1) How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us; 2) The Wake-Up Bomb; 3) New Test Leper; 4) Undertow; 5) E-Bow the Letter; 6) Leave; 7) Departure; 8) Bittersweet Me; 9) Be Mine; 10) Binky the Doormat; 11) Zither; 12) So Fast, So Numb; 13) Low Desert; 14) Electrolite
A road trip that arguably does the best job possible in distilling the very essence of R.E.M. and its many varied forms under the covers of one studio album.
Key tracks: "New Test Leper", "E-Bow the Letter", "Bittersweet Me"
R.E.M.’s move to a more electrified direction in the mid-90s had an infamous aftermath. With the style shift inspired by a desire to go on stage again the band naturally embarked on an extended world tour following Monster, which in hindsight turned out to be a terrible decision. The tour was plagued by a number of problems throughout its run, including a number of health issues within the band which culminated in Bill Berry’s brain aneurysm, leaving him to retire the band after recovery for the sake of his own physical well-being. The incident gave the era an ominous end that often overshadows the period’s big positive: the band’s greatly increased creativity. The band had a lot of songs coming out, and the audience were treated each night to at least one song that hadn’t yet seen an official release. R.E.M. had never really managed to fully capture their live energy in studio despite their best efforts earlier on, and eventually someone came up with the idea of why bother trying to replicate when you could just record those news songs as they happened. New Adventures in Hi-Fi was released during the Monster tour and is a curious mixture of a live and studio record, featuring a set of brand new songs recorded throughout the tour in soundchecks and on stage, audience noise mixed to nothing, with a handful of brand new studio recordings scattered within. It was a brand new studio album as much as it was a road trip recollection, with travel photos and place names adorning the liner notes, and it is about as unpolished as R.E.M. could be at the time.
New Adventures acts much like a road trip too, traveling around and spotting new sights along the way - in sound it’s one of R.E.M.’s most varied. The body of the songs is still very heavily guitar-driven as per the band’s general guideline at the time, but there’s a marked move past Monster’s walls of fuzz into a more freewheeling, natural direction, shuffling through various R.E.M. traits of the past but with a kick in the backbone and a rawer tone. When the band do stray from the central sound, they go over and beyond: there’s absolutely nothing on the rest of the album that sounds like the piano-led casual stroll “Electrolite”, the deeply atmospheric “E-Bow the Letter” and the melancholy Western drawl of “How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us” (which completely blows away my general theory that each R.E.M. album starter is a perfect descriptor for the rest of the record), and they don’t even sound like each other. And yet, they make perfect sense in the context because of how wild-spirited and lively New Adventures in general is (hilariously, these are also three of the album’s four singles).
The idea to capture R.E.M. alive in their natural habitat also has the trait of making it clear how great a rock band they really were. While they very obviously always operated within that wide genre net, you could rarely call them exemplary of what we think about when we imagine what a rock band is like: being initially too gentle for it in the early days and then obstructed by the arrangement choices of the turn of the 90s, and even the hyper-rock of Monster was so over-the-top it could come off parodical. This time, due to the live atmosphere around most of New Adventures and how everyone is playing together simultaneously, not only does their beefed-up stage sound show up in all its strength but also the energy and chemistry of the context have been captured perfectly, and through it R.E.M. soar. New Adventures is R.E.M.’s most energetic album if only because of the power the band share between each other - but speedy powerhouses like “So Fast, So Numb”, “Departure” and “The Wake-Up Bomb” exemplify that energy literally as well. It’s a dumb thing to say from a pseudo-live album but it feels alive, every song running electrified and everyone’s performance amped up.
With the twists and turns it takes and how well it showcases the band themselves, New Adventures in Hi-Fi actually comes across as a quintessential R.E.M. album, in a way. It shows so many of the band’s sides from the rowdy to the intimate, the dark and the light, and the quirky sense of humour and the emotional sincerity, that it’s like a self-composed best of mixtape, representing the band in a nutshell - especially with their strengths both in studio and stage environment presented organically together, blending into one another. Just to hammer the point, among all the other excellent tracks there are a couple of integral cornerstone songs for the band. One is “New Test Leper” which is arguably the most R.E.M.-like song ever conceived, the one song that defines their signature sound and all the elements that make it from Buck’s jangles to Mills’ characteristic bass, paired with a gorgeous melody and an emotional charge that make it a fantastic song in general. Another is “E-Bow the Letter”, a haunting semi-spoken word piece guided by the ethereal sound of the titular gadget and backed by Patti Smith’s world-weary vocals, with a sonic richness that could only come from studio (it’s one of the few songs here recorded in a traditional environment). It’s the sound of every insomniac night spent staring through windows, every last stretch of a long journey, every moment of introspection and eventual flicker to a state of calming still. The verses pull you under the waves, the choruses bounce back upon through Buck’s chiming guitar riff. If it’s not R.E.M.’s best song it’s tied with whatever its biggest competitor is. It’s a phenomenal song - and of course, amusingly enough, a complete break from rest of New Adventures both in sound and spirit.
There’s plenty of other great moments too - particular favourites include the cheekily sex-obsessed Monster leftover “Binky the Doormat”, the impossibly feel-good “Electrolite” that always makes the world a little better and the hypnotic, unique shuffle of “How the West Was Won”, all which are completely different from one another and shine in wholly different ways. The batting average is very, very high here, with the only real dent being the short throwaway interlude “Zither”, and even that’s pleasant for what it is. Thus, New Adventures in Hi-Fi is like a parade of triumph, and it’s appropriately so given it closes off an era, even if completely by accident and not in the happiest of circumstances. With Berry’s departure sneakily lurking ahead, New Adventures is a convenient encapsulation of everything that came before musically, a summing up of the band. It is more a continuation than a re-definition in its nature and thus not necessarily an obvious stand-out in the band’s discography, but it’s slyly a classic in its own right: if it’s like a victory lap, it’s one that’s well in due. There’d be a change after this album, not for worse but for different nonetheless, and New Adventures is a brilliant and fitting send-off for the band as four-piece.
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