Vinyl Record
R.E.M. - Up
R.E.M. - Up on 2LP vinyl. A 1998 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.
2LP ยท 1998
Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.
Buyer notes: 1998 2LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.
Up is R.E.M.'s 1998 album of rupture and reassembly, the first studio record after drummer and founding member Bill Berry left the band. That fact is not a footnote; it is audible everywhere. Airportman opens with electronics and unease rather than a familiar guitar-band declaration, and the album keeps testing what R.E.M. can be without its original four-person chemistry. Lotus, Suspicion, Hope, At My Most Beautiful, The Apologist, Walk Unafraid and Daysleeper move through drum machines, organs, broken balladry, lounge shadows and hesitant rock shapes. The long running time and drifting textures make it a demanding listen, but they also make it one of the band's most revealing late-1990s documents. R.E.M. were coming off the huge Warner years, the arena-scale Monster period and New Adventures In Hi-Fi, yet Up refuses to behave like a clean continuation. In the electronic and post-rock-tinged atmosphere of 1998, the band allowed uncertainty into the architecture. It is a record about continuing when the old engine is gone, and its beauty often comes from that instability.
Up matters because it is the sound of R.E.M. rebuilding its identity after losing Bill Berry. Rather than pretending nothing had changed, the album made the absence structural, opening the catalogue to electronics, slower tempos and a more fragile kind of experimentation.
For collectors, Up is the decisive post-Berry starting point and one of R.E.M.'s most debated late albums. It belongs beside New Adventures In Hi-Fi and Reveal as the beginning of the trio era, valuable for the questions it asks as much as for its most immediate songs.
Experimental late-1990s R.E.M. with electronics, organ haze, drum machines, slow ballads, lounge textures, uneasy guitars, fragile melodies and a searching trio-era mood.
Recommended for: R.E.M. collectors focused on the transition into the trio era; Listeners interested in bands rebuilding after a founding member leaves; Fans of Daysleeper, At My Most Beautiful, Lotus and Walk Unafraid.
When was Up released? Up was released in 1998 as R.E.M.'s eleventh studio album. Why is Up important in R.E.M.'s catalogue? It was the band's first album after Bill Berry's departure, and it openly reshaped the sound around that change. Which songs are good entry points for Up? Daysleeper, Lotus, At My Most Beautiful, Walk Unafraid, Hope and Suspicion show the album's range.