Rickenbacker

Not to mention the lyrics on the album are so whimsical. I really like that, it suits the music well. I love the half spoken middle bit of She's Going Bald. Such urgency in his voice, despite such a seemingly arbitrary topic, it's great.

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rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

Rickenbacker

A shiver, picked me up and grabbed me by the back of the neck.

I don't know where I am or where I'm going, but I like it.

You're moving faster now, careening of the rails but somehow you stay on board. You see nothing now.

But then a light.

A pulsing heartbeat and a deep piano sound.

"Look into space, it surrounds you!", exclaims Wayne, from somewhere within this blinding whiteness.

The pulsing beat is building now, and the light doesn't fade, only flickers like a hot flame. Synthesized strings gambol on around a distant piano. Lost voices cry out, but to whom? Not you, I hope. Anyone but you.


As soon as it arrived, the light is gone. Vanquished, maybe, but only for now.

Superman has lifted up the sun, and everything is at peace now, for now.

This is the amazing thing about the Soft Bulletin. Reveling in the infinite beauty found in the simplest, most miniscule aspects of life. Spiders bite. Bugs fly in the air. Relative weights; for an ant, a spoonful weighs a ton. That's mind expanding, man!

I guess it's only fitting that the band who wrote Jesus Shootin' Heroin years earlier would attain pop perfection, a phrase so overused that it has nearly lost its meaning.

Oh the irony.


Doesn't matter.

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rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

storymilo

That video reminded me:



Listen to the beginning of that, and then the beginning of this. Similar, no?

Interesting write up as well

Rickenbacker

I've got this weird disease that makes me to never do anything ever. It's not that I'm not able to, I just don't want to. What's the matter with me? As a young blue-blooded teenager shouldn't I be compelled to do... anything fun at all? Maybe that's the issue; as my idea of fun is a night playing Fallout 3 at home, alone, with a pizza and enough root beer to saturate my sugar necessity for months. The best time I ever had was attending a meeting for my family's non-profit foundation and spending the night drinking vodka and cranberry juice that my 19 year old cousin managed to get from the open bar. Maybe that sounds like fun, but I don't know. I have no perspective.

Out of my Element

Like a child who wanders into a movie and expects to know the plot.

I can quote the Big Lebowski.

That's proof enough.

My life is dominated by a need not to achieve anything at all except to finally be done with goddamn football practice so that I can get home and complete my daily routine. I see each day as beginning at 6 PM and ending at 7:30 AM when I leave for school. That doesn't even make sense actually. Shows what I know I guess. I don't love life, but I certainly don't hate it. I couldn't possibly feel such strong emotions on either end for something so mundane.

Flash forward some months.

I get a recommendation from some guy for some album called Discovery from some band Daft Punk, which I think is a ridiculous name for a band, especially one that looks like robots. I go to my local neighborhood music store (yes they still have those) and begrudgingly handed over my 15 or so dollars in exchange for this album which says the name of the band in big mercurial letters, under which smolder the embers of some sort of rainbow fire. The second the opening, orgasmic, fantastic and incredibly beautiful note of One More Time hits my ears, things just sort of start going right in the conventional sense. I had been happy... no not happy, but content with my current situation for as long as I can remember, but this was something new. This was catharsis by the books. Looking back, Discovery seems a very apt name. By listening, I discovered something about myself, humanity, and life. We are not here to live like I lived: less day-to-day and more just... meh. Instead, we are here to celebrate ourselves as a species and more importantly as a collective of cultures; many single individuals each unique in their way united under the power of FEELING. NOT MUSIC, but what MUSIC makes! Emotion! A Chemical process, maybe, but conceptually it's more than that! It's what makes us human! Believe it. Life changing is only the half of it.

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rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed

Rickenbacker

This is not really about the album so much as the effect it has had.

On paper, a fourteen year old American boy should have nothing to do with Morrissey. Forget the Smiths! At fifty years old, the sporadically genius solo artist should, by logic, be remembered if at all only by aging former fans. These were the beta version of the Indie Kids, who clutched their copies of The Queen is Dead like some holy artifact and Sang themselves to Sleep every night. In 2004 this seemed to be about to become a reality, as Morrissey's solo work became worse and far between. Having apparently lost his once resplendent boyish looks and with his audiences getting smaller still, Moz was losing relevance at an alarming rate.

Then.

The Single.

That slinky guitar line... then the drums come in...

The voice of a much younger Morrissey speaks to a new generation of hipsters and indie kids. Or is it? This can't be the same Morrissey who in 1986 declared himself Unloveable! This Morrissey wears suits and wields Tommy Guns and spits upon the name Oliver Cromwell! To think that he would be so daring!

But that chorus. My God... the chorus. With that chorus, "Irish Blood, English Heart" gave the world a reason to like, no, love the wonderful self-deprecating creature that is Morrissey. And love him the world did, with "Irish Blood" reaching number 3 in Britain and 4 in the United States.

But why did this very late career resurgence occur? What reason was their to trust Morrissey to make a good record containing perhaps the best pop song of the past fifteen years, with seven years having passed since the abysmal Maladjusted? Every generation needs an older genius gone unnoticed for them to discover and subsequently worship. In 1986, this was Lou Reed, with R.E.M. releasing the Velvet Underground styled guitar heavy album "Life's Rich Pageant", the Feelies creating the Velvets album that never was with "The Good Earth", and The Smiths themselves channeling the confessional lyrics of The Velvet Underground's self titled album into a little record called The Queen Is Dead.

For Generation Pitchfork, Morrissey was just this.

Six years and two very good albums later, he who was once declared "Unloveable" is the most respected Briton in alternative music if not music in general.

Ironic? Maybe. But I accept the graceful aging of the face of Indie music with open arms.

__________________

last.fm
rym
Talk About the Passion - R.E.M.'s Discography Reviewed