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(tloMinber 23, 1994
Metier front Qlett% Orleani
Two Cents on Ml@IMS T'IE
There’s a difference
between “Pop Sense” and
“Pop Smarts.” Take Richie
Sam bora and Jon Bon Jovi,
for instance: two normal,
be-spandexed, lion-maned
dudes who were bom —
like a warehouse full of
hacks around the globe —
with the former, but are
severely lacking in the Utter. To illustrate: See how long it
takes you — like it or not — to call up the opening acoustic
guitar run of “Wanted: Dead or Alive ”
What, seven seconds, tops? Now call up the mandolin
run that sums up REM’s “Losing My Religion”: The two riffs
are pretty simibr, except for the fact that REM’s got the
smarts
Now, friends, you take a band with the Pop Sense who
can filter that Sense through the Smarts, mix this distillate
with X number of really painful romantic ex-relationships,
along with a dash of the proper mix of whiskey/metham-
phetamines/model airplane glue, and you’ll wind up with a
really good rock and roll group, most times.
REM’s new record has garnered rave reviews from Spm,
Rolling Stone, the Voice and Flagpole, amongst others, but l
feel like it is the most problematic record they’ve made yet.
It’s hard to say whether their impulsive Pop Sense has been
drained, or whether Pop Smarts have simply squashed the
impulse to be catchy. Or maybe their hearts just aren’t in it.
Before I continue knocking ol’ REM (careful: One feels
the entire Athens economy teetering), I should probably
tell you what kind of REM fan l am. I signed on pretty early,
around ^.hc time Reckoning was released. I was 14. and I saw
them*$lay A a little auditorium on the Tulane Campus
They turned all of the house lights down and sang “Moon
Rivef^Vta^pc lla: l couldn't move Those first three records
merged for me, all of the dissonance of the Modem that had
been coming out of post punk England with the fblky, dark
and moving Appalachian/Country music — along the lines
of the “Tennessee Stud” — that my father used to play me
on his guitar as my informal crash course in American
studies
The next few records were problematic, but had bnght
spots, although they also saw REM moving away from folk
and closer to mainstream rock. They also became “super
stars” for lack of a better word, at this juncture. I remained
interested, but not as passionately
Then somebody left a copy of Out of Time at my house
about a year after it was released This record, along with its
follow up, Automatic for the People, rekindled my passion for
the group: their Pop Sense was in full bloom, and their Pop
Smarts told them, thankfully, that when a “Shiny Happy
People" or “Everybody Hurts” falls out of God’s lap and into
your arms, you don’t shelve it for image's sake, but release it
on an album tempered with the flipside, the bleak side, be it
“Losing My Religion” or “Star Me Kitten.” It's an old
Beatles tnck: you balance “When I’m 64” with “Helter
Skelter”: In the process, you defy categorization, sell a
billion records, and critics start throwing around words like
“genius"
Monster, on the ocher hand, suffers from a dulling
sameness, an unswinging guitar monochrome It's supposed
to be the "rock” record REM has been promising for a
while, but who says they needed to make a rock record in
the first place? Pop Sense just didn’t seem to get tapped
here, and often, when it did, as on the nominally catchy
opening song “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?," Smarts
obscured what could have been a good thing Somebody, it
seems, spent a little too much time working on the oo-ahhs
of the backward guitar solo here, and not enough time
getting the boys to swing in time.
Even Smarts takes a siesta on the third track, “King of
Comedy." Michael Stipe’s best moments as Rock Star —
and therefore Figurehead and Spokesperson for the masses
— have always come when he wasn’t addressing the World’s
Big Problems head-on (sing: “We are the World..."), but
rather shooting from the hip in a more intimate first person,
from “So. Central Rain” to “Religion.” On “King of Com
edy," he tries to split the difference, making a sweeping
statement about how irrelevant money is, which is, of course,
easy to do when you are capable of buying the entire nation of
Sn Lanka From there he intones, “I’m Not Your Commod
ity.” The insinuation is, 1 guess, that being a rock star’s not all
strawberries and cream Er. uhhh... excuse me for a moment,
while 1 grab a hanky.
The rest of the record suffers from an impenetrable layer
of techno-sheen, plus an awkward layer of irony laced with
sincerity. U2 has been able to pull off this trick as of late by
immersing themselves in Berlin night life, pictures of their
ridiculous 1981 haircuts, and by responding “How high*’
when Brian Eno says, “Jump." Also, Bono was in dire need
of a shot of irony to counter his descent into comball. But
REM never went comball. even on tracks like “Everybody
Hurts." Something remained believable in Stipe’s straight
forward warble, and now, behind the veil of irony, it comes
across not smart and postmodern, but rather just sort of
messed up, an unconnected punch
There is one cut on Monster that is wonderful, catchy,
sad and perfect: “Tongue." *7, which finds Stipe doing a
’70s jagger falsetto, but incomprehensible and very lonely,
accompanied by organ, piano, bass and tambourine It’s
another song that fell out of God’s lap and into the arms of
REM. They had the Sense and Smarts to include what is
being regarded as a “novelty song" on this album, so maybe
there’s hope for the future But that is the future. As for
tonight, only “Tongue" has the honor of wafting out of our
open window, over tops of the sleeping buildings, mixing
with the swirls of strangers’ vicissitudes and the first falling
leaves of aurumn
Richard Fausset
rfaussftnom vs. humc.edu
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