R.E.M. - "Up"

words by Joe Cortez | November 12, 2023

To listen to R.E.M.'s debut as a trio, "Up," 25 years after its original release is to be transported to a time when your heroes were invincible and anything seemed possible.

Overlooked by the record buying public at the time, "Up" was a seminal listening experience for me in the fall of 1998. The band that had opened the doors of music to me years earlier with "Out of Time" was now embarking on a new journey that saw them without a key member, drummer Bill Berry, and forging ahead in a completely new direction that ditched many of the trademark sounds and stylistic choices that had defined the band's transition into a major label act for the past decade.

Perhaps a contributing factor to my close attachment to this album was the fact that I too was going through such as monumental shift: I had recently begun high school and the looming threat of adulthood hung over me just as "Up" was being released. My head was full of emotions I only now recognize as fear and anxiety; fear of a change I couldn't stop and anxious about why lay ahead of me. I see now that those same feelings likely permeated the writing and recording sessions for the events studio album by the boys from Athens. This is not what comes through in the record, nor was it what I responded to at the time I first heard songs like, "Daysleeper," "Walk Unafraid," "Louts," and "Diminished." No, what I heard was my favorite band courageously showing me the way forward, in life and in art and I was floored by it.

I knew at the time of release "Up" was something special and the passage of time only reaffirms those beliefs. Were it to be released today, "Up" would likely be heralded as an album completely of its time and in lock step with the cultural zeitgeist. To the initiated such as myself, this 25th anniversary re-release is both fresh and familiar, revealing surprises with its supplemental content and surround mix on the included blu-ray disc. For others perhaps just discovering this hidden gem for the first time, there are many joys to be discovered and savored.



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