I love Dirty.... That tour was amazing, saw them with Pain Teens and Pavement opening up...

Man, You just listed 4 LP's I dislike very much.....

I like Adore a lot, but the rest of those...

Rob we seem to be in agreement on Dirty.

I love Wish Fulfillment more than Genetic...Mote is as great as Wish Fulfillment. Also really love Pipeline/Kill Time, Saucer-Like, Skip Tracer, Hoarfrost, both Karen and Walking Blue.

I don´t also like much Radiohead, R.E.M and Smashing Pumpkins (always hated Billy Corgan´s voice). Elvis Costello is only one I think maybe should listen more...

I have been a huge REM fan since I heard Pretty Persuasion on MTV and bought all their albums. I stopped giving a fuck around Out of Time because I could sense a sea change in what they were aiming for (they became adult contemporary). I love all their early LP's. Chronic Town EP, Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant, Document and Green.

Punch the Clock and the follow-up Goodbye Cruel World are considered by fans and El Costello himself to be the lowest points of his career. Just saying.

I think you're taking OUT and AUTO for granted, which is understandable after all these years. But they really are (were) surprising, original and very good albums. I agree neither rocks very much, and I think Buck made a deliberate attempt to move from his jangle thing, but they're both classic REM's as far as I'm concerned. The first 8 are part of the rock cannon, I say.

Adult contemporary? Gin Blossoms/Matchbox 20, etc might sometimes sound like REM, but REM never sounded like the Gin Blossoms, if you know what I mean.

But yeah, after AUTO, the best one could hope for was 4 or 5 good songs an album. I still deny the "adult contemp" charge. Simply a bewildering vanishing of great material.

Out of Time and Automatic have some great songs, but they are not my thang.

It wouldn't matter to me if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rose from the dead and claimed that Punch the Clock is his least favorite album of all time. All that matters to me is my emotional reaction to just about every song on that album. That's proof enough for me that I absolutely love that album. And Trust, and Imperial Bedroom. Can't stand his first few albums. Haven't heard Goodbye Cruel World, but if Elvis groups it with Punch the Clock to be a low point, perhaps I might love it.

I went out of my way to specifically mention a few albums I love that get a bad wrap. For the most part, I love the same albums that everyone else does. For example, I love every Beatles album, just like everyone else (though Beatles for Sale is a bit weak).

The only other REM albums I've heard are Green, Out of Time, and Automatic. I only like about 5 songs on those albums, but I like everything on Monster. Perhaps someday I'll find another REM album I love. But I haven't been able to find a decent REM message board to bother about that yet.

I'll be back with some SY album reviews soon. I agree with Mortte that my review of Dirty doesn't do a good job of really describing what exactly it is about each song that I like or don't like. It's really difficult to put an emotional reaction to music into words, and especially a lack of emotional reaction. If I spent enough time meditating on it, maybe I could figure out how to do so. Or maybe I'll be better off not attempting that and just posting some shorter reviews.

I see. It was easy to assume you were just being willfully contrary. Turns out you just haven't heard enough good stuff.

You really should listen to REM's first five albums and then decide where Monster should rank. Any REM message board would say the same. Actually, there's a good time-saving compilation I'd recommend: And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982–1987

If you prefer poppy Elvis to rocking Elvis, maybe check out SPIKE. Overproduced, but interesting instrumentation and really good songs. The follow-up, MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE, has a similar production but the material isn't as good. His 3rd worst album, I think. You might love it.

androgynous mind is a cool track, and starfield road fucking owns. a nice drum sound on exp jet set, very dry and substantial.. dig the muted quality of the sounds.

I really like also how Sister & Experimental sounds (sear sound studio -sound). RR also sound me much better than Eternal even it has much more modern sounds than those other two.

One of the heaviest reviews I've read in a long time
L

if by "heavy" you mean "conceptually hollow and miserably written" then i totally agree ;)

Well I may not agree with the each critique of each song...but Dirty is probably my least favorite. Not because of material...but sound. SOmething is lacking for me.

i'm not saying everyone should like every song there, but throwing out words like "nice" "okay" "great" "vomit" over & over isn't really "reviewing."

then again, listening to the smashing pumpkins is like listening to constipated vomit :D :D :D

(but for serious...)

and to the original questions:


seems to me you're most likely to find it in the fading memory of your teenage years rather than the music itself


EJSTNS has all kinds of elements that connect it to various other records they made, but if you're not in a receptive state right now it will all fall on deaf ears.

---

eta: but i'm gonna go out on a limb now and say try a thousand leaves. if that doesn't work for you then i'd suggest tahiti-- i hear it's a magical place.

Both EJSTNS and Dirty are great records. That review, if you can call it that, is pants.

Hey it still was better than anything on Pitchfork

Just as boring, I'll give it that.

You guys have any favorite songs from EJS? Mines Screaming Skull, I can't get enough of it.

My favourite track is probably Skink, but I love all those strange Kim songs in this record, Bone, Doctor's Orders & Quest for the Cup. From Thurston my picks are Winner's Blues and Starfield Road

Winners Blues, Bull in the Heather, Starfield Road, Skink, Bone, Androgynous Mind, Quest For the Cup, Doctor´s Orders, Tokyo Eye & Sweet Shine are my favourites. But I think Thurston´s vocals in Doctor´s Orders are better than Kim´s.

Sweet Shine, Starfield Road, Androgynous Mind and Doctor's Orders.

On Dirty: Shoot, On the Strip, JC, Theresa's Sound World, Chapel Hill, Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit (great Beatlesesque touch too), Wish Fulfillment and Youth Against Fascism.

Orange Rolls is disgustingly beautiful, I wish they did more of that type of sound

My dirty favs: Swimsuit Issue, Theresa´s sound-world, Shoot, Wish Fulfillment, Sugar Kane, On the Strip, Chapel Hill, Stalker, JC & Purr.

sweet shine is up there with my most favorite sy songs
its my favorite on ejtns along with doctors orders

I've been listening to Dirty a bit more, trying to pull my mind open. For my ratings, I may have rounded down in a few places where I might round up now. I actually kind of like the chorus of On the Strip now.

As I listened more and more, I began to imagine what I could do if I had a magical pair of music scissors. I eventually decided to dabble around a bit, and after a while I created what you might call an awful, butchered version of Dirty--but what I call an improved album that I find much more enjoyable.

In summary, I threw out 3 songs, kept 5 songs completely intact, and mashed up the remaining 7 into 3 songs. Unfortunately, that only leaves me with 8 songs, but I quite like them:

1. 100% Drunken Butterfly
2. JC's Sound-World
3. Shoot
4. Wish Fulfillment
5. Youth Against Kane, Angel's Spit
6. On the Strip
7. Chapel Hill
8. Purr

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post the mash-ups, but descriptions are below.

1. 100% Drunken Butterfly
This ended up being only about a minute. I tried to do more with it, but this was the best I could come up with. It's definitely not perfect, a little jarring at the change, but it almost works. For me, though, this is all I need, the initial punch of 100% followed by the amazing beginning of Drunken Butterfly. I'll call it an intro to the album.

2. JC's Sound-World
For this one, you might say... uh, all you really did here was put approximately the entire song JC followed by pretty much everything in the song Theresa's Sound-World--why not just keep them as two separate songs? Well, the key is that it amazingly morphs back into JC towards the end of Sound-World--and in my world, JC was never enough to stand on its own, and Sound-World needed a little something more. I would have been content to just start with Sound-World and morph it into JC at the end, but I decided that I love the guitar intro of JC and how it builds up to the vocals--I love it too much to just throw it away.

5. Youth Against Kane, Angel's Spit
This one starts with a couple instrumental pieces of Angel's Spit, which for me is the only magic of that track. The end of the guitar instrumental coincidentally is approximately the same as the beginning of Sugar Kane. I'm not a big fan of Sugar Kane, but I find one round of it to be a lot more enjoyable than repeated rounds. It morphs nicely into Youth Against Fascism, which on its own, in my view, is an incomplete piece of song that's rather cool but on the verge of being annoying--the secret is don't play it 10 times over and over again. Just once. I actually like a single round of Youth Against Fascism. Hook it to a single round of Sugar Kane, and you have a complete song, that starts off with a superb Angel's Spit instrumental intro.