Have I missed the big Reveal?

Haven’t done one of these in a while but do not fret! I have not forgotten about the R.E.M. project. Running surprisingly low on time in 2021, but I think I’ll be able to get through the rest of their studio albums by the end of the year and then think more about the deep cuts and their larger legacy next year. Anyways, here’s what I think of Reveal.

In some circles you might be able to summarize Reveal as simply as: “In 2001, Rock music got weird… R.E.M. did not.” This album was released in May of that year so it’s not like White Blood Cells or Is This It? had come out yet but in 2000 alone Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and the Deftones all had their mainstream breakthroughs signaling a new, rap-inflected version of angst and in the artsy corner of the world bands like Radiohead, Sigur Ros, and Godspeed! You Black Emperor were exploring dystopian visions of a new world. R.E.M.’s Reveal is the sound of a band settling in comfortably to an elder-statesman role.

It’s not so much that the band was doing a complete back to basics sound. There’s some serious electronic buoyancy to this album which their actual 80’s records lack. Reveal just doesn’t seem to grapple with itself in the way Up or even Monster do. The song forms are almost a little quaint and the guitar solos breezy—it’s a warm and inviting selection of pop songs that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

My favorite track on it is probably All the Way to Reno. I’m almost tempted to say that its a spiritual predecessor to the electro-stoner country of Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour. It’s a bright and dreamy vision of a country tune with Stipe smiling big as his melody hazily drifts along. There’s some even brighter moments like Imitation of Life’s obvious ear-worm chorus or Beachball’s syrupy horns. Elsewhere the band dips into quiet beauty. I’ve Been High is one of Stipes sweetest vocal deliveries to date and though it sports some mildly dire electronic whirs and clicks, Saturn Return achieves an inviting smolder. The ending runs a little long, but the pacing is basically perfect, no moment is completely overwrought or useless.

I had said at the beginning of this project that one of the things that interests me about the band is that R.E.M. is one of the few bands that thrived in and survived the 90’s. Basically they were well respected before, during, and after the 90’s and made music throughout all those time periods, which is surprisingly rare. It was a decade when mainstream music radically changed often and many new talents exploded and then fizzled out in one way or another. Of course, this can be a bit of a double edged sword. Music is often at its most exciting when it’s just on the verge of completely falling apart. R.E.M. was firmly past the time of really risking anything like that in the 00’s. Reveal doesn’t seek to carry the world on its shoulders like the band tried to time and time again before.

Still, R.E.M. doesn’t disappear completely into simplicity here. Thematically, the record itself grapples with the desire for fame and the things you sacrifice chasing it. There’s stories of people’s misguided attempts to win the world over and references to the band’s own work. The lyrics “Easy to poke yourself square in the eye/Harder to like yourself, harder to try/These Elvis poses;” I’m assuming are a reference to the Elvis affectation of Man on The Moon, which is probably the least vulnerable moment on that album. In the end R.E.M. execute the comedown in a distinctly R.E.M. fashion—thinking hard about what it all meant and where they go from here.

-Donovan Burtan