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R.E.M.: New Adventures in Hi-Fi

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 1996.09.15
Time:
 65:33
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] How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:31
[2] The Wake-Up Bomb (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:08
[3] New Test Leper (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:26
[4] Undertow (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:09
[5] E-Bow the Letter (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:23
[6] Leave (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 7:18
[7] Departure (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:28
[8] Bittersweet Me (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:06
[9] Be Mine (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:32
[10] Binky the Doormat (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:01
[11] Zither (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:33
[12] So Fast, So Numb (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:12
[13] Low Desert (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:30
[14] Electrolite (B.Berry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:05

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


"How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us"
    Recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, United States

    Bill Berry – drums, percussion, "ennio whistle"[12]
    Peter Buck – guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, bass guitar
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, piano, backing vocals, synthesizer
    Michael Stipe – vocals, synthesizer

"The Wake-Up Bomb"
    Recorded live at the North Charleston Coliseum, in Charleston, United States on November 16, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – guitar
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, backing vocals, organ
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"New Test Leper"
    Recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, United States

    Bill Berry – drums, percussion
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, backing vocals, organ
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Undertow"
    Recorded live at the Fleet Center in Boston, United States on October 3, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – guitar
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, backing vocals
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"E-Bow the Letter"
    Recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, United States

    Bill Berry – drums, percussion
    Peter Buck – e-bow guitar, electric sitar
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, backing vocals, organ, Moog synthesizer, Mellotron
    Patti Smith – vocals
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Leave"
    Recorded at a soundcheck at the Omni Theater in Atlanta, United States on November 18, 19, or 21, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums, acoustic guitar, synthesizer
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – guitar
    Scott McCaughey – ARP Odyssey
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, keyboards
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Departure"
    Recorded live at The Palace of Auburn Hills in Auburn Hills, United States on June 6 or 7, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – guitar
    Mike Mills – fuzz bass, backing vocals, Farfisa organ
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Bittersweet Me"
    Recorded at a soundcheck at the Pyramid Arena in Memphis, United States on November 7, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Scott McCaughey – piano
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, organ, Mellotron
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Be Mine"
    Recorded at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, United States

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – bass guitar
    Mike Mills – guitar, backing vocals, keyboards
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Binky the Doormat"
    Recorded live at the Desert Sky Pavilion in Phoenix, United States on November 4, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums, backing vocals
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – guitar
    Scott McCaughey – Farfisa organ
    Mike Mills – fuzz bass, backing vocals, keyboards
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Zither"
    Recorded in the dressing room of The Spectrum in Philadelphia, United States on October 12, 13, or 14, 1995

    Bill Berry – bass guitar
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – tambourine
    Scott McCaughey – autoharp
    Mike Mills – organ
    Michael Stipe – count in

"So Fast, So Numb"
    Recorded at a soundcheck at the Orlando Arena in Orlando, United States on November 15, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Scott McCaughey – piano
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, backing vocals, organ
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Low Desert"
    Recorded at a soundcheck at the Omni Theater in Atlanta, United States on November 18, 19, or 21, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – guitar
    Nathan December – slide guitar
    Scott McCaughey – piano
    Mike Mills – bass guitar, organ
    Michael Stipe – vocals

"Electrolite"
    Recorded at a soundcheck the Desert Sky Pavillion in Phoenix, United States on November 4, 1995

    Bill Berry – drums
    Peter Buck – banjo
    Andy Carlson – violin
    Nathan December – guiro
    Mike Mills – piano
    Michael Stipe – vocals

Technical crew

    William Field – assistant engineering, Athens
    Sam Hofstedt – assistant engineering, Seattle
    Victor Janacua – assistant engineering, Los Angeles
    Adam Kasper – recording engineering, Seattle
    John Keane – recording and mixing
    Scott Litt – mixing
    Bob Ludwig/Gateway Mastering – mastering
    Pat McCarthy – recording, Los Angeles
    Mark "Microwave" Mytrowitz – technical assistance
    Joe O'Herlihy – tour recording engineer
    Jo Ravitch – tour recording engineer
    Eric Stolz – digital editing
    Jeff Wooding – tour recording engineer

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded in 1995–1996 at various locations in the United States.



Recorded during and immediately following R.E.M.'s disaster-prone Monster tour, New Adventures in Hi-Fi feels like it was recorded on the road. Not only are all of Michael Stipe's lyrics on the album about moving or travel, the sound is ragged and varied, pieced together from tapes recorded at shows, soundtracks, and studios, giving it a loose, careening charm. New Adventures has the same spirit of much of R.E.M.'s IRS records, but don't take the title of New Adventures in Hi-Fi lightly - R.E.M. tries different textures and new studio tricks. "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us" opens the album with a rolling, vaguely hip-hop drum beat and slowly adds on jazzily dissonant piano. "E-Bow the Letter" starts out as an updated version of "Country Feedback," then it turns in on itself with layers of moaning guitar effects and Patti Smith's haunting backing vocals. Clocking in at seven minutes, "Leave" is the longest track R.E.M. has yet recorded and it's one of their strangest and best - an affecting minor-key dirge with a howling, siren-like feedback loop that runs throughout the entire song. Elsewhere, R.E.M. tread standard territory: "Electrolite" is a lovely piano-based ballad, "Departure" rocks like a Document outtake, the chiming opening riff of "Bittersweet Me" sounds like it was written in 1985, "New Test Leper" is gently winding folk-rock, and "The Wake-Up Bomb" and "Undertow" rock like the Monster outtakes they are. New Adventures in Hi-Fi may run a little too long - it clocks in at 62 minutes, by far the longest album R.E.M. has ever released - yet in its multifaceted sprawl, they wound up with one of their best records of the '90s.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



They say it's always darkest before the dawn. For R.E.M., these have been dark days indeed. In 1992 the Athens, Ga., band released Automatic for the People, on which the singer and lyricist Michael Stipe reflected upon life's rich ephemerality. Two years later, Stipe's friend Kurt Cobain killed himself. R.E.M. responded on 1994's Monster by rocking like teenage music geeks in a suburban garage. But a bizarre series of medical emergencies nearly derailed the band's '95 world tour. Stipe, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry all landed in the hospital; Berry suffered a brain aneurysm that nearly killed him. Now on the sweeping New Adventures in Hi-Fi, R.E.M.'s most ambitious album to date, the band attempts to stitch together all the disparate mood swings that have characterized its fight to maintain its integrity in the face of both disaster and superstardom. This could be R.E.M.'s swan song — or the first day of the rest of their lives.

The sequence of songs and the range of emotions on New Adventures convey a narrative that has all the dynamics and contradictions of life itself. Although mostly recorded on the Monster tour during live shows, sound checks and even in a dressing-room jam session, New Adventures is not a conventional live album. Co-producer Scott Litt has cleaned up the music to the point that New Adventures sounds like a studio album. What does come across, though, is a freedom and movement inspired by the road. From the seven-minute-long "Leave" (recorded during a sound check in Atlanta) to the five-minute-long "Undertow" (from a gig in Boston), there's a sense of spontaneity here that's rarely been heard on an R.E.M. record.

Stipe gets to the heart of matters in the first track, "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us," a sad, bitter song that floats atop a whispering tom-tom pulse and a lonesome Ennio Morricone-ish guitar part. His voice creeps across the landscape like a tired warrior. "This story is a sad one, told many times," Stipe sings, and it's clear he's talking about R.E.M. this time, not of the plight of America or the earth.

"How the West Was Won" is hardly the obvious choice for an album opener; a safer bet would have been the harder-rocking second track, "The Wake-Up Bomb," a glam-y song about youth gone mad and success gone haywire. But in a time when too many cookie-cutter alternative bands crank out predictable ear candy, R.E.M. choose artistic restraint over crass commercialism, giving New Adventures a sense of ambition and liberation that R.E.M. haven't displayed since 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction.

Liberation is a recurring theme on New Adventures. Whether Stipe is singing of escape in "Departure" or "Low Desert" or questioning religious faith in "New Test Leper" or "Undertow," he seems anxious to rid himself of the noise and clutter of celebrity excess. In "The Wake-Up Bomb," he riffs on the suffocating price of fame: "I've had enough, seen enough, had it all, given up/I won the race, broke the cup; I drank it all, spit it up." And then, in a sardonic kiss-off, he adds, "See ya — I don't wanna be ya." In "Leave," which begins with a baroqueish-sounding pump organ and acoustic guitar before blasting into a full-on-rave driven by a squalling electronic siren, Stipe warbles the line "I'm leaving, leaving, leaving it all behind." In "Bittersweet Me," he confesses, "I'd sooner chew my leg off/Than be trapped in this."

Stipe's rage is tempered only by a sense of melancholy that embraces the album like a warm quilt. In a duet with his longtime heroine Patti Smith, on the eerie "E-Bow the Letter," he talk-sings his way through a Dylan-esque narrative constructed of clipped images that could be an ode to a dying friend or lover. With Peter Buck sawing away on his guitar in fuzzy, sustained notes that recall guitarist Robert Fripp's patented Frippertronics sound, Stipe repeats the line "Aluminum tastes like fear" as Smith's background moaning of "I'll take you over" serves as sort of a loving, maternal safety net.

"E-Bow the Letter" is the most ambitious song here, but R.E.M. also push their boundaries elsewhere. Stipe sings the first part of "Be Mine" in a low-fi style similar to that of Sebadoh, with nothing but Buck's distorted guitar ringing in the background. R.E.M. take their first step into the realm of exotic lounge music on the sad-faced "Zither," an instrumental featuring trembling guitar, shimmery zither, organ and tambourine.

By the final track, "Electrolite" — a simple, folk-based pop song fueled by R.E.M.'s soothingly familiar guitar jangle — Stipe seems cleansed, even giddy in his commitment to moving on. After reeling out a cinematic image of hope among the depraved ruins of Los Angeles ("If you ever want to fly Mulholland Drive, up in the sky/Stand on a cliff and look down there; don't be scared, you are alive"), the music stops and gives way to the kind of silent clarity that only comes with the dawn. "I'm outta here," Stipe says. Welcome to the new beginning.

Mark Kemp - September 19, 1996
RollingStone.com



New Adventures in Hi-Fi is the tenth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M. It was their fifth major label release for Warner Bros. Records, released on September 9, 1996, in Europe and Australia and the following day in the United States. New Adventures in Hi-Fi was the last album recorded with founding member Bill Berry (who left the band amicably the following year), original manager Jefferson Holt, and long-time producer Scott Litt.

While New Adventures in Hi-Fi began the band's sales decline in the United States, it topped the charts in over 10 countries and reached #1 on the Top European Albums for 5 consecutive weeks. The album peaked at #2 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and spent 22 weeks on chart. According to Nielsen SoundScan, it has sold 994,000 units in their homeland as of March 2007. The first single "E-Bow the Letter" received only modest radio airplay in the U.S. and peaked at #49 on the U.S. charts. In the UK, however, the single became the band's biggest hit at that point, reaching #4.

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