Bumped for 20 minutes to show

Just started and they are kickin ass. GET OVER HJERE!

Second guessing awesome. Bass is way high in the mix.

Join the NPR chat http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2008/03/...he_shows_1.html

Badass set guys.
They sound recharged.

TOnites show

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IDTDTOO2

R.E.M. HAVE their mojo back. I was at the SXSW show last night. It was amazing. Everything I loved about the band, and very little of what I didn't. It was like being at an intimate club show, but instead of doing all the hits they do these amazing new politically-charged rock songs. No blue face makeup. No synths. Minimal slow songs. It had more in common with the show I saw them do in 1987 than any show I've seen them do since.

goddamn am i glad to hear that

definitely am anxiously awaiting the pre-sale tickets to go up for fanclub members. that should be happening soon, no?


i need to download that set when i get off work. gooooo

Dude, what was up with that crowd? The NPR reporters made it sound like they played their hearts out to an audience that lacked energy or enthusiasm.

just started listening to the stream of this now

fuck. the opening of the show and "Living Well..." actually, lamely enough, gave me chills

i like the sounds of this stuff a lot

I'm gonna have to pass on that live listening party....my desire to hear new R.E.M. is trumped by my desire to learn Lost secrets
I am going to try and record the live stream though....if i end up with something listenable (not likely from a webstream) i'll try to upload it tomorow for anyone who misses this.

Fuck! Totally forgot that.

So yeah I just heard the new tunes...this is pretty farking amazing. I didn't think they had this in them...after ATS i was kinda resigned to the fact that the days of good R.E.M. albums were gone. I think it's safe to say this is easily better then the last 3 albums...not even in the same league with those. They could have made this album right after Document really.

Sooooooo you have the show recorded right? (Bats eyelashes)

P.S. If anyone is planning on pre-ordering the vinyl, I found it for $26 ($29 shipped) which seems as low as youre gonna find it.

I do have the full show recorded. I'll get that uploaded a little later when I have more time. For now here's all the new songs they premiered on the show minus Supernatural Superserious because i'm assuming we've all heard that by now. This preview was done in front of a live audiance so you hear clapping at the beginning and end of some of the songs, but these are in fact the studio versions. Sound quality is about what you can expect from a streaming internet broadcast.

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/99430484/remradiopreview.zip.html

Petras you rule!

This is great, regardless of sound quality.

Thanks!

BTW, for anyone worried about burning themselves out before the proper release: dont trip. These tracks have huge replay value.

Heres the full recording. 168MB MP3 file. Basically it's all the new songs I already posted + supernatural superserious, A whole bunch of interviews with the band, Live performances of Supernatural Superserious and Imitation of Life and as a special bonus if you act now a free yardbirds song that I was too lazy to cut off the front of the recording
The interviews are a decent listen but not really anything we haven't heard before if you've been following the press leading up to this release. The live performances are ok but not mind blowing. You can also hear little instrumental clips of the song Houston surrounding the station breaks plus a little bit of the Studio version of I'm gonna DJ during the intro. I'd really only recomend this download to the hardcore fans everyone else should prolly just stick to my other post unless you've got time + bandwidth to spare.

hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/rnsduw

Over at Murmurs some who were there said that the band was fantastic at Stubbs, and there were pockets of people really into the show, but for the most part the crowd consisted of L.A. Beautiful People and/or industry types who were too cool for school.

All I know is that the new material is fantastic.

the new stuff is energetic, so of course kneejerk reactions are positive, but, as i suspected, the songs are otherwise kind of boring. definitely not on the same level as their first 4-5 albums.

oh well, fresh energy counts for something, i guess.

based on the first single, it would be some kind of miracle if this album wasn't somewhere between terrible and awful.

Some impressions after listening to the program:

"Supernatural Superserious" - Fun, catchy little number.

"Man-Sized Wreath" - It might have had a better lyrical hook, but it's still a cool tune.

"Living Well's the Best Revenge" - Great song. Buck described the guitar he plays as like Husker Du, one of his favorite bands of the '80s. Great guitar, cool bass, and exciting vocals. A song that made me go "Wow!"

"Until the Day is Done" - This one recalls "Swan Swan H," though it's not as excellent as that song. Still, it's a decent slow song that is well sung by Stipe.

"Horse to Water" - Thrilling! Great breakneck pace, memorable chorus. My second favorite song behind "Living Well."

"Hollow Man" - It starts slow and builds nicely into a solid song.

Overall, it sounds pretty fucking good. They've got the swagger from their '80s days back. I haven't heard all the songs, but it could very well be one of their best half a dozen records.

abso-fucking-lutely.

This is good to hear!! I only caught two of the songs and "Living Well is the Best Revenge" is awesome. They definitely sound energized.

So the live SXSW set that was streamed the other night was just outstanding. Absolutely loved it. It really made me jealous that I was in Austin a week too early.

Still, everything I keep reading is so promising. I can't wait to hear this thing. I'm going to resist the urge to download any proper leaks or anything of the like just so that when it comes out in a few short weeks, I can listen to it freshly.

Press gushing over this thing makes my expectations that much higher.

Leek

chomp chomp chomp

actual leak

exactly, they've got the swagger, but not the songwriting. the internet is always initially kind to albums with rocking energy.

sometimes you are just a wet blanket

Some of these songs have been circulating in live form since last spring though....the interwebs loved the songs in dublin and the same people still love them.

Yes, DrJimmy is, but the guy's got a right to his opinions (even if he doesn't appreciate fierce energy of some of these songs as much as I do). I will agree the songwriting isn't as sharp as their very best stuff, but I think the fine songs here don't have to be on the same songwriting level as those on Automatic for the People to still be really good. Some of these tracks, like "Living Well" and "Horse to Water," are wild bolts of energy that are very exciting to hear. It's not as hard as Monster, but the pacing on a few of the songs I've heard (and a few tunes I haven't heard, if the reviews are to be believed) is such a rush they don't have to be as lyrically beautiful as "Find the River" or as melodic as "Nightswimming." The faster songs here RACE, rock, and sound pretty great.

Hey guys...!!!!!!!!!!

http://sharebee.com/12646f93

hope it is legit.


(for those that care, it was stolen from Kokoro)

Guitar sound and production ruin this record. Mike Mills almost saves it. All that hype = Monster II.

I have no problems with Monster. Just for the record.

so wait... there are REM fans that don't think Monster is silly? i've never liked that record at all. i've always heard it as a weak attempt to "rock out" again, which doesn't bode well for this new one...

Well, Monster isn't the complete dud some make it out to be, but it's not a great album. I certainly have "some problems" with it, as I only like a handful of songs. But Monster holds the record for appearances in used record stores. You can't go anywhere over the last decade without seeing that thing for a buck.

This record's best attribute is it's brevity. Mediocrity seems so much more palatable when it's shooting past. You know, like expert editing sexing up the mundane in Bourne movies.

The main difference between Accelerate and Monster is that between guitar pedals. Slip a tremolo under Buck's foot, and this is the same thing.

Monster is one of those records that I can't listen to very frequently. I have to be in the right mood for it. Some of the songs I could probably listen to all the time, but others ("Crush with Eyeliner," "I Took Your Name") I need to be in the right mood for. It is a silly little album, but I think that is part of its charm.

And saying it was them trying to show they still could rock out...I disagree. I think it was just them having fun with an album and turning the guitars up. I never considered it in any way to be something of an attempted throw back of any sort.

With that said, glad that this thing has leaked. Now I will wait a few weeks to hear it proper.

pfft. it's the shooting style and the editing.


i pretty much hate Monster.

yeah, i'm on the cusp of hating Monster too. New Adventures in Hi-Fi just seemed so much more organic and part of their natural flow of their records, where Monster seemed like a forced attempt to be drastically different from their last two mellower records and rock out like all the other 90's bands.

sometimes i think people write this kind of comment as a self-referential joke. like, "here's a cliched SOMB response, aren't we music geeks! let's party!" then i realize that some people actually get hung up on the most irrelevant of song elements.

it's an electric guitar, what would be the "perfect" sound? ah, forget it, guitar tone is such a slippery thing, with literally a limitless number of choices, i'll just never understand this kind of nitpicking.

Monster is still better than anything released this decade. I'm not arguing that it's a great album by any means. I do think the negativity towards it is at least partly due to other things than the songs on the album (see the end of the next sentence).

No surprise it's in the used record stores, it did sell 4 million copies. Their last album sold about 1/16 that many.

I don't even know if I'm going to bother listening to this to be honest.

just listen to it

it's free music and there's a chance you may enjoy it

i mean, c'mon, you can spare 30-minutes of your life

How is it "nitpicking"? It's a guitar band! That's a pretty big "nit." When the guitar sounds artificial and chunky, it ruins "REM" for me. "SS" gets it half right. The choppy, processed riff is immediately dated, but the Byrdsian picking underneath is nice. Peter Buck needs to stick with the Byrds. He's not a great "riff" guitarist. You admit it's "limitless", but you argue I should just accept generically it as "electric guitar."

I will on Monday at work I guess. Just not enthused at all.

I don't find the guitar sound on this to be nearly as contrived or forced as what Buck did on Monster.

"artificial?" i just don't think this way at all. it's an electric guitar with some distortion. there is an infinite number of variations on this sound, i lack the ability to deem one "artificial" and another "real" or whatever.

but more importantly, i would never go so far as to say that a guitar sound ruins an album. to me, that's a totally alien, microscopic way of thinking...or maybe just a strange obsession with a textural element that, to me, is negligible compared to melody.

If you're that ambivalent, skip it. There are 10,000 other songs out there worth hearing.




k

I totally agree with this. Very little of this sounds much like Monster(which I kind of like). The songs here are shorter, tighter, not as heavy on the effects.

Well, for what it's worth, I like this a lot. It reminds me of the second half of New Adventures of Hi Fi.