Tonight’s selections from R.E.M.'s fourth album, Lifes Rich Pageant. This was a transitional, yet pivotal album for the band, bridging their earlier lo-fi sound and future big rock sound that sold out arenas worldwide. Diary first published in August 2022.
Ever since the compelling obliqueness of "Radio Free Europe" first brought the band to national attention in 1981, R.E.M.'s impact has always depended much more on sound than sense. [Peter] Buck's ringing guitars, the inspirational reach of [Michael] Stipe's singing, Mike Mills's musical bass parts, Bill Berry's subtle, steady drums, the uplifting choruses that sweep the vocal harmonies into a rush of feeling – these all communicate "meaning" in an R.E.M. song, rendering the much-belabored "obscurity" of Stipe's lyrics irrelevant.
On Lifes Rich Pageant, producer Don Gehman has done an outstanding job of hardening R.E.M.'s sonic jolt. Without sacrificing the band's lushness and texture, Gehman has crafted a sound that subordinates musical details and coloring to the main instrumental thrust of each song. The distractions that occasionally crept into Mitch Easter and Don Dixon's productions (the two LPs Murmur and Reckoning and the EP Chronic Town, which Easter produced solo), not to mention the ominous murkiness of Joe Boyd's work on Fables, art dispelled on this album. The most basic conventions of rock recording – clear, crisp, loud drums, for example – which R.E.M. had almost perversely avoided before (largely at Stipe's insistence), are observed. As a result, Lifes Rich Pageant has a contemporary feel, even as it sidesteps obvious modern electronics and indulges in such oldfangled touches as pianos, banjos, accordions and pump organs. — Rolling Stone
Begin The Begin
Ditching the much-ballyhooed "mystique" of the earliest albums in favor of a cleaner, more direct full-band sound, Lifes Rich Pageant (singer Michael Stipe had an aversion to apostrophes in his titles back then) proved that R.E.M. didn't need to hide in the sonic shadows to make a compelling record. The quartet's old approach to recording had reached the end of its artistic viability on the group's previous studio release, Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), where the underwhelming mix turned many already-hard-to-distinguish songs into a thick mire. In contrast to the soul-sapped ambiance and creative exhaustion that plagued Fables, Lifes Rich Pageant is a clear, vibrant concoction that brims with life and purpose. Additionally, unlike the Fables remaster, this new edition of Pageant doesn't feel the least bit dated.
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Noticeably front-loaded, the first half of Lifes Rich Pageant is arguably the strongest single side of vinyl/cassette R.E.M. ever laid down. The group instantly shocks listeners into attentiveness with the uncharacteristic "Begin the Begin", a dirge-like yet captivating opener that wouldn't sound out of place alongside cuts by harder-rocking alterna-progeny Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Tying in with Stipe's call to shake off the generational complacency, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry lay down a downright heavy rhythmic bedrock as guitar antihero Peter Buck forgoes plucking out jangly melodies on his Rickenbacker to instead (shock, horror!) strum distorted barre chords. Elsewhere, uptempo jangle pop numbers "These Days" and "Hyena" move fast, while the astonishing "Cuyahoga" ebbs and flows like the tide, building up anticipation until finally offering the release of a truly rousing chorus halfway through. The record's second half is somewhat haphazard in comparison, but that shouldn't discount any material there. "The Flowers of Guatemala" is simply gorgeous, the cheerful cover of '60s garage rock group the Clique's "Superman" (featuring Mills on lead vocals for the first time) is feel-good, hook-filled fun, and the Appalachian folk pastiche "Swan Swan H" is an unlikely triumph, given it's the most traditionalist piece of rustic Southern gothic the group had crafted at a time when it was becoming more and more concerned with the here and now of the wider world. — Pop Matters
Fall On Me
The cover of Lifes Rich Pageant features the handsome forehead and full eyebrows of drummer Bill Berry, whose face is cut off at the nose by a low-contrast picture of two buffalo. It's a curious image, embedded with a Buffalo Bill pun, and it playfully nods to the band's refusal to practice expected music-industry behaviors like appearing prominently on their album covers, lip-syncing in videos, writing love songs, or generally revealing too much of themselves beyond the music. Even four albums into their career, they still cultivated an enigmatic presence on Lifes Rich Pageant, starting with that cover and extending to the dropped apostrophe in that title and the mismatched tracklists. Furthermore, the mysterious painted figures and roughly sketched symbols in the liner notes presented the album as something more akin to folk art than folk rock.
In direct conflict with that visual impression, Lifes Rich Pageant was R.E.M.'s most pop-oriented and accessible album up to that point. Recording frequently and touring almost constantly, the band had been nurturing a grassroots audience throughout the early 1980s, and Pageant is a pivotal album in their career, representing the moment when their Southern post-punk sound anticipated larger venues and began expanding to fill those spaces. It was also, strangely, their most overtly political collection, with songs addressing environmental crises and political malaise. Rather than sounding sanctimonious, however, such dissent energized R.E.M. and injected more pep into Berry's drumbeats, more incisive jangle into Peter Buck's guitar, and more charisma into Michael Stipe's performance. The album barrels along in just over 30 minutes, lending the songs a sense of purpose. This is music that has to be somewhere. — Pitchfork
These Days
The received wisdom on REM's fourth album Lifes Rich Pageant is that it represents the moment that the critically doted upon sons of Athens finally manned up and stopped being so obtuse. And it's true that the songs are rocky, major key and propulsive, that Michael Stipe's vocals are full throated, that his lyrics are largely discernible, that the band mostly slough off their folk trappings, that whatever dickhead argument you're going to trot out, it basically sounds like ABBA Gold next to the murk of Fables of the Reconstruction. — Drowned in Sound
Swan Swan H
Lifes is R.E.M.'s first transition album, one that builds on the innovations of their early releases while hinting at the territory they would cover on Document and Green. It's both epilogue and prologue, yet these songs retain their own specific flavor, as R.E.M. map the borders between small clubs and large venues, between underground and mainstream, between rhythm and melody, between outrage and hope. That in-between quality still sounds invigorating so many years later. — Pitchfork
Hyena
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Miley Cyrus, Mike Birbiglia
Jimmy Fallon: Shaquille O'Neal, Hayley Atwell, Dasha
Stephen Colbert: Paul Giamatti, Audra McDonald, the Broadway company of "Gypsy"
Seth Meyers: John Oliver, Chloe Fineman (R 5/5/25)
After Midnight: Chris Fleming, Aparna Nancherla, Jason Ritter
Watch What Happens Live: Elizabeth Banks, Amanda Peet
The Daily Show: Dawn Staley, host Ronny Chieng
