An Obsessive Guide to R.E.M.’s Discography

With R.E.M. calling it quits this week, everyone has been ranking their favorite albums. In my attempt to do so, I wrote this obsessive record guide to the R.E.M. discography, complete with recommended tracks for the novices and a list of my favorite records.

Chronic Town (1982)
The band’s opening statement, the brief Chronic Town EP is a minor, oft-overlooked masterpiece. There are only five songs on record, but all are required listening for fans of the I.R.S. Years. “Gardening at Night” is one of the band’s absolute essential tracks, complimented by four more that established R.E.M. as a bold voice of the 80s.
Essential Tracks: “Gardening at Night,” “Boxcars (Carnival of Sorts)”

Murmur (1983)
While Chronic Town maybe the forgotten beginning of R.E.M., Murmur is where they established their sound. Though released only a year after Chronic Town, Murmur saw the band instantly mature as songwriters. “Radio Free Europe” announced the band to the world, but there isn’t a single track on the record that should be missed. For years, Murmur has been hailed by many as the defining album of the band* but it’s more of a defining album of 80’s indie rock**, and perhaps of indie rock all together. It’s an all time classic that needs to be heard at least once by every serious music fan.
Essential Tracks: “Radio Free Europe,” “Pilgrimage,” “Catapult,” “Sitting Still”

Reckoning (1984)
The most crucial album of a band’s career is its second. The luster of “best new band” is gone, and a lackluster follow up can destroy a band’s momentum in the press and creatively. Thankfully, R.E.M. delivered a masterpiece in Reckoning. Though perhaps living in the shadow of its predecessor, Reckoning again saw the band step forward with their sound, opening it up and adapting it for the larger audiences they were playing for. It was also the record where Michael Stipe began his transformation from bashful, mysterious singer to a confident lead. Reckoning offers a clear blueprint of the sound that R.E.M. would continue to work with for the rest of the career, the first step in their progression from indie darlings to international stars.
Essential Tracks: “So. Central Rain,” “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville,” “Pretty Persuasion”

Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)
Recorded during tense sessions in London, Fables found R.E.M. going darker than they had on their previous two records. Once again, the band improved their sound, coming off more polished and cohesive than before. In many ways, the R.E.M. of Murmur is hardly heard on the album. Michael Stipe’s mystery is completely absent from bold tracks like “Can’t Get There From Here,” and Peter Buck’s guitar riffs feel less potent than before. It’s easy to think of Fables as the band’s first small stumble, but it successfully built on the new sounds they toyed with on Reckoning and helped lead them to the more radio friendly sound of the late-80s. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s an important transitional record for the band.
Essential Tracks: “Can’t Get There From Here,” “Maps and Legends,” “Life and How to Live It”

Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)
For those disappointed by Fables, Life’s Rich Pageant was a return to form for R.E.M., but for astute listeners, it’s not much of a departure from the ideas of its predecessor. Stipe was at his most direct, offering commentary on the environment on “Fall on Me” and “Cuyahoga,” but with more punch and passion than he’d ever had. What is most important about the record is that it saw the band step up from humble critical darlings to an indie competitor for popular music. They were already established and were arguably the biggest name in independent music at the time. While most Americans flocked to Paul Simon’s Graceland, the indie community grew around Life’s Rich Pageant. This is where they started to become rock stars.
Essential Tracks: “Fall on Me,” “Cuyahoga,” “Begin the Begin”

Document (1987)
On their last album for I.R.S., R.E.M. made as good of a case as any to be picked up by a major label and turned into rock stars. 1987 was a year where George Michael had the top song and U2, probably the biggest rock band at the time, was offering up the lackluster “With or Without You,” but Document was a bold, smart record that finally helped R.E.M. break into the mainstream for good. “Finest Work Song” announced a major change in the band. Gone were the kids from Athens. In their place, four men making remarkable music. It’s a record that stands easily in the upper tier of their discography, and should not be missed.
Essential Tracks: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”, “The One I Love”

Green (1988)
Document began a remarkable stream of good albums that was continued on the band’s first album for Warner Bros., Green. A late-80s pop classic, it took the big sound of its predecessor and took it to new heights while also revisiting some of the folk based sounds first tried out on Reckoning. The band was at a crossroads, it’s indie roots seemingly far away with its greatest triumphs right around the corner, and the potential for Green to be a let down was a definite possibility. Instead, we got a record that showcased a band that seemed to have unlimited potential.
Essential Tracks: “Stand” “Pop Song 89,” “Orange Crush”

Out of Time (1991)
After putting out an album every year for six years, R.E.M. took a break and returned with an all new sound and the biggest hit of their career. For a band that once tore through songs like “1,000,000,” the sound of Peter Buck’s mandolin was a major evolution. “Losing My Religion” has become an inescapable hit and “Shiny Happy People” is about as ridiculous a single the band put out, but in between are several amazing songs. One of the most overlooked R.E.M. tracks is the dark “Country Feedback,” a song with unbelievable power. Mike Mills’ first chances to take the lead, “Near Wild Heaven” and “Texarkana” are just two of truly gorgeous tracks that is essential in the transition of popular music from the 80s to the 90s.
Essential Tracks: “Losing My Religion”, “Country Feedback,” “Half a World Away”

Automatic For the People (1992)
If a band’s second album is the most important album of their career, the second most important record is the one that comes after their most successful. Once again, R.E.M. succeeded, making Automatic for the People, a record I once read described as “the Pet Sounds of the early 90s.” This is a record that dealt with dark sounds and themes full of power and resonance. If you get past the joke “Everybody Hurts” has become***, you’ll find a complex and brilliant record that would shape music for the next 15 years.
Essential Tracks: “Man on the Moon,” “Nightswimming,” “Sweetness Follows”

Monster (1994)
Recieved with lukewarm reviews, Monster saw the band turn the volume back up. From opener “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” the band did their best rock star impersonations on their first inconsistent record in eight years. The record has its moments, but it was an awkward transition from the beauty of Automatic. The deaths of friends River Phoenix (to whom the album is dedicated) and Kurt Cobain (with whom Stipe wrote “Let Me In” for) hang heavy on the album, but there’s also some fun moments, like the Green-esque “Star 69.” To say that Monster was the beginning of the end of the original lineup is a stretch, as it was really the disastrous tour in support of it that started to erode at R.E.M., but after a string of fantastic records, Monster is a disappointment, but not necessarily a bad record.
Essential Tracks: “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth,” “Let Me In,” “Strange Currencies”

New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996)
The Monster tour was a major disaster for the band. Stipe and Mills both needed emergency surgery and Bill Berry suffered a brain aneurysm on stage, yet the band took the advice of tourmates Radiohead and began recording on the road. The resulting album, Berry’s last in R.E.M., is without a doubt, the most overlooked of their career. There’s not a single on New Adventures, but it’s a remarkable album that finds Stipe finding the poetic voice he’d mastered pre-Monster. The record melds the ideas and themes of Out of Time and Automatic for the People, while nodding towards the harder edge of Monster before distilling it all into their most sophisticated record of the 90s. New Adventures is an essential R.E.M. album, perhaps their last, great record.
Essential Tracks: “New Test Leper,” “Bittersweet Me” “E-Bow the Letter”

Up (1999)
The departure of Berry led the remaining three members to begin experimenting with their sound with mixed results. There are good moments on average songs like the end of “Sad Professor” and the bridge of “Diminished,” but the use of drum machines and synthesizers often cluttered the sound. Up reveals how essential Berry was to the band, and the record ultimately suffers from a lack of backbone. It also marked the begin of a rough patch of records that led to the end of R.E.M.’s immediate relevancy.
Essential Tracks: “Sad Professor,” “Daysleeper,” Suspicion”

Reveal (2001)
An album that is way too sugary and ernest, Reveal has a few tracks worth listening to, but is a largely forgettable, bland record. Stipe, Mills, and Buck seem like they’re going through the motions on the first album of their career that sounds truly uninspired. The saving grace of the album is the building “She Just Wants to Be,” but even that song fails to take advantage of R.E.M.’s full potential.
Essential Tracks: “She Just Wants to Be”

Around the Sun (2004)
Without a doubt the band’s worst album, Around the Sun is a soulless record that showcases a shell of a band. There’s no energy, no emotion, even with Stipe’s anti-Bush rumblings on “Final Straw.” There isn’t a moment on the album worth going back to, and is the only album in the R.E.M. discography that can and should be totally ignored.
Essential Tracks: None

Accelerate (2008)
The band’s return to form, Accelerate is a good old fashioned rock album that saw R.E.M. return to the raw rock of New Adventures in Hi Fi. It’s the best album of the post-Berry years, thanks largely in part to the renewed sense of energy and feeling in every song. The band sounded happy again, eager to make music because they wanted to, not because they had to. It’s not perfect, but it’s a record that should not at all be overlooked.
Essential Tracks: “Living Well Is the Best Revenge,” “Supernatural Superserious,” “Horse to Water”

Collapse Into Now (2011)
What turned out to be R.E.M.’s final album failed to deliver on the promise of Accelerate, but wasn’t altogether a disappointment. The energy of its predecessor saves even the worst songs on Collapse Into Now, which offered up more “R.E.M. songs” than Accelerate. The horribly named “Mine Smell Like Honey” features a classic drum beat and soaring choruses while “ÜBerlin” calls back to Out of Time’s timeless beauty. It’s not a perfect ending to one of the greatest bands of the last 30 years, but at the very least, it sounds like a record where they gave it their all.
Essential Tracks: “Mine Smell Like Honey,” “ÜBerlin”

*I disagree. It may be their best album, but calling it their greatest accomplishment diminishes anything else the band did. They not only have a slew of great records to their name, they also helped save popular music for several years, even when they switched to a major label. Murmur is great, but it by no means defines the band.

**I’m sure someone will want to argue Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation or the Pixies’ Doolittle, but those both came out four and six years after Murmur. Those albums may have shown the end result of the decade, but Murmur was the record that turned 70’s punk and new wave into indie rock in the 80s.

***The song has not aged well, more than perhaps any other R.E.M. song.

My Personal Favorite R.E.M. Top 10:
1. Reckoning
2. Automatic for the People
3. Murmur
4. New Adventures in Hi-Fi
5. Document
6. Out of Time
7. Green
8. Monster
9. Life’s Rich Pageant
10. Fables of the Reconstruction

The New Radio Cure: Coming Soon

Over the last year, I’ve devoted most of my blogging energy to my other site, Tangled Up in Wires.com, but starting this week, the Radio Cure returns, completely revamped. I now plan to use the site as an outlet for music and film reviews, but more in the form of a “consumer guide” as opposed to a rundown of whats new and hot. Expecting a review of a new record? Go to TUiW. Want a review of a classic French New Wave film? Come here. I’m hoping to have a post up by the end of the day, so stay tuned!

Review: R.E.M. – Live at the Olympia

In the last two years, R.E.M. seems to have been revisiting their desire to release live material. Prior to 2007, the only official live R.E.M. recordings came through concert films, obscure b-sides, and bonus tracks. But in 2007, the band released Live, a fairly lackluster concert album and DVD that featured the band’s big hits, but didn’t really capture the fire the band can have in concert. This was followed with the release of two previously unreleased concerts packaged with the reissues of Murmer and Reckoning. Both were recorded early in the band’s career, when they were touring non-stop and before they had reached the massive heights that they had by the time 1994’s Automatic for the People came out. The contrast between the older shows and Live is vast, but not just because the performers themselves had gotten old. In the early 1980s, R.E.M. had a relatively small catalog, mostly full of quick rockers and no huge hits, but by 2007, fans expected to hear classics like “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion,” and “Everybody Hurts.” Live also suffered from its use of material from 2005’s Around the Sun, which is easily the band’s worst record to date.

But before the shows that comprised Live were recorded, the band did a five night stand at the Olympia in Dublin which were essentially live rehearsals of material new and old, which gives us this newest release. For these shows, the band largely forgot about the material post-1990, save for a few tracks here and there. As a result, Live at the Olympia is largely comprised of early tracks, forgotten fan favorites, and songs that would appear on their return to form record, Accelerate. While this may deter casual fans and listeners unfamiliar with R.E.M., it is a two-disc run through of the some of the band’s best material that greatest hits compilations have forgotten.

During the tour for Around the Sun in 2004-2005, the band had seemed to be somewhat disconnected from one another. It’s to be expected that after 20+ years, they might not want to hang out all the time, but they seemed to be going through the motions live. Live at the Olympia totally contradicts this idea. They joke with each other about new songs, play each others’ favorites, and have the occasional slip up. The band is loose, and it sounds like it. On the opener, “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” it sounds like their instruments will break from playing them too hard. “Disturbance at the Heron House” has a miscue before beginning, but for a song that hasn’t been predominately featured in 20 years, it sounds awfully good. Even the banter is loose. Before “1,000,000,” Michael Stipe jokes, “Lots of death in this one too, I don’t know where I was in the early 80s.”

Live at the Olympia may not be the first R.E.M. compilation I’d urge new listeners to pick up (check out the best of the IRS years comp And I Feel Fine), but if you know their big hits and want to hear some of their best songs outside of them, Live at the Olympia is a must listen. Not only do you get to hear a great band rejuvenating itself, but you get to hear a great band play some of their best work. Songs like “New Test Leper” and “Harborcoat” are not songs you’d know if you didn’t know R.E.M., but they sound terrific here and are worth your time if you’re willing to listen.

Review: Land of Talk – Fun and Laughter

[Editor's Note: This review is also posted on The Radio Cure's sister site, Tangled Up In Wires]

When I was working as Assitant Music Director for WDUB, my college radio station, a copy of Land of Talk’s debut, Applause Cheer Boo Hiss was in my review pile. The promoter of the album boasted it was for fans of Metric, so I put it in and immediately got pulled in. Lead singer and songwriter Elizabeth Powell has the ability to convey both power and a fragility to her voice that, when combined with jangly guitars and thunderous drumming, is an irresistable combination. Their first full length, Some Are Lakes, was one of my favorite albums of last year. A combination of irresitable pop tunes, vulnerable slow songs, and head bobbing rock, they seemed destined to be the next big indie band to make it big. But even with the production of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and a tour with Broken Social Scene, the band didn’t quite break the mainstream bubble.

They’re back now with a new EP, Fun and Laughter, another small sample of irresitable tunes to tide fans over with until the next full length. At first listen, some might be reminded of early, Something About Airplanes, Death Cab for Cutie, just by the way the record sounds, but it’s  not a far cry from Some Are Lakes‘ catchiness. The opener, “Sixteen Asterik” begins with a syncopated rhythm which tightens up as the band bounces through it. It’s followed by “May You Never,” the defacto single, which does a good job of showcasing the strengths of the band. After a very catchy piano opening, the song breaks wide open. Powell double tracks her voice to harmonize with herself as she hammers away at her guitar, hoping the rest of the band will catch up. If there were one song on the EP to play for someone who’s never heard of Land of Talk before, this one is it.

It’s followed by “As Me,” a brooding song punctuated by clacking drums and guitar lines that weave around each other. Again, Powell is double tracked and harmonizing with herself before ripping into a howling guitar solo. The closer, “A Series of Small Flames” is a soft song played on electric guitar with light tom-toms backing it up. Powell continues to mine the emotional depth she plays with on the rest of the EP, which redeems the otherwise monotonous track.  The EP also comes with videos for songs from Some Are Lakes. The songs are fantastic, but the videos are not great. That isn’t to say they aren’t worth watching, especially if you don’t know the songs, but their quality doesn’t match that of the songs themselves.

Overall, Fun and Laughter is probably too short to get a grasp as to who Land of Talk are, but it’s as good a place to start with a very talented band. Good things are on the way for Elizabeth Powell and company, and Fun and Laughter is a nice preview of what’s to come.

Land of Talk – “May You Never” [mp3]

Best of the Aughts: The Mountain Goats – Tallahassee

In light of the Mountain Goat’s recent success, it’s easy to forget that 10 years ago, John Darnielle was an obscure songwriter recording on a warbly tape recorder in his bedroom. Darnielle was a master of lo-fi, using spare resources to craft songs that were touching, haunting, and hilarious all at the same time.

Darnielle’s transition from lo-fi to hi-fi came with 2003’s Tallahassee. Coming very quickly after All Hail West Texas, Darnielle’s final lo-fi effort to date, Tallahasee maintained the same humor and intelligence of its predecessor, while expanding the sound significantly. Instead of Darnielle on guitar, maybe a bass, and the rare additional instrument heard on previous Mountain Goats records, Tallahassee was the first time Darnielle worked with a full time band, featuring longtime friends and collaborators Peter Hughes and Franklin Bruno. But instead of starting the record with this new sound, Darnielle eases into it on the song “Tallahassee,” with only him on a guitar. But the fragile beginnings of the title track clearly signal this different sound. Without the tape hiss and warble of Darnielle’s earlier work, “Tallahassee” comes off as one of the most beautiful song he’d written up to that point. It’s also one of the record’s sweetest songs, as Darnille asks and answers his own question: “What did I come round here for?/You”

The narratives of the individual songs are particularly noticeable on this record, as Darnielle is able to set up songs with lost characters, stuck in love or in trouble, and with little resolution in sight. The characters, known as the Alpha Couple (for songs about them that have the word Alpha in the title), have just moved to Tallahassee and shows the ups and downs of their crumbling, alcohol filled marriage. “First Few Desperate Hours” begins with the line “Bad lucks comes in from Tampa/on the back of a bus,” the characters in trouble, but seemingly not by their own accord. “International Small Arms Traffic” uses international relations metaphors (including my favorite Mountain Goats  line ever: “Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania”) to describe the volatile and loveless interactions between the two lovers. The gorgeous “Game Shows Touch Are Lives” puts the grandeur and wealth of game shows parallel with the quiet evening of a couple watching them, longing for the wealth, but content with the cheap gin that they have, in a rare sweet moment between for the two of them.

The bitterness between the two in the Alpha Couple also comes through frequently throughout the record as they continue their slow march towards inevitable divorce. On “Southwood Plantation Road,” Darnielle sings, “Our conversations are like minefields/No one’s found a safe way through one yet,” and on the albums penultimate song “The Oceanographer’s Choice,” he snarls, “What will I do when I don’t have you?/When I finally get what I deserve?” The characters are most definitely aware of their growing disdain for each other throughout, their love becoming an increasing burden. On “See America Right,” the husband expresses his love for his wife, but adds, “But my love is like a dark cloud full of rain/It’s always right there up above you.” This couple is bound to each other, but clearly hating it. Their house and relationship crumbling, they continue to dissolve throughout the course of the record into a drunk, angry couple, the shadow of what they once were.

Perhaps one of the best songs in the record is “No Children.” The song has become a crowd favorite at Mountain Goats shows over the years, with fans merrily singing along at the top of their lungs. But the song is far from joyous, but rather an incredibly bitter argument told through the husband’s perspective. Darnielle sings of abandoning friends, getting away from the town, and even bleeding all day from a shaving-induced cut. The final verse is one of the most bitter ever written:

And I hope when you think of me years down the line

You can’t find one good thing to say

And I’d hope that if I found the strength to walk out

You’d stay the hell out of my way

I am drowning

There is no sign of land

You are coming down with me

Hand in unlovable hand

And I hope you die

I hope we both die

The Alpha Couple is done and they know it. They hate each other, but they also hate themselves for sticking with this person for so long. The song’s upbeat tempo is perhaps the reason crowds love this song so much, but it seems odd given the nature of it (live, Darnielle changes the final lines to “And I hope you die/I hope we all die,” the crowd joining in happily).

Tallahassee received its due critical acclaim when it came out, and Darnielle continued to change his sound and grow in esteem and popularity. Each of the five records he has released since then deals with a different narrative or sonic theme. An appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report recently has completed Darnielle’s transformation from bedroom songwriter to polished studio musician. But Tallahassee is an important milestone in the career of a songwriter destined for all of the good things that have since come to him.

How Creed Helped Destroy Popular Rock Music

Today on Slate, Jonah Weiner wrote a defense of the band Creed, a late-90′s pseudo-Christian rock band who were quite popular for a few years before lead singer Scott Stapp self-imploded with the help of alcohol and drugs. The band is back again, with a comeback tour and and a new album on the way.  Weiner calls Creed, “one of the most underrated and unfairly maligned groups in pop history.” He also suggests that their hit “Higher” might become a song like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” a song maligned upon its release that eventually becomes an anthem for sports teams and alcohol induced sing-alongs.

Honestly, I’m entirely unsure how you could consider Creed to be an underrated band let alone one that deserves more respect than it’s gotten. The band emerged around the same time as Limp Bizkit, an equally unimpressive band that simply pandered to angsty teenagers and those that wanted a more happy medium between heavy metal and grunge. In the late 90′s, both bands received large exposure from MTV that made their genre, which Weiner dubs “nu-grunge,” hugely popular. Creed and Limp Bizkit helped spawn bands like Nickleback and 3 Doors Down, both of whom still chart well today and have subsequently spawned similar bands on their own.

The problem is that Creed’s music is not underrated as Weiner suggests. The lyrics, filed with Biblical references, are incredibly tacky and generic. The band wouldn’t have exsisted had it not been for Nirvana and grunge, but they completely lack the lyrical magnificence of Kurt Cobain. Similarly, the music itself is incredibly bland, just loud power chords put in different order to make up different songs. The songs aren’t ground breaking or any different from each other. Stapp seems to have tried imitating the voice of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, but with seemingly less power.

Thinking of what else was going on with music around the same time makes it even harder to comprehend how Creed can be considered a lost gem.  During the period of 1997-2002 when the band was at it’s “prime,” Radiohead made two of the best records of the last 30 years with 1997′s OK Computer and 2000′s Kid A. Radiohead started as a post-grunge rock band with an angsty debut single (“Creep”), yet they managed to evolve into the most important band of the early 21st Century. Creed, on the other hand, had very little musical development in refining a commercial, processed sound designed to sell records, not improve upon the sound of popular music.

As a result, creativity in popular rock music came to a screeching halt. Since the genre’s beginnings in the 1950′s, each decade saw it get more and more sophisticated. Nirvana in the early 1990′s even seems to be the last breath of any creativity, any sound that enhanced the genre on a national stage. Since Creed and nu-grunge of the late-90′s, popular rock music has changed very little in sound. Rap and hip hop, in contrast, has developed leaps and bounds as it has become a larger popular genre. But in rock, Nickleback is one of the most popular bands on rock radio today, and their sound has remained largely unchanged since their first single at the start of the decade. To hear truely innovative, original rock music, fans have to seek it on their own. Gone are the days of finding original music on radio. It’s all on the internet now.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Creed single-handedly destroyed rock music, corporate influence is probably more to blame. But Creed represents the manufactured sound that popular rock music has adopted as its own. The lack of creativity and originality has shifted from the radio to the internet and independent radio. Even major label releases by bands like Built to Spill, who are on Warner Bros., doesn’t make the same airwaves that Nickleback and 3 Doors down do. So I guess yes, Creed is underrated, but not for it’s music, but for its role in making popular rock music bland and uninteresting.

Bon Iver – Live at Riverside Theatre

Yes, Justin Vernon is everyone’s indie songwriter darling, but I gotta say, there’s a good reason. Vernon’s work as Bon Iver and with Volcano Choir is incredibly beautiful, and I have yet to tire of it. He’s taking a well deserved break from touring, and his show this week at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee is available for streaming from Radio Milwaukee. Be sure to listen.

Best of the Aughts: The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free

On his debut LP as the Streets, 2002′s Original Pirate Material, Mike Skinner emerged as the voice of the London working class. Combing traditional hip hop, dance beats, and a cockney accent, Skinner looked like the answer to Dizzee Rascal and Grime with a more musically inclined sound, full of finesse.

All of this was confirmed on 2004′s A Grand Don’t Come For Free, a concept album that plays out an urban soap opera over fully realized beats and hooks. The story is fairly simple. Skinner, or the character he plays, gets mad at his friends for stealing his money, meets a girl, falls in love, gets drunk, gets stoned, has a nasty break up, and ends up where he started.

But this narrative isn’t typical of rap. Skinner articulates in a manner that makes one of The Wireor gritty films.  The conversational nature of the lyrics drives this home on tracks like “Get Out of My House,” where he argues with his girlfriend Simone (played here by MC C-Mone) or “Such a Twat” where Skinner relays events to a friend on the phone, complete with a loss of service and a subsequent explanation.

The album is full of standouts, starting with “Could Well Be In,” in which Skinner meets and nervously hits it off with eventual girlfriend Simone. “Blinded By The Lights” is a glorious club song where Skinner gets so high he doesn’t see Simone kiss his friend Dan. Kanye West obviously heard this song before writing his song “Flashing Lights,” which shares its club-meets-rap sound and mentality. The single, “Fit But You Know It,” features pulsing guitars borrowed from Madness and a party feel that makes it an anthem for any night out. “Dry Your Eyes” is probably the best break up song rap has ever seen. Skinner sounds more vulnerable than most rappers allow themselves to be, making it a beautiful and sad song not to miss.

The album’s closer, “Empty Cans,” is particularly interesting. The first half features a bleak ending to the story, with Skinner shunning his friends and fighting a TV repair man. The sound of the music reflects the lyrics, with dark tones and an edge that leads you to believe Skinner will actually end on such a bleak note.  Instead, the tape rewinds and the song restarts, this time with Skinner forgiving his friends, finding his lost money in the back of the TV, and meeting a new girl. The music too brightens as Skinner assures us that things will be good again and the story comes full circle.

Skinner’s next two records went on to show musical maturity and new themes,  including celebrity and the meaning of life. But A Grand Don’t Come For Freeremains, at least as of now, his definitive album. The sophisticated production has become a trend in (good) rap, but this album bears its maker’s mark, differentiating it. additionally, no rapper on either side of the Atlantic has every even come close to Skinner’s narrative and emotional prowess, making A Grand Don’t Come For Free one of the best rap albums of the 00′s.

The Enduring Cool of the Beatles

Tomorrow, The Beatles will release a reissue of their entire catalogue on CD. Though the albums may all be bought individually, fans may purchase a box set that tops the $250 mark. Additionally, a Beatles version of Rock Band will be released as well, allowing users to rock out to their Fab Four tunes. Rumors are also swirling that Apple will announce the addition of the band’s catalogue to their iTunes store.

This new wave of Beatlemania hardly seems surprising. The band hdipped in popularity at all over the years, but every couple of years seems to grab attention as if they’re back out of nowhere, the result of a massive PR blitz. First came the TV/DVD/CD/book blitz of the “Anthology”. Next was “1″, a collection of number one hits that sold very well, despite the exisistence of two best of compilations. After that, there was DVD releases of “A Hard Days Night” and “Help!” A Cirque du Solei show, “Love,” became a smash hit.

Each new product allowed young music journalists to have their shot at reviewing the band, all of the inevitably crediting the current reissue for pulling in new, young fans. This I find a completely absurd assertion. Any kid that loves rock music is going to know a handful of Beatles songs automatically. Heck, anyone who’s ever been exposed to pop culture knows Beatles songs. What these reiussues and special packages do is spark a media frenzy around a band that’s been broken up for 40 years, making people go out and buy more.

I currently own the entire Beatles catalogue and see no reason why I should buy any of these reissued albums, yet I might, simply out of curiosity as to how something I know and love might be different. It is for this reason that the Beatles’ marketing department is increibly smart and successful. Young fans that don’t have the records will go buy them. Old fans who have them will buy them out of curiosity and because of a need to own every morsel of the Beatles’ catalogue.

Look to see this as the strategy that today’s popular acts adopt in the future. Though there don’t seem to be any bands today that can even hold a candle to the Beatles’ popularity, all of them will capitalize on their model for enduring financial success.

Radiohead – These Are My Twisted Words

Radiohead have another new single out called “These Are My Twisted Words,” and it may have come out amidst the greatest amount of attention a “leak” has ever received.

Let’s step back a little bit for those who missed it. It all started over a week ago when Radiohead posted a new track, “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” on their website. The track was a lushly orchestrated song released in memory of Harry Patch, the last British veteran of World War I, who had just passed away. It was followed very shortly by Thom Yorke telling The Believer that Radiohead wasn’t going to release a new album anytime soon, instead preferring to release a string of EPs and other shorter works. He also hinted at a creative system of releasing that song. Thom’s assertion was backed up by a similar one by Jonny Greenwood just a few days later.

Then a leaked track called “These Are My Twisted Words” hit a torrent side. Attached to it was an .nfo file filled with gibberish that also mentioned something called “@wallofice.” If you went to wallofice.com, you were directed to the Radiohead w.a.s.t.e. store. Speculation was rampant that there would be a new EP called Wall of Ice out on Monday, today.

Then this morning, we were treated to this blog post from Jonny, officially announcing the single and mentioning that it’s free too. He also posted a link to download it from a torrent website, perhaps hinting what Radiohead had been up to all along.

The coolest part about the file is that it comes in a folder with artwork, a text file with the production info, and a .pdf that has artwork you can print out and use on your own. Very cool stuff, be sure to check it out.

Radiohead – These Are My Twisted Words