I completely forgot how devastating the closer is, can’t believe they chose to finish the album with Stipe’s painful moan “youuuuu”, and how great they did so! Not quite the mood they kickstart with …Kenneth.
I always go back to this as how it was at the time.
R.E.M were absolutely massive, monumental between Out of Time and Automatic. Just ridiculously colossal and somehow got swept into the grunge/alt/independent rock thing as a result of being a pre-cursor to it all.
This album was meant to be their ‘rock’ album in a period where the soul of rock had been ripped away with Cobain dying and things moving on.
Things definitely had moved on but this album although not being truly iconic is the last proper R.E.M album.
