad Day
12 Leaving New York
13 Living Well Is the Best Revenge
14 Supernatural Superserious
15 Überlin
16 Oh My Heart
17 Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter
18 A Month of Saturdays
19 We All Go Back to Where We Belong
20 Hallelujah

I'll vote for Automatic For The People. It's not a really representative album of their style, but it holds up so well. Every song is quality and it doesn't sound the least bit dated. It's like their "Revolver" or "Achtung Baby"-- an artist, mid-career, at their creative peak and most cerebral. It's a desert-island disc for me. No disrespect to Murmer.

My favorite REM albums are, in order, Automatic For The People, Life's Rich Pageant, Reckoning, Murmur, and New Adventures In Hi Fi. Automatic For The People is one of those albums where, the first time you hear it, it sounds like you've known those songs forever, and after hearing it for the hundreth time, it still feels like it's your first listen. An amazing record, but all five of those albums are practically perfect (New Adventures is a track or two too long, but otherwise great).

I voted for Life's Rich Pageant. I guess I just think it has their best collection of songs of any of their albums. Runners-up are Document, Automatic, and New Adventures.

Same for me, just a perfect album. Automatic is a close second.

This is tough because there's at least 6 albums that I absolutely adore and hold close to my heart. I literally lived and breathed this band for a decade. My choice is Lifes Rich Pageant because it's the album that encapsulates everything I love about early REM and is the zenith of their IRS years. It's like the senior year of high school and after this nothing would be the same (not necessarily worse, but different).

Just out of curiosity, what are the six?

And aren't you just a little curious what Around the Sun sounds like?

New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Pound for pound it takes the top spot for me.

I always liked Fables of The Reconstruction for it's dark southern gothic feel.

One of the things that always amazed me about R.E.M. is that each album was a complete departure from the previous. Yet it always sounded like R.E.M. and no one else.

Murmur
Reckoning
Fables of the Reconstruction
Lifes Rich Pageant
Automatic for the People
New Adventures in Hi Fi

Green, Document, Out of Time and Monster are just a tad below those.

As far as Around the Sun, after Reveal I gave up on REM and after hearing Leaving New York and one other song and seeing the universal panning of the album I decided not to be disappointed again by another dud. I wanted to remember the band in their better days. It was essentially a record buyers version of putting your hands over your ears and say LA LA LA. I'm still not that curious to hear it. Maybe some day.

Just think. Unlike other REM fans I still have an album I haven't heard.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see Life's Rich Pageant atop several people's lists. It's my favorite too (although it's awful close with so many others, including Document, Automatic for the People, and Green). It also has what is probably my all-time favorite R.E.M. song: "I Believe." I don't know why, but I never get tired of hearing it.

I already have a great 2 disc IRS best of, this should had been a 2 disc Warner Bros material.

Murmur

When I started college, I was into hard rock/metal, classic rock & punk. The college newspaper ran a list of the top 10 best alternative albums, and Murmur was #1. Out of curiosity I bought the CD, and - a million listens later - I still love it.

It has such a simple, raw feel to it - a band embarking on their career. "Side One" is just perfect.

I also love the cover art. It has this earthy yet alien feel to it.

Chronic Town E.P.
Murmur
Reckoning
Fables of the Reconstruction
Life's Rich Pageant
Document
Automatic for the People

I love all of the recordings listed above. Too hard to choose a favorite.

Chronic Town Demos. Everything after that was just blah.

Almost went with Chronic Town, but had to choose Murmur.

Toss up between Murmur, Reckoning, and Fables for me. But in the end, the vote goes to Fables of the Reconstruction.

My real answer is that while it is not their best album, my favorite is Monster. First CD I ever bought. When I first started collecting REM boots and many of them were Monster tour shows. So, I think that record just resonates with me the most.

If pressed, I don't know if I could pick a favorite. I came of age during the Warner years, and Green was the first tape I remember turning over and over, but Monster was the first CD I bought on the same day I bought my first CD player. Automatic for the People, though, is also a desert island album. It's incredible. Murmur is the album I put on if I need to listen to something that won't distract me from work.

I've got to go with Automatic, though.

Life's Rich Pagent
Murmur
Reckoning
Document
Green
Automatic
Out of Time
Fables
New Adventures
Monster

... that's all I've heard.

Life's Rich Pagent was on the the first albums I ever bought.

Great things about REM:
- evocative vintage/nostalgic/yearning Americana undertones. They captured certain aspects of what it means to be "American" that no other band has quite matched
- mysterious image (early on). They had a sound that was simulteously archaic and ahead of its time. They seemed to have dropped in from some imagined past or present
- probably the most underrated rhythm section in rock history.
- Stipe's bizarre Southern Gothic lyrics, enhanced by his weathered baritone vibrato
- great live shows
- reintroducing the Byrds jangle to pop radio
- their ability to write a solid hook, e.g.: the chorus of "Don't Go Back to Rockville"

Bad things about REM:
- they should have broken up when Berry left the band

A lot of great music from REM, but Automatic For The People was their zenith

Another vote for Life's Rich Pageant. I was in high school and all I listened to at that time was hard rock/metal but I needed a change in music and also in the people i hung out with. I saw the video for "Fall On Me" and it was so powerful, even more so than any hard rock song but in a totally different way. I bought LRP and then worked my way backwards to Chronic Town. Only got to see them once live on the Green tour but it was a great show.

BTW : Did their Unplugged performance ever get released in any format other than VHS? I'm dating myself here, but I had taped that off the radio broadcast and just loved that performance. I'd love to hear or see it again in its entirety.

I read a review of Murmur in Record Magazine (I think) in July of '83. Bought the album after hearing "Radio Free Europe" a zillion times on the classic rock station in DC. First listen did not reveal what that album would mean to me just a few days later. By the time I saw them open for The Police two months later I was already in love with it and it foreshadowed the next four years in college working at the campus station. It just reeks of college rock. I get why so many people love Automatic, but it would sit below every single IRS album they released. "Ignoreland" and "Drive"? No thanks. Hell, compare the mellow tunes "Nightswimming" to Murmur's "Perfect Circle". Perfect blows it away.

When Lifes Rich Pageant came out people were upset the producer used was John Mellencamp's producer. Silly to complain with such a brilliant album.