R.E.M. Revisit Up With New Deluxe Edition
25th Anniversary edition of the band’s underrated 11th LP contains bonus live album from 1999 Party of Five taping
The albums that R.E.M. released as a trio during their final years together were no doubt a mixed bag.
But when the pared down combo of Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck released the band’s 11th LP Up, their first without original drummer Bill Berry who retired from their ranks in 1997 following an onstage aneurysm two years prior, magic was indeed in the air.
Like the group’s last great transitional album, 1988’s Green, Up found R.E.M. exploring new means of expression through the use of keyboards and drum programming to give it a more electronic pulse combined with live drums helmed by Joey Waronker and Barrett Martin.
“It was different, but we had already planned on it being somewhat different,” Mills recently told Rolling Stone in an interview about the newly released deluxe edition of Up for its 25th anniversary. “[Guitarist] Peter [Buck] had been buying drum machines and vintage keyboards and odds and ends for some time in preparation for making a different record. It was definitely in the works. When [drummer] Bill [Berry] left, we just continued. We had already decided that a lot of the old rules were out, especially when it came to songwriting and creating the songs. When Bill left, it just really hyper-accelerated that process.”
Up was also the first R.E.M. album since Document not to feature longtime producer Scott Litt behind the board, opting to work with Pat McCarthy, who had previously engineered the band’s last two records in 1994’s Monster and 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. And it was McCarthy who allowed the trio the comfort level they were seeking to explore outside their own parameters, resulting in such exceptional material as “Airportman,” “Suspicion” and “Sad Professor.” The record’s centerpiece, meanwhile, is the gorgeous Beach Boys homage “At My Most Beautiful,” a song that serves as a clear nod to the songwriting of Brian Wilson.
VIDEO: R.E.M. “At My Most Beautiful”
“Obviously, this is our tribute to the Beach Boys,” Buck revealed in the liner notes to the 2003 R.E.M. collection In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003. “Mike told me that when he and Bill lived in Macon, they would cruise the city, singing along with a Beach Boys eight-track. He said it really stretched their upper ranges. Until the day Bill quit, they could still hit those notes.”
Up also marks the first time Stipe’s lyrics were printed on the inside booklet of an R.E.M. album.
“Impressed by Stipe’s writing, Mills suggested throwing out another R.E.M. restriction for Up by printing all of the lyrics,” recounts journalist and Talkhouse Executive Editor Josh Modell (A.V. Club, SPIN, Rolling Stone, Vulture) in his impeccably researched liner notes within the deluxe’s 32-page hardcover book. “Stipe was proud of what he’d come up with so he agreed, and there thet were, naked on the page, ‘unfettered by complex sweets’ and all.”
The new edition of Up, in addition to a beautifully remastered version of the original LP, also features a bonus disc containing a previously unreleased set from their guest appearance on the hit TV series “Party of Five.” Captured in 1999, the performance includes an 11-song setlist—including enduring hits like “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion,” and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”—plus live renditions of such Up gems as “Lotus,” “Daysleeper” and “Walk Unafraid.”
“There are dozens of great R.E.M. live sets out there, but nothing quite like this up-close oddity,” writes Modell. “Loose and happy, the band runs through a good chunk of Up in front of a small crowd…Stipe is chatty, telling stories about accidentally ripping off Billy Corgan (and telling Corgan about it), playing with the Human League on a funny stage at that very venue, and more.”
The accompanying Blu-ray, meanwhile, features HD music videos from the 1998 album (“Daysleeper,” “Lotus” and “At My Most Beautiful”), a six-song performance from the era (titled Uptake) recorded in a London studio, the album’s original EPK film This Way Up by filmmakers Emer Patten and Nick Wickham, plus the LP in hi-resolution and 5.1 surround sound audio.
VIDEO: R.E.M. “Daysleeper”
“People are rediscovering Up and realizing that maybe they were overly harsh about our middle period and late period, I think,” Stipe tells Modell in his liners. “We’ll see where that goes. But it’s nice to think about writing these songs. The growing pains of becoming a three-piece were really evident throughout the entire making of the record, and it left three best friends very distant from each other as creative partners, but we managed to hold it together, and I believe a very good record came out of it. I don’t know how many people hold it out as their very favorite, but that’s okay.”
Twenty-five years after its original streeter, Up is ripe for rediscovery. And whether you loved it, hated it or were indifferent towards it in the fall of 1998, these songs deserve to be heard again with fresh ears.
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