REM are to begin work on their new album in Canada next week, alongside Bloc Party and Kasabian producer Jacknife Lee.
The follow-up to 2004's Around The Sun will be part-recorded in Vancouver, with the band then heading to Ireland to complete the work. While in Ireland REM will play no fewer than five Dublin dates:
June
30 Dublin Olympia Theatre
July
1, 2, 3, 4 Dublin Olympia Theatre
These shows are billed as 'working rehearsals'... might be best to not expect 'It's The End Of The World...'.
well it cant be
any worse than around the sun, the only album of theirs that i truly cant listen to
Dubliners
the new market research focus group for stadium rock bands, anyone?
interesting move on the band's part tho.
it needs to show a marked improvement
over the turgid Around The Sun where they totally lost the plot.
any token (early 90s style) pop raps on any of the songs and I'm gonna burn all my REM albums.
I second the above comments
I really hope this is better than Around the Sun...another New Adventures in Hi-Fi perhaps guys? That would be good...
this Jacknife Lee guy
from his cv doesn't exactly look like the guy who'll bring R.E.M. back from the brink of blandness.
they should lose the session guys, go to a shack in the middle of the desert... puke on each other and record a shabby punk album in two days or something. Around The Sun had some great songs beneath the insipid performances and gloss.
really,
they need a time machine, and need to go back to sometime between 1982-1989 and watch themselves play live, then go off and think about it.
a time machine
or they could just watch Tourfilm?
I hope to hell that this album is good because I love REM deeply but they need to prove that they can still make great music.
i believe (no pun intended)
that REM are the best band of all time. The last album DID NOT HAPPEN.
Please make the new one good. Please.
I believe is one of my faves...
They need to let Mills have a few more vocals, give buck more of a free reign and get Berry back to guide the good ship REM onwards.
aye. ATS was floaty bollocks
although Leaving New York was a lovely song.
They need to record and mix with the same person.
No overdubs.
1 guitar track per song.
And, hey, if the drums are a bit wolly on the bridge
or Peter dreploys and F instead of an F#
leave it in
and
pretend they have to record it all in three weeks
that is the problem as bands get bigger, they have open ended studio time and keep perfecting every little thing, until it is BORING.
do pass that on to the band
i'm having an R.E.M rennaisance
Murmur is such a find. looking at that photo makes me sad.
+1 to Around The Sun
as a terrible album. Absolutely awful (although I admit Leaving New York is a fine song).
They'll never do another Automatic but I'm sure they have another New Adventures in Hi-fi in 'em.
Lets hope so
Even another Up would be OK. But when I heard about this Jacknife lee guy produing a little while ago my heart sank. You miss off that he has also been involved in other albums of great boringness, Snow Patrol, U2, he may as well have produced X&Y. It would be good to see them go really leftfield and make something that we never expected like 'Fables' but I doubt it will happen, it will probably follow the boringness route and be another around the sun.
However this does mean they will be touring at some stage in the near future which is great news as they are awesome live.
I thought Up was really good,
but I seem to be alone.
It is really sad, I was watching Tourfilm not long back and it rather gave me the horn. Then I watched Live 8 and cried tears of Oxtail Soup into a starving orphan's maw.
i quite liked up too
not great, but pretty good
UP
took a few listens...and then I realised that it was genius
up
is among my favourites. i absolutely adored it when it came out and was slightly baffled when they did the whole 'disown the last album' thing when reveal came out. especially as reveal was a bit lame.
not as shit as ATS tho. somehow that's ended up on my mp3 player and the not-random-at-all shuffle option seems to actively seek it out. must delete.
MINE DOES THAT TOO
I'm not sure why.
no hope no hope no hope no hope
is better than a bit of hope being crushed to death. Agree with the bit about getting rid of the fucking YES MEN they surrounded themselves with who say everything 'sounds great'. Seriously, I read two recent biographies and the last few sessions seemed to consist of "ok guys get the weirdest sound on your instruments and play these chords", then finding the blandest settings and plodding out some supertramp dirge...
they recently played their roadie's wedding with bill berry and played nothing past 1987, so here's hoping they're looking backwards :)
Re:
i think Up was great too. until Around the Sun i'd never been one of those 'it was great til Bill Berry left' REM fans, but ATS really lacked any inventive drumming. practically every song the drums come in at the same point and they sound like some 'soft rock 1' preset on a kids keyboard. it works fine for 'Leaving New York' but most of the rest suffer. also the other instruments were polished nearly out of existence. which is a shame because Michael Stipe sings his heart out on that record. anyway this jackknife lee seems to work with universally crap bands but hopefully just the change of surroundings might kickstart REM some
I Have Every Album, But One
I didn't even bother buying "around the sun." I saw them on tour with the songs in Atlantic City and didn't care for it. I was saddened. They played fantastic, but the songs just weren't there.
Especially traumatizing after seeing them on the greatest hits tour in Philadelphia. That was transcendent.
these guys are better
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yiHWOWBOBZ0