Perhaps the best transition album in rock history

On November 7, 1988 i REM released their sixth album, “Green”. It is the first album by the band from Athens, until then champions of the independent scene, released by a major record company. Below is our review of the deluxe edition celebrating the 25th anniversary of the album released in 2013.

The first album for a major label. It’s a Manichean world like that of rock music, where everything is considered black or white. Either commercial or artistic. Either good or bad. Thus an independent band that signs for a multinational always subjects itself to the barrage of fundamentalists. If there is a group that has demonstrated over the years the uselessness of these barriers, it is REM. At the end of the ’80s, after 5 albums for Miles Copeland’s IRS (brother of Stewart from the Police), after having become the symbolic band of college rock – but without reaching the masses – they signed for Warner. “Green” was the first album of this partnership which lasted until the end of their career and is now being reissued for the 25th anniversary – a little early: the album was released in November 1988, at the same time as the elections which crowned Bush Senior Reagan’s successor. “Don’t get bushwhacked” was the advertising slogan of the time that invited people to vote and buy the record, with a play on words (“Give yourself away”/get trapped by Bush) that would return years later in “Drive”.

It’s a transition album, “Green”: but it’s perhaps the best transition album in the history of rock. And it’s one of the best records in a splendid discography. Transition, we were saying: between the direct sound of the first phase of his career and the more refined one of the second part, and between the electric and acoustic guitars and the mandolins that would make REM explode with “Out of time”. Initially it had to be divided between an electric and an acoustic side, and this division remained for a while: on the one hand the guitar fusillades of “Pop song ’89” and “Turn you inside-out”, on the other hand the ballads “You are the everything”, “Hairshirt” and “The wrong child”, which anticipate the melancholic atmospheres to come. In between pure Remmian songs (“World leader pretend”, “Orange crush”), psychedelia (“I remember California”) and the first, beautiful attempts at another genre that would return often – the slightly dickish pop rock “Get up” and “Stand”. In other words: a masterpiece, the album that still best represents all the facets of REM today.

The album was followed by the group’s first real world tour, the “Green world tour”, which also touched Italy (here I talked about my first concert of the group, in Milan, in ’89). From the last date of that tour comes the bonus CD of the reissue, which as is now tradition is a small box containing posters, postcards and CDs. Recorded in Greensboro, the bonus concert is not entirely new: it was used as the basis for “Tourfilm”, a video concert released on VHS at the time, other songs were then released on single CDs in ’91-92.

But, coincidentally, that “Tourfilm” is one of the best live things released by R.

EM- so shame on the fans who already knew a lot of that performance. But better for normal listeners, who will find themselves in the hands of a live album of the highest level and restored in audio: the band in its best moment, compact and sharp as it would never have been again. The only real flaw – the little “a cappella” covers that Stipe did on that tour of songs like “World leader pretend” and “King of birds” were cut from the live show (and which made the songs even more fascinating). In the digital edition, there are 26 songs: the 5 tracks published in the limited edition EP for Record Store Day are included.

Real fame would only come in ’91 with “Losing my religion”. From then on REM would prove that you can be on a major label, sell millions of records and remain true to yourself. They would become, for a few years, more melodic, underlining that melancholic streak already present in “Green”, and then rebound to rock with “Monster” only in the mid-90s. But also with hindsight. “Green” remains a splendid album, 25 years later, and this reissue does it justice.