Risky business

R.E.M. essay New Adventures, but their latest is hit-and-miss

by Brett Milano

You have to get four songs into the new R.E.M. album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Warner Bros., September 10), before you hear anything that sounds truly uplifting. The song is "Undertow," and it soars in classic R.E.M. form. There's a grand, gospel-ish chorus, and one of those energizing fuzz-guitar riffs that Peter Buck excels at. Listen more closely, however, and you realize that what you're hearing is one of rock's more blatant suicide songs.

"I'm drowning, I'm drowning me" is what Michael Stipe sings in that heavenly chorus; and the verses are even more forthright: "I can't say I'm fearful; I can't say I'm not afraid, but I am not resistant . . . I am in the place where I should be. I am breathing water, nobody's got to breathe." No apologies or cautionary tales here, just a guy who's comfortable with the decision he's made.

Is it irresponsible to put something like this on an album that will sell zillions of copies to impressionable kids? Probably not -- after all, the teenage body count didn't go up after Trent Reznor voiced similar sentiments on the last Nine Inch Nails album. And most of Stipe's fans will be familiar with such concepts as metaphor and irony; besides, they'll probably have their spirits lifted if they stick with the album long enough. (And if anybody's planning to act this song out, please don't.)

But "Undertow" is a representative track on an album that's best summed up by a really bad Chicago lyric from a few years back: "It's a paradox/Full of contradiction." New Adventures is being touted as a loose, spontaneous release that gestated while the band were on tour, but it features some of the densest production in R.E.M. history. The album combines songs recorded on the road with newer, more somber ones added later in the studio. (On the subject of contradiction, "Undertow" was recorded last fall at the FleetCenter, where the then-unfinished sound system caused R.E.M to play far less dynamically than they had at Great Woods a few months earlier. Stipe even complained about the Fleet's sound on stage in Providence the next night.) And though New Adventures comes at the commercial peak of R.E.M.'s career -- they've just re-signed with Warners for a cool $80 million, making them one of the wealthiest bands alive -- its songs, especially the newer ones that weren't introduced on tour, are heavy with foreboding and self-doubt.

Unlike the last two R.E.M. releases, Monster and Automatic for the People, New Adventures in Hi-Fi is a long way from flawless. Two of its songs, "Leave" and the current single "E-Bow the Letter," rank with the worst of R.E.M.'s catalogue, and even the best moments sound like Monster leftovers. For all that, it's a hard album to write off: New Adventures may be cold and confused-sounding at times, but it's no cynical sellout.

Perhaps massive success brings out a certain ambivalence in R.E.M., up front as they've been about courting it. Something similar happened nine years ago, when they signed with Warners for a bundle of money and released Green, their most difficult album till then. Its single, "Stand," had enough surface cheer to turn the album platinum, but its tone was set by more-subdued songs like "World Leader Pretend," "Hairshirt," and "The Wrong Child" -- all about feeling isolated/misunderstood, and all sporting unusually harsh melodic turns (the latter two songs remain as grating as Stipe's ever gotten). The cold and fussed-over production on Green added to the sense that R.E.M. were putting up barriers just when the world was beating a path to their door.

It was around this time that fans learned to stop wishing for a return to the jangly innocence of Murmur (1983) and Reckoning (1984), knowing they weren't about to get it. And anyone who happened to see R.E.M. play a life-changing set in a tiny club -- in my case, that famous '84 double bill with Hüsker Dü at the Rat -- figured out that they weren't going to get a replay, anymore than they were going to see Hüsker Dü get back together after '89. But R.E.M. went on to some fine work on their bigger, grown-up terms: both Automatic for the People, with its lush melancholia and AIDS-era subtext, and the brash garage-rock of Monster were as risky and as successful as anything from the old days. And I hate to trash myths, but last summer at Great Woods they played a concert that put my (admittedly fuzzy) memories of that Rat show to shame.

With the release of New Adventures, it's growing-pains time again. And like Green, the album comes with a major rise in R.E.M.'s fortunes. With the $80 million deal under their belts, the band who once defined indie-rock integrity are up there with the biggest moneymakers in the industry. This Saturday night Warners will be advancing the new release with an outdoor event at the Prudential Center, turning the nearby buildings into video screens showing plugs for the album and footage from the forthcoming Road Movie video -- all, coincidentally enough, within walking distance of several record stores. The band won't be present, but the unmistakable smell of big money will.

Longtime fans have a right to feel alienated by such splashy gestures, but it sounds as though the band were feeling something similar. New Adventures' opening track, "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us," is anything but a celebration. The music's as daring as the band have gotten: a haunting melody paired with a track that's equal parts trip-hop and Ennio Morricone. Buck plays twangy guitar leads against a bass-heavy track with a repeated piano lick and a shrill synth whizzing in the background. And Stipe's taking stock of some empty victory, the lyrics just cryptic enough to keep it from turning whiny: "The story is a sad one, told many times/The story of my life in trying times/Just add water, stir in lime/How the West was won and where it got us." Sounds as if Stipe were still enough in touch with the real world to deal with a subject as nitty-gritty as middle-aged unfulfillment.

A similar feeling recurs throughout the 15 tracks. "New Test Leper" is the closest this album comes to the jangle of old, but its repeated chorus -- "Call me Leper, hey-hey" -- sounds like an intellectual's way of saying "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me." "So Far, So Numb" and "Bittersweet Me" are about coming to terms with relationships you've fucked up; they sport the album's most indelible pop melodies. The latter tune is especially gorgeous, with fuzz-guitar and Hammond-organ swells that come around whenever Stipe hits the refrain ("I don't know what I'm hungry for/I don't know what I want anymore"). It's one of pop's oldest tricks -- setting the sad lyric against the big, uplifting tune -- and it still works wonderfully.

Not everything on New Adventures is a downer. Save for "Undertow," the tour-recorded songs suggest R.E.M. were originally aiming for an even goofier, garagier album than Monster. "Wake-Up Bomb" finds Stipe taking the voice of an obnoxious teenage glitter rocker -- speaking from personal experience, no doubt; and though its lyrics allegedly take a swing at Oasis ("Supersonic, what a joke/I don't see ya, don't wanna be ya"), the singer seems to recognize them as kindred spirits. "Departure" is one of the more gung-ho songs about being a rock band on the road since Grand Funk's "We're an American Band," with a proudly moronic guitar riff and a repeated chorus of "Here we come." You half-expect them to make like the Monkees and follow that with ". . . walking down the street, we get the funniest looks from everyone we meet." Oddly, a better song in this vein, "Revolution," was a highlight of last year's shows but didn't make it to the album.

Then again, some of New Adventures misfires wide, starting with "Zither," the latest in their string of throwaway instrumentals (there's no zither on it, but I do hear a dulcimer). And you have to admire the perversity of putting something as left-field as "E-Bow the Letter" out as a single, but that doesn't make it a better song. Stipe's Beat-poetry inclinations (used to far better effect on the Out of Time track "Country Feedback," a high point of last summer's tour) here amount to little more than a bad Patti Smith imitation; and when the real Smith appears to sing the choruses, she sounds like a sample of herself. The E-bow, by the way, is an early-'80s guitar doohickey that Buck uses to make the violin-like sounds, and it's his weird guitar trademark for this album (like the backward guitars on Monster and the mandolins on Out of Time). There's an E-bow in at least three other songs, notably the finale of the slow-building love ballad "Be Mine," where it makes more sense.

The other turkey, "Leave," is more frustrating because there's a good song in there somewhere, some nice chord changes and a bit of grandeur in the chorus. But it fails because they borrow a hip-hop sound that was cutting-edge five years ago, specifically the urban-panic sound effects that Terminator X brought to Public Enemy. "Leave" sounds as if it had been recorded while somebody's car-alarm siren was going, and the noise runs for most of its seven-minute duration (the longest R.E.M. track yet). Throwing on more of the damned E-bow doesn't help, and neither does an ending that trails off instead of peaking.

Still, a track like this won't fit anybody's definition of an obvious commercial move. One thing that has endured since the old days is the band's Zen-like approach to recordmaking: catch the feelings that were in the studio that week; try all the odd ideas and sort them out later. R.E.M. came by their mega-success honestly, and risky albums like New Adventures in Hi-Fi are part of the reason. But not necessarily the best part.