10.31.98 Wall Of Sound Moving forward on three legs following the departure of drummer Bill Berry, R.E.M. was forced not just into a new adventure, but a whole new way of being. Settling into a couch and putting his feet up on the table at the plush Huntington Hotel in San Francisco, Peter Buck offers [...]
10.31.98 Irish Times REM’s new album – a reaction to the shock departure of drummer Bill Berry – is said tohave alienated many of the band’s traditional fans. Michael Stipe explains its development to Tony Clayton-Lea Imagine the scenario. You’re one of the world’s most respected and acclaimed rock bands – intelligent, provocative, committed, simultaneously [...]
By Betsy Powell 10.30.98 Windsor Star R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe recalls his best friend’s reaction to the group’s new album, Up. “He said it was…ballsy,” says the singer. Up is a challenging listen and, contrary to its title, it’s moody and dark. Hooks and hummable melodies take a back seat to ambient textures, while the instrumental [...]
By Brian McCollum 10.30.98 Orlando Sentinel When is a band not really a band? Some might say when it loses its drummer, doesn’t replace him, overhauls its sound, doesn’t play live too often and crashes badly when it does. But right now it doesn’t matter what you call R.E.M. because this is still a group [...]
By Rob Sheffield 10.28.98 Village Voice “I can hear you/Can you hear me?” Michael Stipe sang on the first R.E.M. album, and he’s probably spent a chunk of the past 15 years wishing he’d kept his pretty mouth shut. Few rock stars have been mind-read and decoded over the years like Stipe, the preternaturally wiggly [...]
10.28.98 Toronto Star R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe recalls his best friend’s reaction to the group’s new album, Up. “He said it was . . . ballsy,” remembers the singer. “(He said) `This record is just so out there, people are not going to know what hit them.”’ Up is a challenging listen and, contrary to its [...]
By Jeremy Wickett 10.28.98 Oklahoma Daily “They claim to walk unafraid/I’ll be clumsy instead,” sings Michael Stipe on R.E.M.’s 11th studio album, Up. After the loss of drummer Bill Berry, the trio might have stumbled over the last year, but the members of R.E.M. picked themselves up and made one heck of a record. From [...]
By Neil Strauss 10.28.98 New York Times “Did you see the drummer’s hair?” the rock group Pavement once asked in a song, sarcastically referring to the obscurity of rock-band drummers. But after Keith Moon of the Who died in 1978, the band never regained its creative footing. And when John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer, died [...]
By Josh Massey 10.27.98 The Red and Black Grade: A- To label “Up” an R.E.M. album would be true, but also deceiving. Nothing on this 14-track album indicates it is from the same band that, as recently as 1996, put out the muddled “New Adventures in Hi-Fi.” There’s more experimentation here than the band has [...]
By Mark Bautz 10.27.98 Entertainment Weekly When drummer Bill Berry quit rock & roll last year to devote himself to the more laid-back life of farming, R.E.M. was just starting rehearsals for “Up,” the group’s 13th album (in stores today). Singer Michael Stipe says the three remaining bandmates thought about quitting “for about three minutes,” [...]