R.E.M.: Lifes Rich Pageant [I.R.S.]

Why you'll love it

This 180g reissue comes with a download voucher. Producer Don Gehman pulled Michael Stipe's voice up front for the first time, and the result is the band's punchiest, most direct record of the I.R.S. years.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Download card included

About the album

After making Fables of the Reconstruction in London, R.E.M. wanted something brighter and louder. Mike Mills said they were after a "really hard-driving record" with pianos, organs, accordions and banjos thrown in, so they headed to John Mellencamp's Belmont Mall studio in rural Indiana in the spring of 1986 and spent their evenings at concerts in nearby Bloomington. Demos cut earlier that year at John Keane's studio in Athens showed the songs were ready.

Don Gehman, who had shaped Mellencamp's big acoustic sound, taught them to layer overdubs and comp vocals, and the band took to it. "Begin The Begin" and "These Days" come out swinging, "Fall On Me" carries one of Stipe's finest melodies over Mills's high harmony, and "Cuyahoga" and "The Flowers Of Guatemala" fold his environmental and political concerns into gorgeous jangle. Mills takes the lead on the closing cover of The Clique's "Superman."

It's the record where the Athens band first sounded built for big rooms, and it set up everything that came next. They spent their nights off at concerts in Indiana, which is the closest thing to a holiday most bands ever manage.

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Tracklist

Listen

On I.R.S. (cat# 4785140), a reissue of the 1986 album.