By David Browne 09.30.96 Entertainment Weekly The ironies ran deeper than the lines of fans who camped out overnight for R.E.M. tickets. Seven weeks into the band’s almost yearlong world tour, Bill Berry, the group’s congenial drummer, was talking about how happy he was to be back doing what he loved best–playing amp-pulverizing rock & [...]
By D. M. Avery 09.30.96 CMJ Magazine New Adventures In Hi-Fi is R.E.M.’s best album since 1988′s Green, perhaps the group’s best since 1983′s Murmur, perhaps its best album, period. “Perhaps” because New Adventures is so meaty in texture and rich in detail that it can only be digested properly over time. New Adventures achieves [...]
Review of New Adventures In Hi-Fi 09.30.96 By Frank A. Lazar Move over Beck; there’s some more rockin’ to be done this year. And wouldn’t you know that those troubadours of college radio stardom are the ones doing it. Without taking the last three attempts at albums into account this is an excellent record. While [...]
09-30-96 By Bob Gullas Wall Of Sound Rating: 92/100 Much has been made of the unearthly sum R.E.M. landed in their recent deal with Warner Bros., and deservedly so. Eighty million dollars – or whatever the actual figure – is a staggering amount of money, even for a mega-band. Yet before you write-off R.E.M. out [...]
By David Cavanagh Select Magazine After ‘Monster”s lumpy grunge, R.E.M.’s tenth studio LP finds them back on song. Many a heart sank upon first exposure to R.E.M.’s last album, ‘Monster’. Yes, it was an ideal time to make a rock ‘n’ roll record, but R.E.M.’s over-reliance on two-chord fuzz-outs and off putting irony meant that [...]
By Mark Kemp Rolling Stone 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. [...]
Review of New Adventures In Hi-Fi Melody Maker If Monster was R.E.M.’s Achung Baby – the stripped-down, toughened-up record that saw U2 follow more earthy impulses after years of spiritual pontificating – then New Adventures In Hi-Fi would appear to be their Zooropa, the first R.E.M. LP about R.E.M., the self-conscious title hinting (misleadingly, as [...]
09.29.96 E! Online Grade: B+ In which the world’s most successful and long-running alternative band runs smack into a midlife crisis–and lives to tell the tale. Recorded onstage, during soundchecks, in dressing rooms and in studios during R.E.M.’s grueling 1994 world tour, New Adventures is a skittish work by a tired bunch. The virile rockers [...]
By Mark Swanson Florida State Newspaper That’s it, they’ve done it. R.E.M., those bastions of Folk Rock have gone techno. Please say it ain’t so boys. Monster was a surprising, but acceptable, departure from their usual fare. However, their latest release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, had absolutely nothing to do with the music that they [...]
09-23-96 Allstar Featuring members of Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Screaming Trees, Luna, & More If rock supergroups have a deserved reputation as overblown and ego-driven, consider Tuatara, a genre-jumping collaboration of rock’s biggest shots, whose modest ambition is to record jazz-scented, ethnically-inspired film music, not arena-rocking, beer-sponsored jingles. The band, fronted by Screaming Trees drummer Barrett [...]