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By Tim D'Avis
Arizona Daily Wildcat
September 12, 1996
After nearly two years and an extensive tour of international medical facilities, R.E.M. returns with yet another album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi. It's pretty OK. R.E.M. is a band that people should recognize by now as being an indisputable member of the current popular music canon, placed alongside other bands that are indisputably pretty OK, and definitely a cut above the normal KFMA diarrhea.
No segue here, on to the review. New Adventures in Hi-Fi succeeds on better terms than R.E.M.'s last four albums, but is by no means the band's magnum opus. Chock full of decent midtempo numbers and sprinkled with a few gems and one or two turds, the best part of the album if the first half. In the first nearly flawless eight songs, you'll find the single "E-Bow the Letter" (featuring the always extraneous Patti Smith), "The Wake Up Bomb" - the best R.E.M. song in a long time - and "Leave," the album's longest track clocking in at seven and a half minutes. The problem is that only a couple of these songs are under five minutes, and I found myself ready for the closing song about four songs early.
After the halfway point, R.E.M. ceases to make a good new album, and resorts to stealing bits from the past, or in the case of "So Fast So Numb," stealing from bands that have stolen from early R.E.M. albums. The last six songs, with brief exceptions, are forgettable fodder fit for the B-sides of singles. The song titles are, as always, obscure and fit to name bad high school bands after (Binky the Doormat appearing with Zither and New Test Leper at Cafe Luna Loca, admission three dollars at door), and the packaging is naturally sparse and enigmatic.
R.E.M. has more or less spent its career being a good band, and New Adventures is no exception. However, the heyday is past and it's doubtful we'll ever see anything like Fables of the Reconstruction or Murmur again. If you're a casual fan, this is certainly not the album to own, unless of course it's between this and Dishwalla.
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