Up

R.E.M.'s album Up is one I've developed a connection with recently. I found a copy on CD for £3 in a second hand shop early on in the new year (the one I bought years back I realised a while ago had gone missing somewhere along the line). It's an album I've often in the past found difficult to love but I know it also has its fans. This time around, playing it in the car while driving to and from work much of it struck a chord in a way it hasn't done before. 

Up was released at the end of October 1998. This was a month before Isaac was born and he spent the first few weeks of his life in hospital so by the time I got my head back into music mode I think Up had passed me by. Other bands were doing for me what R.E.M. used to do- Grandaddy and Belle and Sebastian both spring to mind and I wasn't listening to that much guitar based music either. Also, R.E.M. weren't exactly selling Up. It was the first album without Bill Berry, got some mixed reviews and the making of it was problematic for the three existing members. Michael Stipe said in an interview that 'a dog with three legs is still a dog', which maybe wasn't the vote of confidence he thought it was. 

Berry left the band after suffering an aneurysm on stage but told the other three that if it meant R.E.M. finishing, he'd stay- which put them in the position of having to carry on to allow Bill to leave. Not ideal. Peter Buck had been buying up synths and keyboards and was keen, as he often had been previously, to change the sound and do something different but the making of the album was fractious and they nearly split making it. The first song was written, recorded and mixed in a day (album opener Airportman) but after that they struggled. They couldn't rehearse without Berry and tried drum machines and session drummers (both on the songs on the album along with Buck drumming). Later on Stipe got a bad case of writer's block. Scott Litt, who produced their previous five albums, was gone too. Parts of Up feel and sound like they were written in the studio, clock ticking, the musicians having to come up with something, anything...

The previous album, New Adventures In Hi- Fi, had been written on the road at soundchecks and in hotel rooms. The writing process had been disrupted further by Berry's departure. He wasn't just the drummer but a key part of R.E.M.'s songwriting. Often Buck and Berry would play together, knocking ideas and arrangements around before Mike Mills would come in and add bass and organ. Now they were a three piece in the studio trying to make an album that embraced electronics. The sense of it being a bit incomplete or unfinished is added to by the inclusion on the album of several fairly non- descript songs that drift from start to finish. Quite a few of the songs end in a buzz of noise and feedback, as if they'd forgotten how to end a song. The last song, Falls To Climb,  just sort of ends, an anti- climax of a song (and previous albums had had really strong closing songs- Electrolite, Find The River, Me In Honey- that felt like finales). Up also suffers from being fourteen songs and sixty six minutes long, a victim of the bloated 90s CD album, with extra time on the disc to fill. A ten track, two sided vinyl album could have been a much stronger album. 

Despite all of this Up really has some moments and they struck me last week in the car. It was almost like hearing the album anew, it being so long since I'd heard it and not having any real emotional connection to it. Opener Airportman sets the tone, with ambient keys and noise,a  Brian Eno like feel and Stipe singing of a man permanently in transit. Lotus is a strong song, Peter Buck's minimalist keys and live drums behind Stipe's surreal lyrics clicking together- a subtle groove, some hey heys, a gnarly guitar topline, and Michael singing in a deeper register, a step away from the rock star persona he'd had played with on Monster and New Adventures In Hi- Fi. No surprise it was the album's second single after the catchy and melodic pop- rock of Daysleeper.

Four songs in comes Hope, a distorted analogue keyboard sound repeating, the tip tap of a drum machine and Stipe at his most Stipe- like, a song about looking for something- meaning, friendship, something to do, a way to live and stay alive. There's some pre- millennial tension in there too. It's a song that catches fire, shifts the album forwards, shakes the bones a little. 

Hope

Hope's rhythm and vocal were so close to Leonard Cohen's Suzanne they gave him a writing credit (although Suicide's organ sound is almost as much the basis of the song as Cohen). It has that melancholic hopefulness that R.E.M. were so good at. Cohen too. 

Past Hope there's more songs that stood out for me- The Apologist (a song that could have been a Monster or New Adventures throwback to these ears), Sad Professor (acoustic guitars, echo, a character study) and the Patti Smith inspired Walk Unafraid, the only song on Up that actually sounds up, one that shows they really were looking for a new sound, to do something different and that despite all the difficulties they encountered recording Up the magic was still present. 

Daysleeper sounds woozy, a slightly dislocated vocal that then swells with the music, Buck picking away at his guitar, a song for nightshift workers and their messed up rhythms. 'I cried the other night', Stipe sings at the breakdown, 'I can't even say why' and it sounds absolutely genuine. 

Daysleeper

Funny thing music isn't it. I've had a very ambivalent relationship with Up since 1998 and last week it really made some kind of sense to me- a flawed but interesting album with enough good songs to keep me letting it go back to the beginning when Falls To Climb ran out. It feels like maybe the last album they made where they really wanted to make art, to write songs that they cared about. After Up each album felt like they were making an album because that's what you do, because Warners wanted one, because they didn't know when or how to stop. Reveal, Around The Sun, Accelerate, Collapse Into Now- they have one or two songs each but are overworked or overproduced or a deliberate attempt to go back to basics. Each one seems like a case of diminishing returns and none of them feels right to me- but Up does.