Taking Sides: ACHTUNG BABY by U2 VS. MONSTER by R.E.M

xpost I totally don't see how the songs on this are duller than those on the previous three albums. I think I said before it's like the best hooks of 70s CBGBs bounced around the reverberating, stereo-panning studio walls.

Welcome to my world.

What's The Frequency vs. Zoo Station: U2
Crush With Eyeliner vs. Even Better Than The Real Thing: REM
King Of Comedy vs. One: U2
I Don't Sleep, I Dream vs. Until The End Of The World: U2
Star 69 vs. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses: REM
Strange Currencies vs. So Cruel: REM
Tongue vs. The Fly: U2 (battle of the falsettos!)
Bang And Blame vs. Mysterious Ways: U2 (battle of the second singles!)
I Took Your Name vs. Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World: macho rawk or macho ballad ("woman, be still")? ugh. REM, I guess.
Let Me In vs. Ultraviolet: REM (close though, but I love the organ part)
Circus Envy vs. Acrobat: REM
You vs. Love Is Blindness: REM

I thought U2 would get it cuz of "One" (which Michael Stipe even COVERED with "Automatic Baby"), but REM grabs it song-for-song I think. Unless you dig Bono drama.

Monster was the first album by R.E.M. I flat out didn't care about. My memory tells me that it all blended together into an undiscernable glop, though I'm sure it's not the case. One thing that does stand out in my mind though is how lazy Peter Buck sounds on this album.

Monster was also the dawn of Mike Mills' silly vegas outfit era, which it seems he still hasn't recovered from.

Peter Buck says he likes it in the sense that he loves listening to crazy Neil Young genre albums, wondering what the heck they were thinking. I'm guessing they're prouder of some of the songcraft on New Adventures, which does have some specific individual songs that top anything here, but the whole is really bloated compared to Monster.

Monster is sure as hell better than Pop as far as big regrets though. And frankly REM should regret not breaking up in 1997 more than anything else.

xpost
New Adventures [...] is really bloated compared to Monster.

Oh God. Please do not get me started again.

Achtung is an all-time great album, while Monster is merely a neat experiment.

this is easily the most anyone's gotten out of selling back a copy of monster.

Hrmmm. Certainly not musically over the top. Seems to be just an upade of the old Edge with a rhythm (ie. a funkier bassist than U2 ever had and a turn-down-the-snare-and-kick, turn-up-that-tamborine percussion). Maybe lyrically, if you think emoting in lyrics is over the top. I mean, those words are pretty heavy, very nicely written and delivered nicely. Interestingly, "So Cruel" does the same thing with a nice little piano riff immediately after to also to great effect.

xpost:
In a way, it reminds of Reveal by REM.

Ha! I feel the same way to an apparently 180 degree opposite conclusion.

Chuck Eddy to thread! (though i'll run like its a grenade when that happens)

And yes, "The Fly" was played in clubs, IIRC.

Stodgy old stadium rockers Styx going techno on "Mr Roboto" was 982734 times more radical than stodgy old stadium rockers U2 going techno on Achtung Baby 8 YEARS LATER.

Seriously, even to my middle school ears, Achtung Baby didn't seem radical at all. It just seemed that Jesus Jones/EMF was the 'next big thing' at the time (maybe even stuff like PWEI and NIN or Beastie Boys even) and U2 was adapting to it, preserving major elements of their sound (even ripping off "With or Without You"!) and setting it to a more modern beat. U2 wasn't rock in the sense of Bon Jovi and GnR either. They were more comparable to, say, the Cure who used dance beats all the time in the 80s. Or Peter Gabriel may be a better comparison.

But I don't get the 'credit' thing. IIRC U2 was totally feted by the press for this album, weren't they? And Radiohead got much more mixed reception - a couple Rolling Stone critics even said that they should have learned from U2 who remembered to keep the songs in when they got weird or somesuch. (Which seems a crucial point to me. U2 was playing fairly straight songs even if, like Def Leppard did on Hysteria, they were experimenting with the production and arrangements. Radiohead were experimenting with songform itself. If "Treefingers" doesn't cut it, like, what would they have had to do to be more radical than Achtung Baby?)

Sure Sundar, you and me and some of our middle and high school friends were listening to PWEI and NIN, but the other 99.9% of the school was listening to GnR and telling you that DM was pussy music because they weren't using real drums. U2 took Apollo 440 remixes to *those* people.
(xpost)

U2, *as huge as they were*, did an abrupt about-face from what they had been for the previous 12 years. Radiohead, OTOH, hopped on the electronica bandwagon 3+ years after it had been hailed as the "next big thing".
(xpost)

the hell?

U2 sold dance music to a lot of rock fans who weren't expecting it (or expecting to like it).

M'Lord, better save that for the eff-orribleness that is Reveal.

Oh well. I still love about a third of the songs off A-Baby - and about a half of Monster.
But Baby has over the years lost some of its luster for me, whereas Monster at the same time has come to appear *a bit* more solid record that it initially did.

It still kind of seems that most of what you've said of U2 could be applied to Radiohead. Surely the number of people who were already listening to Boards of Canada or Autechre or even DJ Shadow was much smaller, whatever the press coverage of that stuff. (Ditto for Paul Lansky, though he was the darling of the electronic art music world too!) Even Portishead and Bjork and Massive Attack weren't doing what Kid A did. I guess maybe NIN did throw an ambient instrumental on to Downward Spiral but still. Certainly the people who were listening to The Bends along with Oasis (and frankly, Soul Asylum and The Tragically Hip . . . and U2) weren't listening to all that stuff. And most people I know offline did go off Radiohead when they went electronic.

I'd say OK 'puter sounds the most U2-like (and the most uninteresting to me)of the R'head alb's I've heard.

Also, my experience in middle school may have been atypical but what it was was that I listened to classic and hard rock (and a bit of blues and jazz and Karnatak music) while 99% of the school listened to Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer and C&C Music Factory (and LL Cool J and Dee-Lite), with maybe some GnR, but for the most part people thought you were a freak if you wanted to play guitar or listen to stuff that didn't use drum machines. It seemed like that stuff was everywhere and 'modern' rock bands like U2 and EMF and Jesus Jones were just adapting to and drawing on it.

(xpost Was James a Britpop band?)

As if this mattered anymore. Eno's a whore.

What aboot the Top 10 debut for Broken? It's pretty rare for an EP to chart that high, especially one for with the seemingly limited audience yr giving the band.

I was 15 in 1991, and I recall all the hype of Achtung Baby prior to its release focused on the fact that they were making a dancable rock album along the lines of Jesus Jones (the name did appear repeatedly in all the stories), which seemed like a huge folly by the fall of '91 when Metallica, Guns 'n' Roses and Nirvana were the big bands, in contrast the the winter/spring popularity of JJ/EMF.

Gotta differ with you there. If there were any bands' sounds U2 were "gearing" towards on Achtung Baby, I wouldn't have cited James among them (more like Front 242 and, fuck, Berlin-era Bowie). Whether they succeeded or not is another matter.

Dare I suggest it here, but I think a lot of U2's departure had more to do with sartorial presentation. I mean, "One" and/or "Trying to Throw Your Arms Around My Pancreas" could've easily been on an earlier U2 record. The oft-cited "new direction" pretty much begins and ends with "Zoo Staion" and "the Fly".

I want a show of hands from people who go to sleep to this record.
(*Lowers Hand*)
No. And as for "Monster", it *IS* a snoozathon, but I doubt I could use it as an Audio Sedative. The Guitar work is awkward and jarring in spots.

I want a show of hands from people who go to sleep to this record.
(*Lowers Hand*)
No. And as for "Monster", it *IS* a snoozathon, but I doubt I could use it as an Audio Sedative. The Guitar work is awkward and jarring in spots.

M'Lord, better save that for the eff-orribleness that is Reveal.
After hearing "Monster" I didn't want to buy "Reveal"

Thats where the Eno connection makes sense.

I don't hear the Depeche Mode comparisons at all, only that they both owe something to glam.

I mean the Mirrorball Man, honestly.

Leftism came out in 95 - ie. about halfway between Zooropa and Pop. I don't think you can really hear its influence on the latter, but then by the time Pop came out there were other, more appropriate dance music reference points the band probably wanted to make.

The Depeche Mode similarity comes through stronger on their Songs of Faith & Devotion than on Violator, though I can imagine that "Personal Jesus" might have played some part.

Flood is a major reason that record sounds the way it does, after all he worked with Depeche Mode (Violator & Songs of Faith and Devotion) to NIN (Downward Spiral) to New Order (Movement) to Nick Cave (Your Funeral, My Trial). That guy is an expert at making things sound dirty and expensive at the same time.

"So Larry was bullshitting when he bigged up Leftfield?"

Probably not, but the band liking Leftfield probably had little bearing on their sound.

As for Achtung baby, I remember it being touted at the time as their baggy album, but it's only really Mysterious ways which would fit into that genre. If anybody influenced that record, the shadow of Bowie, Iggy and MBV is writ large on that album.

Er....I mentioned it about nine posts before you.

It has nothing to do with 'dance beats' per se. They weren't trying to be a 'dance' band. NIN and U2 have nothing whatever to do with one another.

Monster was a completely different deal: R.E.M. had helped to create an alternative radio sound, and then become wussified by comparison to their own genealogical descendents (like, say, Live - ugh). And Monster was a big rock-n-roll dildo they could wave around to say, "We did this first, we own this sound, even though in the last album there's a picture of Michael dressed like a consumptive monk." The whole thing is either undermined or greatly improved by the presence of really soulful, queenie songs ("Crush," "Strange Currencies," and "Tongue," which is beautiful, and "Let Me In," which if you've heard it live is an incredible song).

So I say that they are not to be compared, though I like Monster better because I think it's strong all the way through, whereas AB is a string of singles with a clunky ending. If I were *really* to compare 'reinvention' albums I would compare Green with Achtung, Baby, in which case U2 wins hands down, or I'd compare All That You Can't Leave Behind with Around the Sun--the mediocre, geriatric, let's-recapture-our-old-sound records.

in my defense it was a three word blurb in a long ass page

very easy to miss

Mark: Are you implying that Zooropa wasn't as good as Achtung Baby? Because IIRC I liked it much better. The title track, "Numb", and maybe even "Lemon" count among the handful of U2 songs that have made any connection at all for me, at least as far as my memory from 10 yrs ago goes.

The only reason people are like U2=dance is because of the hype around "Pop," which also wasn't a dance record except in the most token fashion ("Mofo" and remixes). Maybe the basic story: U2 pre-1991=fascinated with America and American sounds. U2 post-1991=fascinated with Europe and European sounds?

Now I'm listening to the Dave Matthews Band. There's something to be said for them, really.

(Aargh that "hike up your skirt a little more and show your world to me" line!)

Jesus Jones, definitely. The number one reaction among friends at the time when "The Fly" came out = "Why are they sounding like Jesus Jones?" Then "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Enter Sandman" would come on the radio next.

The euro/baggy/dance-rock/etc. bands (who were a small minority of the rock bands anywhere near the charts in the early 90's) started sounding less like rock and more like Republica as the decade wore on, and U2 were no exception.

Also, it's silly to say that "Zooropa" had "Lemon" and "Numb" on it but the real heart of the album was someplace else and therefore it wasn't a dance album. The fact that the two songs I mentioned were the singles makes it fairly clear how U2 wanted to be perceived at that time.

Im not going to get into which was a bigger departure - both can be seen as huge and miniscule in different ways. oh my god, REM with fuzz? wtf?" and "so they use fuzz now, but the songs are still the same really. Strange Currencies is basically Everybody Hurts Part II!"

but man, achtung is mostly great songs. Classic. Arms around the world and One are rubbish, but the rest are various levels of greatness. And I have to say that i think So Cruel is the best U2 song *ever*.

and i fucking hate U2.

This is my Achtung Baby story: I bought it in 1993. I can't remember why -- it might have been that I thought the "Even Better than the Real Thing" video was cool. I listened to it obsessively for three years, loved it, memorized it, played it until the tape wore through, etc. Followed it to the rest of U2's canon, still like it better than any other album they made. Listened to it yesterday and was pleased all over again.

This is my Monster story: I bought it when it came out in 1994. Listened to it a few times. Liked "Crush with Eyeliner," and, er, that's the only song I remember more than the chorus of. Left it in my childhood bedroom when I went to college in 1996; have never had an urge to recover it or listen to it again.

So Achtung wins for me.

true. great video.

Two bands approaching the same sound from different directions.

"As if this mattered anymore. Eno's a whore."

hahahaha!

I just got Achtung Baby a few months ago, after many many years of generally dismissing U2 (although I always liked "Discotheque" and one or two other things). It's rapidly become one of my favorite listens, to the point where I fear I may have to give it the victory here, and I'm speaking as a longtime apologist for Monster. The comparison between the two unfortunately brings the flaws of REM's record into focus. What makes AB so good is that U2 brings a strong set of songs to a slight but significant tweak in their sound; REM seems to hope that a totally different sound will write the songs for them. Monster has many good songs spiced throughout, but a lot of times Buck is just leaning on the tremolo pedal and betting that something cool will happen. (One suspects that they needed to do a big tour to let material grow more organically - New Adventures In Hi-Fi, pretty much written and recorded on the Monster tour blows Zooropa out of the water, and can take Achtung in a fair fight.)

Achtung's production, for the most part, is a thickened-up (sometimes spaced-out) modernized version of U2 circa "Gloria," nearly completely bypassing the obnoxious Joshua Tree crap that put me off of them for so long.

It's got its downfalls - there's a sameyness to several tracks, to where you wonder if it's necessary to have "The Fly" AND "Until The End of the World" AND "Acrobat" on the same album ("Until The End of the World" clearly wins the category). But the dizzy disco ripple of "Even Better Than The Real Thing," the punchy gospel of "Mysterious Ways," and the wide-open lament of "So Cruel" - these are some fucking excellent songs! Monster for its part has, again, some great tracks, but most of them are working the same sonic territory (with the exception of "Tongue" and "Strange Currencies") making it feel much more like some sort of genre exercise than a major statement.

As for the posturing involved, miccio pretty much nails it with "You want to punch Bono in the sunglasses, you want REM to just take the damn things off and stop kidding themselves."

Eventually I'll probably overdose on Achtung and not want to hear it for ages, at which point they'll probably be about equal as things I pull out every once in a while and go "Hey, this is a lot better than I remember!"

More overuse of the word "irony." I don't see how R.E.M. deciding to do more of a rock album after Out of Time and Automatic for the People was in the least ironic.

http://rem.sk/news/monster.jpg

I used to have a poster of this, in black and white. REM - tough kids from the mean streets of Athens, GA??? It's just so out of touch with their previous "image" that one wants to read it as some sort of literate, deliberate posture rather than a sincere sell...

. . . and a couple hundred more in the back.!

That's my favorite part of the song! It's one of those stupid ideas executed brilliantly, with diminishing returns, as the years went on.

An even better thread idea might be to compare the albums' first singles: "The Fly" vs "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" At the time I was less prepared for the U2 song.

Monster's ringers: "You," "Circus Envy," "Bang and Blame."

Prediction: There will come a day when "The Fly" is your favorite song on Achtung Baby. This is what happens.

i like the idea of r.e.m. fans across the country returning en masse a week after monster came out to sell their no-longer-wanted copies

Whereas REM was coming off their Joshua Tree.

this broke my brain.

This kind of leads in the direction of ultimately giving REM more long-term credit, insofar as, even though their albums have gotten less and less consistent, they've steadfastly refused to do a "they've returned to their classic sound!" record - even going so far as to release "Bad Day" just to prove that they could still do it if they wanted to. Whereas, after Pop, U2 seemed to realize they had taken the whole ironic, Euro, dancey, electronicafied, whatever thing, as far as they could...and then couldn't think of anything else so they just went for what they knew wouldn't fail to sell records on Beautiful Day or whatever it was called.

As for whether or not it was an "ironic" period, I'll grant that for REM it's a lot more debateable, but, seriously, PopMart?

Best Album Since Blood On The Tracks

-Bands that became popular in the 1980s

-Bands consisting only of white men

-Bands whose names lack lowercase letters

-Bands whose newest record is consistently "hailed as their best since the last one mattered"

-Bands whose entire discography is owned by my dad

-Bands who I listened to a lot in junior high

-Bands whose music features guitars and drums and a bass and vocals, either in concert or separately

-Bands who have been on the cover of Time magazine

totally off-topic, but i remeber seeing a feelies/rem show at the Felt Forum (lol, what a great name for a concert venue, amirite?) circa 1987. feelies didn't make much of an impression, rem were pretty good, but i had started to lose interest at that point (the Superman album) and then stipe did an ultra-diva pose late in the concert when some teens up front were pushing close to the stage - they walked off and never came back!! i guess they thought it was too dangerous/possibility of someone being crushed or something, but it easily could have been handled by security. that really ended the rem phase of my youth

Always seems important to register dissent re. this position. : D

I wouldn't say Depeche Mode were approaching this sound by "Violator". "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" was very obviously an attempt to sound like "Achtung Baby" era U2, but "Violator" is more of a classic "dark" electropop album, which has also been the case with all of their post SOFAD-efforts.

monster for me is listenable, but fairly forgettable. it doesn't have a great deal of consistency or even a particular standout track (ok, maybe 'crush with eyeliner') to make me reflect on it when it's not playing. i've tried to revisit it a couple of times, but never seem to get more than a minimal kick out of it.

achtung baby is a strange record for me. it really does seem to be built around a few very good songs ('mysterious ways', 'one', 'acrobat', 'the fly') while the rest are either interesting ('love is blindness') or completely expendable ('so cruel', 'trying to throw your arms around the world'). the whole thing sounds great, and when the better tracks merge with the slick production, the record truly shines. really, a bizarre instance of an album where i treasure the highlights and tend to overlook the impact of the weaker tracks, perhaps because they're largely inoffensive and unmemorable. somehow it remains relatively untarnished and a landmark of early 90s rock.

This is OTM in every way. Add "Imitation Of Life" to "Bad Day", though. One of the great "eighties" R.E.M. songs.

(Ha, Just noticed the coincidence with the titles: "Beautiful Day" and "Bad Day" both being attempted -- and successful -- returns to form.)

And - and this is important - the last two U2 records are not returns to their 80s style. The U2 of the 80s were a mainly riff-based rock band, with The Edge's guitar playing the obvious centrepiece of everything, while the U2 of the oughties is more of a melodic pop band, heavily influenced by the classic songwriting style of the Britpop bands.
I obviously prefer the latter, which is why the last two U2 albums have been my favourite albums by then ever.

I'm a Zooropa guy. Though I believe gear (obv. not Geir) will occasionally post in defense of Pop.

Geir, I agree that the last two records are not "returns to form," and I even think They've got some of Teh Edge's coolest playing, but what you're overlooking is that they're also boring and irrelevant. They're like the greatest Remy Zero records ever.

http://cache.kotaku.com/gaming/bono_takes_two.jpg

"...and y'know, I also think we need to sort out the environment because people are affected by that too and...what's this?... Alright, then, Geir has told me that I'm not supposed to talk about the environment. Just stick to poverty, yeah."

"By the way, did anyone buy that song we did with Green Day?... You did? Fookin' suckers!"

"in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, for which their music was often used as an inspirational backdrop."

while the U2 of the oughties is more of a melodic pop band, heavily influenced by the classic songwriting style of the Britpop bands "Acrobat" by U2

I'm still waiting for R.E.M. to go through a "let's go to Berlin and record" phase.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, October 30, 2006 10:24 AM (5 years ago)

It happened!

This kind of leads in the direction of ultimately giving REM more long-term credit, insofar as, even though their albums have gotten less and less consistent, they've steadfastly refused to do a "they've returned to their classic sound!" record - even going so far as to release "Bad Day" just to prove that they could still do it if they wanted to

(Ha, Just noticed the coincidence with the titles: "Beautiful Day" and "Bad Day" both being attempted -- and successful -- returns to form.)

"Bad Day" wasn't a return to form, it WAS their old form, an outtake from Lifes Rich Pageant.

> they've steadfastly refused to do a "they've returned to their classic sound!" record

Every album after New Adventures was marketed as a "return to form"

"Star 69" just came on. This would have been a much better single than "Bang and Blame."

I can't check to see if it was an official single but it did get a lot of airplay.

it was a promotional single w/ no video but it was maybe the 3rd or 4th biggest radio hit off the album.