1) What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?; 2) Crush with Eyeliner; 3) King of Comedy; 4) I Don’t Sleep, I Dream; 5) Star 69; 6) Strange Currencies; 7) Tongue; 8) Bang and Blame; 9) I Took Your Name; 10) Let Me In; 11) Circus Envy; 12) You
Glam! Sleaze! Fuzz pedals! Riffs! And a whole load of great and surprisingly conflicted songs hiding underneath the loud textures.
Key tracks: "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", "Crush with Eyeliner", "Bang and Blame"
By 1994, R.E.M. had become a grand success story with critical and commercial acclaim pouring from everywhere, but very atypically they had done this without touring for their two recent hit albums. What had started as a temporary hiatus turned into an extended studio venture where the band didn’t feel the need to restrain themselves to a four-piece live setup. The spark of life for Monster was R.E.M.’s plan to return to the live setting and to go with it, after two relatively calmer albums, have a record more suitable for the stage. They’d become a signature band for the 90s alternative rock movement but without much of the whole ‘rock’ part of it, but that was about to change.
Monster isn’t quite as straightforward as its idea of a rock 'n’ riff record (or as someone on the internet once put it, the album where Peter Buck discovers the fuzz pedal) would seem to be at first glance. The elaborate string arrangements and acoustic guitars have been pushed off from the way of more and even more electric guitars, but when Monster is described as a rock record, it’s just as much an album about rock and roll. It’s full of cocksure rock star posturing, the kind where cool shades and suggestive poses pave way for trashing hotel rooms, with a hint of detached irony you’d expect from a rock band in the 90s. The more you familiarise yourself with Monster, the more apparent it is that the album openly embraces that semi-cliched rock star bravado, both honestly as well as on a meta level.
It goes far enough that it feels like straightforward escapism for the band. Despite their recent success R.E.M. were in fact in a bad shape at the time, culminating in a literal (obviously temporary) split during the sessions. Monster’s masquerade act is almost like deliberately moving away from what being in R.E.M. was meant to be like, running away from the fame by being something completely different. Michael Stipe, a known introvert, had turned into one of the world’s most known rock stars over the last couple of years and his lyrics on Monster are frequently written from the point of view of lust-driven, brashly egomaniac characters so at odds with his usual self that initially it can be downright jarring. The grunge-esque posturing and relentless walls of fuzz are deliberately exaggerated and over-the-top, almost as an act against the people who joined the band’s followers with the previous albums. Occasionally Monster seems to acknowledge this - one of the unused song titles listed in the liner notes is “Yes, I Am Fucking With You” after all - but the lines between R.E.M. the rock band and R.E.M. the Conceptual Rock Band are constantly blurred.
Approach it from whichever angle you will, Monster acts as a big reminder that actually, R.E.M. can be a real strong rock band when they want to. Buck’s guitar approach here is relatively straightforward but he knows what he’s doing with all the fuzz and distortion, and still scatters the occasional neat little detail here and there like the little “fills” of “King of Comedy”. Mills’ bass actually ends up taking most of the melodic leads this time. which slots in just fine with his style. The songs themselves are more basic than on most R.E.M. albums but the focus is on the right parts: make each section hook you in and hit you with a good musical muscle. Just as importantly, Monster is a really fun album, regardless of the mental health of its creators or the meta-side of its lyrics. It’s irresistibly rock and roll, sometimes in a knowingly dumb way: full of swagger and posture, glam winks on top of groovy bass riffs and walls of loud guitars. Stipe’s characters here may mostly be sleazebags but he performs them with such bravado that it’s hard to resist their rock star charm. The tunes are bouncy and filled with all kinds of tongue-in-cheek twists and details from particularly fun backing vocal cameos to little musical tidbits that make the songs bounce and come alive. And with straightforwardness comes a certain kind of strength in simplicity: focus on instant hook choruses and effectively snappy verses, which lend the songs a power of their own when done this well.
Even slow cuts like the torchlight anthem “Strange Currencies” or the moody swivel of “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” operate largely by the same standards as rest of the album. “Tongue” is the big outlier for the entire album, with its slow dance comedown vibes and fragile falsetto. It’s a very bittersweet song, full of ache yet somehow sounding really adorable, lyrics full of disgust but presented in a song that’s musically ideal for tender cuddling. Out of the quieter songs it’s the big standout, but it’s hard to say whether it’s the best one or if that title belongs to “Let Me In”, which is a polar opposite musically. “Let Me In” is the one part of Monster where R.E.M. drop all antics and sound completely genuine - tragically, it’s due to grief. It’s their eulogy to Kurt Cobain, a close friend of the whole band, and it’s as devastating as you’d expect. The shoegaze-like atmospherics, full of distortion and noise only broken by faint other elements like light percussion and a simple keyboard melody, do little to hide the band’s grief. It’s an arresting song, and amidst all the fun it’s a bit of a reality check to how the band was genuinely feeling at the time. And to some sequencing credit, Monster doesn’t do a 180 after it, with “Circus Envy” sounding more muted compared to the other direct rock cuts and the closer “You” curls up into a claustrophobic, slow-burning mood drop of a closer, far from the rock and roll feel-good stroll the album started out with.
And what an intriguing album it is. Monster’s nature, with all of its stylistic subversions and sudden sonic transformations, makes it one of the most conceptually curious parts of R.E.M.’s discography and something far deeper than its more straightforward tendencies and fashionably grungy sound give it credit to. That alone makes it interesting, but what rarely gets said is just how tight a listen it is. Compared to the previous few it’s downright basic in its approach, but R.E.M. nail down those basics: while musically the album might consist of little more than loud electric vibes and snappy choruses, they’re pulled off really damn well on Monster. Each song is a standout of some sort and contributes something unique to the whole, and they’re all infectious in a way you want a muscular rock song to be like. Or to put it as directly as the album presents itself, in the end Monster’s qualities boil down to a very simple thing: a band in their peak performing great songs with immense gusto and refreshing - if a bit strange and potentially utterly false - sense of fun.
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