| | R E M Around The Sun CD R E M Discography of CDs
The follow-up to 2001's laid-back REVEAL, AROUND THE SUN finds R.E.M. mining a similar vein of dreamy, mellow rock. "Leaving New York" sets the tone with Peter Buck's chiming guitar and Michael Stipe's plaintive vocals at the fore, while "Electron Blue" continues the band's occasional forays into electronic territory with keyboard-driven atmospherics. Other standout tracks include the haunting "The Outsiders" (which features rapper Q-Tip, recalling OUT OF TIME's "Radio Song" with KRS-One in execution if not in tone) and the folky, defiant "Final Straw," a blatant condemnation of fear-instilling governmental policies.
Not as exploratory as other latter-day R.E.M. albums NEW ADVENTURES IN HI-FI (1996) and UP (1998), AROUND THE SUN occasionally echoes the ensemble's lauded AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE's laconic feel, though it doesn't quite match that record's gravitas. In any case, this outing displays the 24-year-old band in a surprisingly relaxed and comfortable mode, and who says that's a bad thing?
R.E.M.: Michael Stipe (vocals); Peter Buck (guitar); Mike Mills (bass guitar).
Additional personnel: Q-Tip (rap vocals); Ken Stringfellow, Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin, Jamie Candiloro, Hahn Rowe.
CD Included
Rolling Stone (p.99) - 3 stars out of 5 - "R.E.M. here resemble their classic selves."
Rolling Stone (p.151) - Included in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Records Of 2004 - "[A] disc of frankly spiritual and acutely topical protest ballads, draped in futuristic PET SOUNDS strum and hum."
Spin (pp.112-14) - "AROUND THE SUN is R.E.M.'s return to folk-rock chamber music..." - Grade: B-
Uncut (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 - "These 13 songs are sung by people exhausted by the trials of their country, haunted by ghosts of its promise, tentatively hopeful of renewal or reconciliation."
Uncut (p.75) - Ranked #16 in Uncut's "Best New Albums of 2004" - "[A] set of powerfully reflective songs populated by the walking wounded rather than shiny happy people."
Alternative Press (p.113) - "Thirteen studio albums into their career, R.E.M. can still throw listeners for a loop. 'The Outsiders' is as velvety smooth as Massive Attack..." - 4 out of 5 R E M Around The Sun Songs Around The Sun Review
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Purchase Around The Sun CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | R E M Green CDs (1988) Wdva; Digipak
Around The Sun
 $16.39  
The album that found the band sandwiched between being an important cult band on the verge of major success and being the world's most successful rock band of the 90s. A tricky situation, but this album made the breakthrough and mighty Warner Brothers were behind it. R.E.M. were able to get their folky mandolin material like 'You Are The Everything' accepted on an equal footing with great pop such as 'Stand' or 'Pop Song 89' (which could have been written by Jim Morrison and titled 'Hello I Love You'). 'Orange Crush' is already an FM radio favourite, and the rest is all recent history.
This Classic R.E.M. title features the entire album in ...
| | R E M Monster CD (1994) Wdva; Digipak
Around The Sun
$21.35
MONSTER was nominated for a 1995 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album.
A return to big guitars and big statements following the dark, intimate AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE.
This Classic R.E.M. title features the entire album in Surround Sound with previously unreleased and rare ...
| | R E M New Adventures In Hi-Fi CD (1996) Wdva; Digipak
Around The Sun
$16.85 
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 ...
| | R E M Out Of Time CD (1991) Wdva; Digipak
Around The Sun
$16.39
Additional personnel includes: KRS-One, Kate Pierson (vocals); Peter Holsapple (guitar, bass); John Keane (pedal steel guitar); David Kampers, David Braitberg, David Arenz, Ellie Arenz (violin); Paul Murphy, Reid Harris (viola); Andrew Cox, Elizabeth Murphy (cello); Kidd Jordan (bass clarinet, alto, tenor & baritone saxophones); Cecil Welch (flugelhorn); Ralph Jones (acoustic bass).
Before Nirvana's NEVERMIND closed out the year with the unexpected commercial triumph of grunge rock, R.E.M.'s OUT OF TIME was the sound of alternative music circa 1991. The smash singles "Losing My Religion"--perhaps the only Top Five US single ever to feature the mandolin as its lead instrument--and "Shiny Happy People" were the commercial face of the album. Elsewhere, however, R.E.M. makes a point of moving away from expectations, resulting in intriguing experiments like the surprisingly funky "Radio Song" (featuring rapper KRS-One), the spoken-word ambient chill-out "Belong," and the self-explanatory "Country Feedback." Interestingly, the songs most immediately identifiable as "R.E.M. songs," the jangly rockers "Texarkana" and "Near Wild Heaven," are both sung by bassist Mike Mills. Though it was quickly overshadowed ...
| | R E M Up CD (1998) Wdva; Digipak
Around The Sun
$16.39 
The departure of drummer Bill Berry in 1997 no doubt unsettled his former R.E.M.-mates, who found themselves straddling not only creative, but personal crossroads. Rather than giving up, the remaining members of R.E.M. reinvented themselves and released UP, a stunning, eloquent album of dark vulnerability and experimentalism. The emotional disquiet Stipe evokes is nearly shocking in its plainspoken lyricism. Songs like the agonized "Sad Professor" and the wary, hypnotic "Suspicion" seem almost too naked for Stipe, who spent years cloaking his words in mumbles and misnomers. For the first time, lyrics are even included in the packaging.
"Hope" is a breathless, galloping piece of pseudo-electronica that raises the ghost of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" before ending in a heady roar of noise. The gorgeous jangle ...
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Around The Sun
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Around The Sun
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| | Effi Netzer Festival Of Jewish Song CD (1997)
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| | Sum 41 All Killer No Filler CD (2001) (Import) Import; United Kingdom
Around The Sun
$13.15
This is an Enhanced audio CD which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
U.K. edition contains the bonus cut "Makes No Difference," CD-Rom videos for "Fat Lip" and "Pain For Pleasure," a "Fat Lip" online boxing game, as well as alternate cover art.
This young pop-punk quartet might seem to be following in the steps of such bands as Blink 182, but they bring something of their own to the table on ALL KILLER ...
| | Pleaseeasaur Beef Flavored Island Adventure CD (2002)
Around The Sun
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| | Eden Burns CD (2005)
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| | Labh Hira Laare Wrong Commitments... 11 & 12 CD (2007) (Import)
Around The Sun
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| | Thee Lexngton Arrows Get Thee To A Drinkery CD (2008)
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