Details
Track Listing
1. Lifting, The
2. I've Been High
3. All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)
4. She Just Wants to Be
5. Disappear
6. Saturn Return
7. Beat a Drum
8. Imitation of Life
9. Summer Turns to High
10. Chorus and the Ring
11. I'll Take the Rain
12. Beach Ball
| Details | | Producer: | Pat McCarthy, R.E.M. | | Distributor: | WEA (Distributor) | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
R.E.M.: Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stripe.
REVEAL was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. "Imitation Of Life" was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.
While the preceding UP equaled Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, and Peter Buck spending their studio time painstakingly stitching songs together via multiple overdubs, REVEAL finds the Athens trio playing together in the studio along with hired guns Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows), Ken Stringfellow (The Posies), and drummer Joey Waronker (Beck). In bouncing back from drummer Bill Berry's departure, the group has emerged with a warm-sounding record bubbling over with dreamy pop songs.
From the opening number "The Lifting," with its swirling textures, sparse piano, and Stipe's plainspoken enunciation, R.E.M. serve up heaping dollops of aural manna. Among the many highlights are the throbbing twang-and-strum of "All The Way To Reno (You're Gonna Be A Star)," which sounds like Mark Knopfler fronting The Flaming Lips, and the faux PET SOUNDS-outtake "Summer Turns To High" with its shimmering keyboards and Stipe's casual falsetto. Elsewhere, R.E.M. fuse Stax-flavored horns, swooping strings, and a cheap-sounding drum machine for the lighter-than-air "Beachball," and set off on a soaring flight of Rickenbacker guitar jangle soaked in strings and synths on "Imitation Of Life." REVEAL represents R.E.M's rebirth as a mellifluous pop engine.
Industry Reviews
...Pitches camp somewhere between UP's experimentation and AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE's traditionalism....There is joy and true artistry here...
Mojo (06/01/2001)
7 out of 10 - ...A remarkably cohesive album of intense beauty and heady wisdom...
Alternative Press (07/01/2001)
5 stars out of 5 - ...Voluptuously modern....12 wonderfully engaging songs that contain clearly defined verses, choruses and middle-eights....they've proved that rock holds no restrictions for REM whatsoever...
Q (06/01/2001)
7 out of 10 - ...A collection of torch songs aching not to become swan songs....Vaguely psychedelic, filled with hazy shades of woo...REVEAL moves with the graceful drag of 1985's FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION, yet with more ebb and flux...
Spin (06/01/2001)
4 stars out of 5 - ...An album of gorgeous, woozily sun-struck ballads....it's a spiritual renewal rooted in a musical one....ceaselessly astonishing beauty.
Rolling Stone (05/24/2001)
Ranked #34 in NME's 50 Albums Of the Year 2001.
NME (12/29/2001)
Ranked #25 in Mojo's Best [40] Albums of 2001.
Mojo (01/01/2002)
Ranked #27 in Q's Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime
Q (10/01/2001)
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