R E M New Adventures In Hi-Fi CD

Most of the songs on NEW ADVENTURES IN HI-FI were recorded live, or during pre-concert soundchecks, on R.E.M.'s 1995 MONSTER tour.

NEW ADVENTURES IN HI-FI was nominated for a 1997 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance.

In the wake of the raging, guitar-fueled MONSTER, R.E.M. has made an album dominated by disconsolate ballads and acoustic instrumentation. NEW ADVENTURES has a stately, elegiac feel. It's punctuated by a few all-out rockers, but the overall mood is dusky and introspective. Michael Stipe's stream-of-consciousness imagery has developed into an incisive, poetic style of great power and resonance, from the religious overtones of "Undertow" (which reveals a Can influence) to the breathless travelogue of "Departure."

The opener, "How the West Was Won And Where It Got Us," sets a dark tone, with an eerie organ backdrop and a mournful piano providing a staccato riff. Punk goddess Patti Smith guests on "E-Bow the Letter," a wordy ramble that finds Stipe questioning, and ultimately denigrating, "this fame thing." A similar theme is explored on "The Wake-Up Bomb," a MONSTERish raveup that attacks celebrity star trips.

NEW ADVENTURES is loaded with musical surprises, including a zippy synthesizer that sparks "Leave," a campy instrumental called "Zither" and various discordant ...