Live albums are usually a cop-out.
Many of them are done by artists looking for a cheap way to get out of a record contract; many others are done as a way to cash in on a tour, almost like a souvenir
Many of the aren’t even live- yes there is a crowd, and there are some live elements to the sound, but the imperfections are glossed away in a studio.
Many of them are rote re-interpretations of greatest hits.
It’s not to say they are always bad. Peter Frampton made a career on a live album, while other bands like the Grateful Dead, their live albums are superior to anything they’ve done in the studio.
On R.E.M’s new record, they threw out the rules.
There are virtually none of their big hits on the record. “So. Central Rain” is as close as it gets. The sound is obviously 100% live. It is all guitars, bass, drums and a bit of piano thrown in. You hear Peter Buck’s guitar feedback and Michael Stipe’s sometimes cracking vocals. When Mike Mills plays piano, you don’t hear a bass line.
They are not really promoting anything. There are a few songs off their early 2008 release Accelerate, so you can say they’re trying to milk a few extra sales off that relatively poor selling record. However, it is well past that record’s “recording/release/tour’ cycle. If there is an underlying motive, it’s to tie-in their rawer guitar-based older stuff with their back-to basics sound of Accelerate.
This record is a valentine to their old fans. The ones who bought Chronic Town and Murmur, probably also bought Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction, but slowly drifted off after that. The album is full of raw re-telling of songs like “Pretty Persuasion” and “West of the Fields”. It is virtually all deep cuts. Even early hits like “Radio Free Europe” and “Can’t Get There from Here” are left off, not to mention “Losing My Religion” or “Stand”
The band more or less stays away from its big rock star era and it also ignores most of the relatively recent atmospheric stuff of Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun. The one song they do from that era, “I’ve Been High”, is re-done sounding like a Fables-era piano ballad.
You don’t hear the eclectic amalgams of Out Of Time, or the graceful southern goth of Automatic for the People (“Drive” being the exception). Some of those textures and the finer material on those records are missed. R.E.M. used to bring along a few sidement to help re-create those sounds, but on Olympia they sound like a three-piece, accompanied by drummer Bill Reiflin.
The seeming result is to re-identify to themselves and their fans as a true rock band. They get well over two hours of pure R.E.M.-style guitar rock, even minus the hits and chunks of their career. It looked like the departure of drummer Bill Berry sort of threw them into a sometimes meandering voyage of re-self discovery. On Accelerate and Live and Olympia this voyage seems to bring them back where they started, as the raw, yet sublime rock band they always were.
R.E.M. has truly given up aspirations of being a U2-style rock dragon. They gave it up long ago. Nowadays they play to their sizable niche. Live at the Olympia is an attempt to re-connect with some of that niche they may have lost during the Big Rock days and the post-Bill Berry experimental period. It succeeds well in that regard. Non-R.E.M. fans may not get it and may not be interested, but that would probably be fine with the band.
Many of them are done by artists looking for a cheap way to get out of a record contract; many others are done as a way to cash in on a tour, almost like a souvenir
Many of the aren’t even live- yes there is a crowd, and there are some live elements to the sound, but the imperfections are glossed away in a studio.
Many of them are rote re-interpretations of greatest hits.
It’s not to say they are always bad. Peter Frampton made a career on a live album, while other bands like the Grateful Dead, their live albums are superior to anything they’ve done in the studio.
On R.E.M’s new record, they threw out the rules.
There are virtually none of their big hits on the record. “So. Central Rain” is as close as it gets. The sound is obviously 100% live. It is all guitars, bass, drums and a bit of piano thrown in. You hear Peter Buck’s guitar feedback and Michael Stipe’s sometimes cracking vocals. When Mike Mills plays piano, you don’t hear a bass line.
They are not really promoting anything. There are a few songs off their early 2008 release Accelerate, so you can say they’re trying to milk a few extra sales off that relatively poor selling record. However, it is well past that record’s “recording/release/tour’ cycle. If there is an underlying motive, it’s to tie-in their rawer guitar-based older stuff with their back-to basics sound of Accelerate.
This record is a valentine to their old fans. The ones who bought Chronic Town and Murmur, probably also bought Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction, but slowly drifted off after that. The album is full of raw re-telling of songs like “Pretty Persuasion” and “West of the Fields”. It is virtually all deep cuts. Even early hits like “Radio Free Europe” and “Can’t Get There from Here” are left off, not to mention “Losing My Religion” or “Stand”
The band more or less stays away from its big rock star era and it also ignores most of the relatively recent atmospheric stuff of Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun. The one song they do from that era, “I’ve Been High”, is re-done sounding like a Fables-era piano ballad.
You don’t hear the eclectic amalgams of Out Of Time, or the graceful southern goth of Automatic for the People (“Drive” being the exception). Some of those textures and the finer material on those records are missed. R.E.M. used to bring along a few sidement to help re-create those sounds, but on Olympia they sound like a three-piece, accompanied by drummer Bill Reiflin.
The seeming result is to re-identify to themselves and their fans as a true rock band. They get well over two hours of pure R.E.M.-style guitar rock, even minus the hits and chunks of their career. It looked like the departure of drummer Bill Berry sort of threw them into a sometimes meandering voyage of re-self discovery. On Accelerate and Live and Olympia this voyage seems to bring them back where they started, as the raw, yet sublime rock band they always were.
R.E.M. has truly given up aspirations of being a U2-style rock dragon. They gave it up long ago. Nowadays they play to their sizable niche. Live at the Olympia is an attempt to re-connect with some of that niche they may have lost during the Big Rock days and the post-Bill Berry experimental period. It succeeds well in that regard. Non-R.E.M. fans may not get it and may not be interested, but that would probably be fine with the band.
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