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R.E.M.: Monster

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 1994.09.26
Time:
 49:15
Category: Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Scott Litt & R.E.M.
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.remhq.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] What's the Frequency, Kenneth? (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:00
[2] Crush with Eyeliner (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:39
[3] King of Comedy (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:40
[4] I Don't Sleep, I Dream (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:27
[5] Star 69 (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:07
[6] Strange Currencies (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:52
[7] Tongue (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:13
[8] Bang and Blame (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:30
[9] I Took Your Name (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:02
[10] Let Me In (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:28
[11] Circus Envy (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:15
[12] You (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:54

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bill Berry - Drums, Percussion, Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals, Producer
Peter Buck - Guitar, Farfisa Organ, Producer
Mike Mills - Bass Guitar, Piano, Organ, Guitar, Vocals, Producer
Michael Stipe - Lead Vocals, Producer

Ané Diaz - Backing Vocals on [8]
Lynda Stipe - Backing Vocals on [8]
Lou Kregl - Backing Vocals on [8]
Rain Phoenix - Backing Vocals on [8]
Sally Dworsky - Backing Vocals on [3,8]
Thurston Moore - Vocals & Guitar on [2]

Scott Litt - Producer
Mark Howard - Engineer (Kingsway)
Pat Mccarthy - Engineer
David Colvin - Second Engineer (Crossover)
Jeff Demorris - Second Engineer (Ocean Way)
Mark Gruber - Second Engineer (Criteria)
Victor Janacua - Second Engineer (Ocean Way)
Stephen Marcussen - Mastering Engineer (Precision Mastering)
Mark "Microwave" Mytrowitz - Technical Assistance

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Monster is indeed R.E.M.'s long-promised "rock" album; it just doesn't rock in the way one might expect. Instead of R.E.M.'s trademark anthemic bashers, Monster offers a set of murky sludge, powered by the heavily distorted and delayed guitar of Peter Buck. Michael Stipe's vocals have been pushed to the back of the mix, along with Bill Berry's drums, which accentuates the muscular pulse of Buck's chords. From the androgynous sleaze of "Crush With Eyeliner" to the subtle, Eastern-tinged menace of "You," most of the album sounds dense, dirty, and grimy, which makes the punchy guitars of "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and the warped soul of "Tongue" all the more distinctive. Monster doesn't have the conceptual unity or consistently brilliant songwriting of Automatic for the People, but it does offer a wide range of sonic textures that have never been heard on an R.E.M. album before.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



Remember the early days of R.E.M., when its records were murky, the lyrics obscured in a blur of strummed guitars and driving percussion, and the music did the rock thing but in a slightly off-kilter way? When there was no such thing as MTV’s Alternative Nation, much less the ever-meaningless term ”alternative rock”?

Apparently, R.E.M. does, or wants to. On its 11th — man, how time flies — album, Monster (Warner Bros.), the band plugs back in after two relatively subdued, largely acoustic albums (the filler-packed Out of Time and the almost churchly Automatic for the People) that touched on every sonic possibility except the jingle-jangle hymns of its first records. Younger bands who were probably in high school when R.E.M. debuted continue to demonstrate the major role Michael Stipe has played in their lives, but Monster proves no one cranks the amplifiers and mumbles lyrics in quite the same thrilling way as the originators.

Start with ”Let Me In,” Stipe’s contribution to the slowly growing genre of songs about Kurt Cobain. As Peter Buck’s guitars splay around like paint splattering all over a wall, Stipe obliquely mourns his lost friend, with whom he had had a few discussions about a future collaboration. Stipe’s pleading wail on the chorus — a simple ”Hey, let me in” that drifts into a wistful falsetto during ”hey” — is a moving catharsis of the type that clone bands like Stone Temple Pilots never remotely approach. Songs like ”Crush With Eyeliner,” and the organ-dotted ”I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” are the sort of transcendent murk that made this band founding fathers of college-kid rock to begin with. And, as in the old days, it takes time to get to know the record. You’ll probably need to absorb it at least three or four times before it starts to - make sense-just like with Fables of the Reconstruction, right?

That’s roughly where the connection with the past ends. Almost from the git-go, R.E.M.’s music was nearly spiritual; at its most exhilarating and hopeful, it made you feel as if you could reach up and grab a cloud. With Peter Buck riding the reverb pedal and creating pulsating waves that sound like a huge, amplified blood-pressure vise, Monster returns the power surge to the band’s music. But sometimes the old uplift isn’t there-Bill Berry’s drums have rarely sounded this ineffectual. Elsewhere, ”Strange Currencies” is a lazy rewrite of ”Everybody Hurts,” ”Circus Envy” achieves the dubious distinction of sounding like one of their rip-off bands, and the album’s plodding first single, ”What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” (named after the mysterious words of a man who attacked Dan Rather on the streets of New York City in 1986), is a rather tired anti-press diatribe.

At least, media manipulation is what the song seems to be about. In another nod to the days when R.E.M. played small theaters instead of arenas, Stipe’s voice-even when it isn’t made to sound as if he’s singing with his head in a sink full of water-is buried in the mix. In the past, half the fun came in deciphering the snippets of lyrics yourself. But what distinguished the band’s previous two albums wasn’t just the sense of musically cleaning house; it was simple enunciation. For once, the band-Stipe in particular-wasn’t afraid to directly express emotions, which is tricky for most human beings under the best of circumstances.

Frustratingly, you rarely get the full picture here. From what bits of lyrics creep out, the series of pleas, whispers, come-ons, exhortations, and accusations that dominate Monster are some of Stipe’s most visceral. The songs hint at obsessive love, possibly with a transvestite (”Crush With Eyeliner”), the frustration of trying to get to know a lover (”Strange Currencies”), and, for what may be the first time for this lyrically celibate band, blatant sex (”Tongue”). It’s ironic that an album that seems to dwell so much on communication and misinterpretation often obscures its own communiques with sonic gunk. Monster reminds you how charged a band R.E.M. can be, but receiving only half its message is like having an intensely personal, confessional phone conversation with a friend on a cellular phone that keeps cutting in and out. B+

David Browne - January 17 2015
Copyright © 2015 Entertainment Weekly



MY FAVORITE NOTE ON R.E.M.'S NEW ALbum, "Monster," is the one that opens "Circus Envy." Peter Buck plays a fat, fuzz-toned, low guitar D that buzzes out of silence and sustains while Billy Berry's drums and Mike Mills's bass kick in. The note begins to break up but hangs around in its own staticky penumbra, crackling and frazzling through the first verse as Michael Stipe sings, "Here comes that awful feeling again." And it reappears throughout the song, holding on after the band is done. Its sculptured cantankerousness might as well continue through the whole album; R.E.M. has started to blare again, brilliantly.

The sound of "Monster" (Warner Brothers 45740; LP, cassette and CD) won't surprise longtime fans. Since 1981, R.E.M. has cut a path for what came to be called alternative rock. The band came out of a small college town (Athens, Ga.) with the do-it-yourself mentality of punk rock and a revived folk-rock lexicon; its songs were urgent, mysterious and memorable. R.E.M. worked its way up to arenas by the late 1980's but stopped touring in 1989.

While rock grew noisier all around it, the band withdrew into its own sphere, recording gentler music built around acoustic guitars. "Out of Time" (1990) wrapped string-orchestra arrangements around fragile, tentative songs about love. "Automatic for the People" (1992) was pensive and death-haunted, though its elegiac tone struck a chord; it has sold eight million copies worldwide. With "Monster," R.E.M. will return to performing, on a world tour that begins in January in Australia.

The band clearly wanted some rowdy new songs for the arenas; "Monster" crashes through any attempt to pigeonhole R.E.M. as a folk-rock band. But "Monster" is not exactly R.E.M.'s first mood swing. From its beginnings, R.E.M. has veered between murmuring to itself and addressing the outside world. "I'm talking here to me alone," Stipe declared in 1987 in "Finest Worksong," though the band rocked loud and hard, as it does on "Monster."

R.E.M. has by turns worried over and shrugged off the perils of reaching a large audience; it's still troubled on "Monster." "I am not commodity," Stipe intones, guardedly, in "King of Comedy," a song that chugs through strategies for making money: "You can lie as long as you mean it." R.E.M.'s early fans cried sellout when, suddenly, the band started to mix songs so that Stipe's vocals could be deciphered. Yet most of the time, his words remained elliptical, a tactic now followed by innumerable alternative-rockers.

Every so often, Stipe dispelled the mists, most recently in "Everybody Hurts," the anti-suicide anthem from "Automatic for the People." But as Sting, U2 and Arrested Development have found out, being the voice of virtue can grow tiresome. R.E.M. won't be trapped; "Monster" is personal, not preachy.

MOST OF THE SONGS ON "MONSTER" ARE about love and lust. Sometimes the singer supplicates, sometimes he snarls, but he ends up alone. In the soul-style ballad "Strange Currencies," he begs an indifferent object of affection for "a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance," and he sounds even more hopeless in "Let Me In": "clumsy, crawling out of my skin." In "Crush With Eyeliner," which has a midtempo swagger and deadpan backing vocals reminiscent of the Pixies, an uncertain suitor wonders, "What can I make myself to make her mine," interrupting himself to cry "Faker!"

When lovers do get together, there's no happily ever after; they end up using each other. In "Tongue," Stipe uses his falsetto to portray the unrequited lover as patsy and plaything: "Call my name, here I come." He's warier in "Bang and Blame," trying to resist temptation, repeating, "No, no, no, no, no."

It's not just lovers who misjudge each other: in the punky "Star 69," the snarling singer, his voice jumbled in echoes, refuses to provide an alibi for someone who counted on him. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?," despite its triumphal guitars, is about the distance between an idol and a fan, with a recurring line: "I couldn't understand."

While the lyrics try to sort out connection and alienation, the band seethes. Like U2 on "Achtung, Baby," R.E.M. has found liberation in noise. In Buck's guitar parts, psychedelic distortion magnifies the singer's disorientation; punk power chords fuel his rancor. Each song creates its own sound scape: claustrophobic in "King of Comedy," empty in the reggae-tinged verses and pushy in the hard-rock choruses of "Bang and Blame." In "I Don't Sleep, I Dream," the singer wavers between involvement and withdrawal - "Leave me lay, or touch me deep" - as the band creates a reverie in multilayered patterns of guitar and piano.

"Monster" carries R.E.M.'s old dilemma and paradox - to connect or not? - to a new zone for the band. As the music shouts to the balconies, the words testify to isolation; the singer can no longer declare that "everybody hurts," because he's not even part of "everybody." Yet R.E.M. will soon find that it's not alone. The alternative-rockers they helped to create have been there for years, howling their loneliness above loud guitars.

Jon Pareles - September 25, 1994
© 2015 The New York Times



Monster is the ninth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1994 on Warner Bros. Records. Co-produced by the band and Scott Litt, Monster was an intentional stylistic shift from the group's preceding albums, Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), consisting of loud, distorted guitar tones and simple song arrangements. Singer Michael Stipe's lyrics dealt with the nature of celebrity, which he sang while assuming various characters. Led by the single "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", Monster debuted at number one in the United States. The band promoted the record with its first concert tour since 1989.

Upon its release, Monster debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. The album also debuted at the top of the British album charts. There were several hits from the album, particularly "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", "Crush with Eyeliner", "Strange Currencies," and "Bang and Blame". The last of these was the band's last U.S. Billboard Top 40 hit. "Star 69" also charted, despite not being released as a single. The album ultimately fared slightly worse commercially than Automatic for the People, representing the beginning of R.E.M.'s commercial decline.

The album was among the first promoted with online content, also distributed physically via floppy disk.

Rolling Stone gave Monster four and a half stars. Critic Robert Palmer noted that Stipe's lyrics dealt with issues of identity ("The concept of reality itself is being called into question: Is this my life or an incredible virtual simulation?") and that occasionally the singer "begins to sound not unlike the proverbial rock star, whining about all those fans who just won't let him alone." He added, "What's truly impressive about Monster is the way R.E.M. make an album with such potentially grave subject matter so much fun." NME gave the album a seven out of ten rating. Reviewer Keith Cameron wrote, "It’s fun, frequently, but we feel distanced, engaged only on a secondhand level. Moreover, the loudly trumpeted fox factor has been conspicuous by its absence." Cameron concluded, "At best stunning, at worst merely diverting, Monster sounds like the album they 'had' to make, to clear out their system, a simple prop to occupy our time..." Allmusic rated the album two and a half stars out of five; Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote, "Monster doesn't have the conceptual unity or consistently brilliant songwriting of Automatic for the People, but it does offer a wide range of sonic textures that have never been heard on an R.E.M. album before."

In 2005, Warner Bros. issued an expanded two-disc edition of Monster which includes a CD, a DVD-Audio disc containing a 5.1-channel surround sound mix of the album done by Elliot Scheiner, and the original CD booklet with expanded liner notes.

In November 2011, Monster was ranked number nine on Guitar World magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1994, between Rancid's Let's Go and Tesla's Bust a Nut. Guitar World also placed the album at number 36 in their "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.

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