 "REM Begins Again" | 2009-08-17 |
| - Reviewed By blackbeardo |
REM
Lifes Rich Pageant; 1986
IRS Records
My Rating: 83/100
REM Begins Again
Following on the heels of the band's first major misstep, PAGEANT is the album where REM starts to find some muscle amidst all the jangle. Whereas the band once relied on propulsion to drive many of their songs home, they slowed things down a bit here, combining huge choruses with slower tempos ("Begin the Begin", "Cuyahoga") to produce their most confident sounding record yet. This was the album that proved REM could be superstars, as evidenced by the classic status afforded to "Fall On Me," which prefigures future REM classics like "Losing My Religion", "Man on the Moon", and "Everybody Hurts." That's not to say that REM slows everything down here - "Hyena" and "These Days" are just as fast-paced and visceral as anything on the band's first three LPs. But this is the record where REM began to distance itself from even the best and brightest of 80's college radio, and laid the foundation for its future success.
Cohesion (5/5)
Concept (4/5)
Consequence (5/5)
Consistency (4/5)
Tracks:
1. Begin the Begin (4.5/5)
2. These Days (4/5)
3. Fall On Me (5/5)
4. Cuyahoga (5/5)
5. Hyena (5/5)
6. Underneath the Bunker
7. The Flowers of Guatemala (5/5)
8. I Believe (5/5)
9. What If We Give It Away? (5/5)
10. Just a Touch (4/5)
11. Swan Swan H (4/5)
12. Superman (4/5) |
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| "We need a vinyl re-issue" | 2008-11-29 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3PUCZGKTKSZ7W |
Like a lot of music fans, I have turned completely back to vinyl, and the versions of this GREAT album that I have found are all messed up. I want Rhino to get the rights from IRS to allow them to do a great 180g pressing as they have done for some other great '80's records, with the fantastic "Pleased to Meet Me" by the Replacements as an example.
I am not, nor ever was a huge REM fan, but I have always loved this album. "Fall on Me" unlike a lot of '80's music still sounds as good to me today as it did as a sophmore in college. As I have gotten older and sadly realized that the music from my generation paled in comparison to the one just before us, I take some consolation in the fact that we have a few winners. Such as this album, Murmur, War and the Joshua Tree. But let's be honest; REM and U2 are not Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, the Allman Bros, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd..... man the 70's sure had a long list of great bands.
Great album, btw. |
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 "We are young despite the years, or, Michael Stipe Sings!" | 2008-11-23 |
| - Reviewed By tbrough |
In what was a transitional album for R.E.M., Michael Stipe's vocals are pushed to the fore of the band's mix, and suddenly, their jangle-rock puts the emphasis on Rock. The greatest evidence of that is on songs one and three. "Begin The Begin" pairs Bill Berry's drum slam to Peter Buck's ringing guitars and delivered on of the band's most propulsive tracks to that moment. Then comes the first of Michael Stipe's more overt socially conscious songs, the environmentally themed "Fall On Me." While the intent is masked by the usual lyrical obtuseness, you can hear just about every word Stipe is singing. When you added Bill Berry (whom I have long considered the band's secret weapon) singing a counter lyric throughout the song, it shows that R.E.M. were making "Lifes Rich Pageant" an effort to polish their sound.
Mich of that can be credited to producer Don Gehman, who was partly responsible for putting the stonesy wallop inside of John Mellencamp. If Fables of the Reconstruction was often dark and dense, "Pageant" was the light at the opposite end of the tunnel. There's more joyfulness here than on that previous album, down to the band playing pranks by listing the songs out of order and hiding the cover of "Superman" - sung with a goofy cheer by Berry - entirely from the track listing. There's even a oddball of a track, "Underneath The Bunker." R.E.M., often accused of being overtly serious, just wanted to have fun.
"Trust in your calling,
make sure your calling's true.
Think of others,
the others think of you.
Silly rule golden words make practice,
practice makes perfect,
perfect is a fault,
and faultlines change."
So sang Michael Stipe on this album's "I Believe." The band was one album away from their commercial breakthrough, Document, and "Pageant" was the real harbinger of their future.
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| "Puts the "rock" in "jangle-rock"" | 2007-08-24 |
| - Reviewed By radioactiveman12 |
This is a very good album. Some people think it's the group's best, and indeed it's up there - for my part, I prefer the damn sellout (Yeah, Exhuming McCarthey's a commercial song, all right) Document. However, this is probably their second-best album. It pounds even the most acclaimed of the group's '90s work into the ground, too. I mean, Out of Time? A glorified single release for Losing My Religion? Get outta town! And Automatic for the People? A bunch of really good singles and absolutely wretched album tracks? It doesn't have a chance! And as for Around the Sun...
Come on, do you need anyone here to tell you that this is better than Around the Sun?
Anyway, let's get down to business here. The fog that was Fables of the Reconstruction had lifted, and in its place was an album that actually (gasp!) had some electric guitar, (no way!) lyrics with meaning, and (oh my god!) discernable vocals. For R.E.M. in 1986, this was as weird as weird could get - especially compared to Fables of the Reconstruction, which had little of the first and second and none of the third. The rockers are all pretty good, too: Begin the Begin, These Days, Hyena, Just a Touch, I Believe, and (my favorite on the record) their cover of Superman, sung by Mike Mills, all can be considered among the best of early R.E.M. (which basically means "The best of R.E.M."). Now there are still folk songs: the Fairport Convention-like Swan Swan H, and the twin enivronmentalist songs Fall on Me ("Please don't... FAAAAALL ON MEEEEE! FAAAALL ON MEEEE!") and Cuyahoga, and those are great too! All of those songs could've made this the group's best album, but they have to ruin it with three tracks I haven't brought up yet, because they suck and I don't like songs that suck. There's an instrumental (Underneath the Bunker), and R.E.M.'s not a group known for being brilliant musicians. There's a faux-Latin thing (The Flowers of Guatemala) that turned out to be a total flop, and a poor, shoddy folk-rocker, What if We Gave It Away. It's still a great album in spite of those three, so pick it up if you like the group. |
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| "A slicker, harder rocking R.E.M. and one of their best" | 2007-07-06 |
| - Reviewed By the_q_is_slient |
After listeners struggled to hear Michael Stipe's words on their first three albums (an intentional mixing decision), suddenly everything he had to say was crystal clear...well, not counting the frequently cryptic messages. But the passages and songs with the clearest purposes prove to be something of a mistake. What little there is to clearly comprehend is often heavy-handed, even preachy at times. Despite good intentions on environmentalism, does anyone want to listen to a college radio hero standing on a soapbox?
Maybe that's one of the reasons why Lifes Rich Pageant is one of R.E.M.'s most forgotten records (despite selling better than their first three albums). Another could be a dearth of popular tunes, but then again, the harder-rocking power pop of songs like "Begin the Begin" and "Superman" seem perfectly adjusted to the waves of radio America. Can this album match their first two efforts of the decade? Not quite. Should it be rediscovered by a generation that knows R.E.M. mostly by "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts"? Definitely.
Best cuts: "Begin the Begin," "Fall on Me," "I Believe," "Superman," "The Flowers of Guatemala," "What If We Give It Away," "Swan Swan H," "Cuyahoga," "Just a Touch" |
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| "If you must have and REM record, get this one!" | 2007-06-22 |
| - Reviewed By bradleyhi68 |
This is good stuff. I was never a huge REM fan but I did like them because back in the day there were pretty cool. They had a cool stripped down sound that was unconventional at the time. What that means is they did not exactly rock my socks off but they were playing actual guitars, drums and basses instead of a synthesizer and drum machine. In my mind that was enough to make them pretty cool. My sister had Reckoning (also pretty cool) and Fables of the Reconstruction (which sucked) so when Lifes Rich Pageant came out I was pretty familiar with REM and kind of liked some of their stuff but felt funny about it because they were my sisters band. The video for Fall on Me is what sold me on the record and I am glad it did because this (as I have said) is good stuff. Buck's guitar had some snarl to it and the drums are heavy and driving - much more so than before or since. As I have admitted, I am not a huge REM fan but have never stopped liking this album.
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