|
|
Music : Out of TimeIn association with Amazon.comRating:  - award winning cdThis is REM at their earliest emergence of sheer brilliance. Losing My Religion is simply one of the best songs ever made in the history of music - it alone is worth the price of the cd. The other songs are quite good too, such as Radio Song and Shiny Happy People. While this cd is overshadowed by it's successor, Automatic For The People, it really delivers. It has a folksy feel to it and defines REM as probably their most significant cd ever released. They really reached prominence with this cd. Losing My Religion is the main story behind this cd - sheer brilliance and genius. Rating:  - New territoryThe reviews seem to either slam this for being too far of a deviation from the norm and too blatantly poppy and saccharine to hailing it for those same reasons. I just like it for what it is. There are some pieces I wonder about, but that is the same with nearly every REM album, even the brilliant Document has songs that don't seem to fit, and so it is on Out of Time. There are plenty of songs I like and amazingly, after repeated plays on radio, Losing My Religion is still that unique hit that doesn't tire out. Maybe it's because it is so lyrically intriguing, I don't know. The only questionable songs I have are Endgame, which sounds like an excessively long intro to Shiny Happy People and, well, Shiny Happy People. I don't mind the song, but it grates on you after a while and seems a bit too much. I'm not analyzing the sarcasm or lack thereof, I just know that it doesn't sound good to me. Speaking of Endgame, I wonder why Peter Buck, a limited albeit melodic guitarist, is so fond of instrumentals on REM recordings. What's the point? Jeff Beck he ain't and even Hendrix eschewed instrumentals for the most part, so why so many from such a modestly talented guitarist? Just a thought. This album is a bit dated and not as in your face as its two preceding brothers nor as jangly and narrow as the band's first three. It is not the sonic overload of Monster. If anything, it is a singular moment in their history where they tried a lot of new ideas and thus loosened the constraints they'd placed on themselves and allowed for the band's future forays. It is a good but not vital part of their catalog. Rating:  - Remember when these guys were good?So R.E.M.'s breakthrough turns out to be completely inconsequential after all, with a couple exceptions: the massively catchy "Radio Song", folk-rocker "Me in Honey" (though I don't like the droning backup vocals), "Near Wild Heaven", sung by Mike Mills, and especially the inescapable hit "Losing My Religion", with an infinite number of hooks. But this album is equally inclined to wallow in miserable lite folk-rock like "Half a World Away", "Low" or "Belong". And this is the one with the detestable, brain-dead "Shiny Happy People", a truly sickening example of what commercial R.E.M. could become. It's hard for me to believe that this is the album most associate with the group... Rating: - Pop-oriented, but great advances of R.E.M. stylesFantastic collection. Losing My Religion is just the surface. great listen especially the last 3 tracks. Get it!! Rating: - Nothing special, but not too bad eitherThis isn't a bad album, but nothing too special. "Losing My Religion" was a mega-hit, and probably the only song on this album that I can play more than once. The other tracks didn't really catch my fancy, but if you're into their type of music, it isn't all that bad. This was an album that I decided to buy mainly for that one track ("Losing My Religion"), so there isn't much else to celebrate. |
||