REM EXCLUSIVE NEWS FROM THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BAND NEW ADVENTURES IN HI-FI TRACK BY TRACK REM ON FILM Deep in the subterranean bowels of the rumour mill (music & arts division), there is an office that is the envy of the whole building: the REM department. For months at a time, the employees are allowed to doss around all day, surfacing twice a year to announce, "Apparently, the next album's going to be even rockier than Monster" or, "I've heard it's closer to the delicate semi-acoustic textures of Automatic For The People." In advance of REM's 10th full-length album, New Adventures In Hi-Fi (released by Warner Bros on September 9 in the UK), these two contradictory stories rang out repeatedly. For an REM fan - and for a UK retailer - the distinction between the two rumours was crucial. Monster (1994) was the record that signalled an abrasive U-turn from the band's sensitive music of the early Nineties. A tongue-in-cheek rock 'n' roll album, it received poor reviews and its UK sales figures were 40% down on the band's previous album. Automatic For The People (1992), on the other hand, was their masterpiece. It had a similar part-acoustic feel to its 1990 predecessor, Out Of Time, and was a beautiful, mysterious album that addressed Aids, death and loss. Worldwide sales of nine million - for an ostensibly uncommercial and melancholic collection of songs - attest to the record's remarkable impact. While New Adventures In Hi-Fi is no artful xerox of Automatic For The People, it does possess a similar thrilling depth and colour and plenty more besides. With a running time of 65 minutes, it is REM's longest and most diverse record to date and it covers a prodigious range - from tear-jerking acoustic folk to flamboyant glam-rock; from swamp blues to cacophonous electronics; from modernist C&W to sweetly-flavoured pop. In an exclusive interview with dotmusic, REM guitarist Peter Buck revealed the level of confidence emanating from the band's camp. He says, "All of us, and all of the people who work with us, and all of our spouses, and all of our friends think that it's our best record. Whether the world will think that, I don't know. But I'm sure they'll be pleasantly surprised." Even on its noisier songs, such as The Wake-Up Bomb and So Fast So Numb, the new album sounds warm and confident and, whereas Monster stayed faithful to one effect (Buck's tremolo guitar) on most of its 12 songs, New Adventures In Hi-Fi is impressively, almost arrogantly promiscuous. Buck says, "I do think that we touch on a wider range of music than just about anyone right now. The Beatles used to do it, Led Zeppelin used to do it and I don't think we get enough credit for doing it." The band's original idea was to open the album with Leave, a startling sonic departure. Written by Bill Berry and lasting almost seven minutes, it features a continuous car alarm noise obtained on an ARP Odyssey synthesiser. Buck says, "When we wrote Leave, Patti Smith was visiting. She and Michael Stipe were sitting in the next room while we were really rocking out with these tiny little amps. Patti came in and went, 'Wow...', while Michael said, 'Hey, you guys are doing some weird shit over there'." Eventually, Leave was positioned sixth. The album begins instead with the last song to be recorded, How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us. It is one of REM's most cinematic tracks, containing a suitably atonal modern-jazz piano solo from Mike Mills, and all four members of the band nominated this song as their favourite. Buck explains, "We wanted to structure the album so that you'd get a little taste of everything that was on it within the first five songs. So you're like, 'Well, what is this record? Is it a rock record or a folk record or what?'. And then you get Leave." New Adventures In Hi-Fi sees REM's return to the instrument-swapping versatility of Out Of Time and Automatic For The People. Of 17 instruments used on the record, Buck plays six, including bouzouki, banjo and electric sitar. Mills plays bass, fuzz bass, guitar, piano, organ, Mellotron and synthesisers. Drummer Berry also plays acoustic guitar, synthesiser, bass and whistle. And, overall, the album is as adventurous as its title would suggest. Buck, who came up with the title, says, "It is real, because it was an adventurous thing, it is hi-fi - it was recorded on eight-track - and, yeah, it's new. But, you know, also on my list was The Modern Sounds Of... and the one that I really wanted was REM's Own Thing, because that's such a great title. I think Revolution Of The Mind was up there, too." The 14 tracks were recorded in nine US cities and co-produced by REM and Scott Litt, who has worked with the band since their 1987 album Document. Ten of the songs were recorded during the last two months of the Monster world tour, which finished in November 1995. Four of these are excellently-mixed live performances from concerts (hence the faint sound of cheering as one or two of them end), with only Stipe's vocals re-recorded some months later in a Seattle studio. These four songs include Departure and Undertow - which British audiences heard at REM's open-air dates last summer - although not Revolution, which was played in the UK but did not make the album's final cut. (It will be a B-side instead .) Of the other 10 tracks, five were recorded at soundchecks before gigs. A sixth song, the instrumental Zither, was recorded direct to Dat in a shower stall in a Philadelphia dressing room. Buck explains, "I wanted to keep the creative energy going on the road. Touring isn't a creative thing. It's a celebratory, fun thing, but you're not making anything. So we were constantly trying to write new songs, working with tape decks on buses, in dressing rooms and on stage at soundchecks. Lindsay Buckingham played with us on Everybody Hurts at the Forum in Los Angeles and he watched us play for an hour and 20 minutes at a soundcheck, doing all new songs. He thought it was the most insane thing he'd ever heard of. And this is from a guy who recorded half of [Fleetwood Mac's] Tusk in his bathroom." REM even attempted to record one of the album's best songs, Be Mine, on Mills's tour bus as it was being driven from Dallas to St. Louis in the early hours of the morning. Buck recalls, "At least two of the people who were involved in the recording don't remember making it. But with the miracle of computer technology, we had these bits of the song, slung them together and overdubbed it. But it sounded too sterile, so we just cut the track live in Seattle in one take." Seattle is home to Bad Animals Studio, where the remaining four songs on New Adventures In Hi-Fi were recorded this spring. One of these, an extraordinary track entitled E-bow The Letter, will be released on August 19 as the first single taken from the album. A slow, brooding song which features Patti Smith on backing vocals and Buck using a guitar gadget called an E-bow, it is a somewhat confrontational choice as a single. Buck concedes, "I would never consider it a commercial song. It's five and a half minutes long. It doesn't have a melody except in the chorus, when someone who isn't even in the band sings. But then we never really have big hits anyway. There's two ways to go. The first way is to go for the surefire hit single and make the video to fit it, which we've never really done. The other way is to pick something that represents the record, knowing that not having had a record out in almost two years, it's going to get played anyway. I'm sure it will puzzle people. I can't wait to see what the alternative stations in America do with it." One of the album's many strong points is that, short of referring to the sleevenotes, it's hard to know which songs are live performances from concerts and soundchecks, and which were recorded later in the studio. REM and Litt have done a forensic job on the live tracks in particular, exorcising audience shrieks, whoops and cries of, "do Everybody Hurts". One notable feature of the "tour" material and the "studio" material is a manpower discrepancy: the 10 "tour" songs make full use of the two auxiliary musicians who played with the band, Scott McCaughey (keyboards, autoharp) and Nathan December (additional guitar). The studio songs were recorded entirely by REM, apart from Smith's one contribution. Buck says, "We're a closed shop when it comes to songwriting; we write the songs. But as a guitar player, I love it when there's someone there to play with me, so I don't have to cover all the ground. Half the time, when I write a song, I know that I have to keep the rhythm going, because Mike is a soloist when it comes to playing bass. So I'm locked in with Bill and I have to play the dumb chords. It was real liberating to go to Nathan and say, 'OK, Nathan, play the chorus, make feedback at the end and don't do anything else'. It was great. He'd have to stand with his arms crossed for half the song." Throughout the Monster tour, REM played all their new songs at soundchecks each afternoon, only to have to play a two-hour show of 25 old songs later in the day. Buck says, "It wasn't so bad, because we hadn't toured in five years. The Automatic stuff, we hadn't played live. Plus we threw in a couple of covers and then, as the tour went on, we started doing more new songs. For me, the shows always picked up a notch the day we added a new song. When we got to America we had five [of them] and, occasionally, we'd do Zither. E-bow almost made it." Despite Monster's considerable drop in UK sales, the album did well worldwide, selling 8.7m copies. In the US, Monster outsold Automatic For The People by almost one million. Buck admits, "I knew that Monster wasn't as good as Automatic, in the sense that Automatic is the kind of record I love. But I really like Monster for what it is. It succeeded in what it was supposed to do, which was to push us in a new direction, and, while not alienating our fans, give them a totally different side of us to look at." He adds, "It really isn't as easy as people might imagine to re-invent yourself. I'll never be able to play jazz. I can play folk music, I can play rock 'n' roll, I could be a decent back-up guitar player for a blues band. For us to push ourselves in that direction [of Monster] was a really good move. It totally freed us up; it closed the door on the past. I don't think anyone knows what to expect from us now." One thing not to expect is an REM tour for New Adventures In Hi-Fi. Buck points out, "We already toured it. I'd love to tour after the next one - maybe not do quite as big places, though. And I think it would be cool to have, like, five extra musicians onstage." New Adventures In Hi-Fi, meanwhile, is the last album REM are contracted to make for Warner Bros. They are currently considering offers from various companies. DreamWorks has been mentioned, as has a re-signing to Warner Bros, but Buck declines to give any indication of the band's plans. Nor can he speak publicly about Jefferson Holt, REM's former manager, whose 15-year association with the band ended in May. The matter is sub judice. REM's affairs are now being handled by Bertis Downs IV, their longtime lawyer. Buck says, "All I can say is that the four of us are in a real positive state of mind. We're going to keep doing things the way we have done, which is a moral way and an ethical way. I legally can't say anything else." However, he is willing to speculate on the next album, which he is keen for REM to release before the end of 1997. He says, "I want to get everyone together and make a record in April. I'm being real optimistic. I'll tell you the plan: everyone's going to come over to my house in Hawaii and we're going to hang out for two weeks and demo stuff in my house. And I'd like to go in to a studio in the summertime and have it out by Christmas next year. "We might have different people in the studio with us when we record the next one. Personally, I'd like to. I have a feeling the next record will be a new direction." by Leo Finlay