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jazzy_daveFound this today for a quid - R.E.M's Monster album. I was piqued into buying it because of an article in Wire this year -the Maximalist issue.
R.E.M.- King of Comedy
Wire said,
Michael Stipe set out his deviant intentions for REM’s ninth album Monster in the 1994 documentary Rough Cut: “A lot of records are from the heart. This one’s from the crotch. It’s a dick record.” Sonically, lyrically and conceptually excessive, Monster was engineered as a maximalist statement. Released after the twin dominating forces of Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, it was specifically crafted for the group’s return to touring after a six year absence – made for stadiums and mass audiences rather than solitary listeners. Where Automatic For The People was introspective, nostalgic and haunted, Monster is brash, sexual and disgusting. Ironically, it failed to click with fans and the wider public partly because of this approach. Although it enjoyed the same huge commercial success as REM’s previous two releases, it was met with mixed critical reception, and in retrospect many listeners found the academic distance of its big rock posturing contentious.
The album’s interpretation of populist rock is contradictory, with rock ’n’ roll excess used more as a conceptual tool than for visceral thrills. The big dumb opening chords of “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” represent an extreme stripping back of Peter Buck’s trademark tricksy guitar work – a musical restraint that is symbolic of maximalism, rather than being maximalist in itself. The guitar sound on Monster is a pile-up of decadent symbols, laden in feedback and tremolo, increasing in intensity over the course of the album until it eats itself completely in the closing moments of “You”. It sounds so big that the threat of collapse is ever present. When reflecting on the recording process, Mike Mills stated that “we were afraid that we were going to be eaten alive by it”.
Michael Stipe’s queerness is a dominant presence on Monster, although it is typically indirect and veiled. Speaking to UK magazine The Face in 1995, the otherwise deeply private Stipe ‘revealed’ what he had previously only hinted at: “I’ve known my proclivities since I was 15 years old. They’re pretty broad. I’m an equal opportunity lech.” On almost every song, his filthy lyrics grind against sleazy guitar lines. In “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream”, his expert delivery turns coy come-ons into aggression: “I’ll settle for a cup of coffee/But you know what I really need”. His emphasis here is accusatory, demanding, his every word twisted.
The essential queerness of Monster is rooted not in lyrical signposts (like the earlier switching of he/ she pronouns in “Pretty Persuasion”, from 1984’s Reckoning) but in its multitudinous nature. In each song Stipe assumes the role of a different character or self. This is an embodiment of queer excess – not just wanting everyone you see, but wanting them in a hundred different ways, as a hundred different people. Quite apart from an idealised image of polyamorous harmony, the album stems from the darker side of desire, obsession and loneliness. It’s about sex, but it’s rarely straightforwardly sexy. “Tongue” is a sleep-walk into an unwanted sexual encounter (“Your last-ditch lay/Will I ever learn?”), with Stipe’s falsetto suggesting he’s taken on the voice of the “ugly girl” of the lyrics. The lyric is suggestive of reluctance, even of abuse (“I want to tell you how much I hate this/Don’t leave that stuff all over me”) but its title and slow jam rhythm are sensual and salacious. On “Crush With Eyeliner”, he goes even further into character, declaring that “I’ll be your Frankenstein” – shifting into any gender or sexuality to make himself custom-fit desirable. Monster has an uncomfortable kind of queer abundance, one completely removed from accepted modes of camp and humour.
The oblique nature of Stipe’s writing – up in the air, never resolved – could be read as queer in and of itself, and especially related to a queerness that is rooted in wideranging desire or identity; a sexuality that the writer and academic Michael Amherst identifies as “a permanent state of not knowing”. Instead of striving for one reductive, minimal, so-called truth, Stipe’s writing – like his sexuality – overflows with possibility.
It’s a cliche that queerness’s encompassing of attraction to more than one gender means we are greedy; our desires are seen as unfixed and ambiguous, posing a potential threat to everyone. The natural response may be to push back and defend ourselves against the stereotypes – but there’s also power in claiming them as our own, in revelling in the unsanitised aspects of our own identities. The excesses of Monster hold a particular appeal for Stipe’s fellow equal opportunity lech queers: those who recognise the perverse appeal of indulging the maximalist, monstrous aspects of our desires.
It is my favourite R.E.M album and different to their others
R.E.M.- King of Comedy
Wire said,
Michael Stipe set out his deviant intentions for REM’s ninth album Monster in the 1994 documentary Rough Cut: “A lot of records are from the heart. This one’s from the crotch. It’s a dick record.” Sonically, lyrically and conceptually excessive, Monster was engineered as a maximalist statement. Released after the twin dominating forces of Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, it was specifically crafted for the group’s return to touring after a six year absence – made for stadiums and mass audiences rather than solitary listeners. Where Automatic For The People was introspective, nostalgic and haunted, Monster is brash, sexual and disgusting. Ironically, it failed to click with fans and the wider public partly because of this approach. Although it enjoyed the same huge commercial success as REM’s previous two releases, it was met with mixed critical reception, and in retrospect many listeners found the academic distance of its big rock posturing contentious.
The album’s interpretation of populist rock is contradictory, with rock ’n’ roll excess used more as a conceptual tool than for visceral thrills. The big dumb opening chords of “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” represent an extreme stripping back of Peter Buck’s trademark tricksy guitar work – a musical restraint that is symbolic of maximalism, rather than being maximalist in itself. The guitar sound on Monster is a pile-up of decadent symbols, laden in feedback and tremolo, increasing in intensity over the course of the album until it eats itself completely in the closing moments of “You”. It sounds so big that the threat of collapse is ever present. When reflecting on the recording process, Mike Mills stated that “we were afraid that we were going to be eaten alive by it”.
Michael Stipe’s queerness is a dominant presence on Monster, although it is typically indirect and veiled. Speaking to UK magazine The Face in 1995, the otherwise deeply private Stipe ‘revealed’ what he had previously only hinted at: “I’ve known my proclivities since I was 15 years old. They’re pretty broad. I’m an equal opportunity lech.” On almost every song, his filthy lyrics grind against sleazy guitar lines. In “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream”, his expert delivery turns coy come-ons into aggression: “I’ll settle for a cup of coffee/But you know what I really need”. His emphasis here is accusatory, demanding, his every word twisted.
The essential queerness of Monster is rooted not in lyrical signposts (like the earlier switching of he/ she pronouns in “Pretty Persuasion”, from 1984’s Reckoning) but in its multitudinous nature. In each song Stipe assumes the role of a different character or self. This is an embodiment of queer excess – not just wanting everyone you see, but wanting them in a hundred different ways, as a hundred different people. Quite apart from an idealised image of polyamorous harmony, the album stems from the darker side of desire, obsession and loneliness. It’s about sex, but it’s rarely straightforwardly sexy. “Tongue” is a sleep-walk into an unwanted sexual encounter (“Your last-ditch lay/Will I ever learn?”), with Stipe’s falsetto suggesting he’s taken on the voice of the “ugly girl” of the lyrics. The lyric is suggestive of reluctance, even of abuse (“I want to tell you how much I hate this/Don’t leave that stuff all over me”) but its title and slow jam rhythm are sensual and salacious. On “Crush With Eyeliner”, he goes even further into character, declaring that “I’ll be your Frankenstein” – shifting into any gender or sexuality to make himself custom-fit desirable. Monster has an uncomfortable kind of queer abundance, one completely removed from accepted modes of camp and humour.
The oblique nature of Stipe’s writing – up in the air, never resolved – could be read as queer in and of itself, and especially related to a queerness that is rooted in wideranging desire or identity; a sexuality that the writer and academic Michael Amherst identifies as “a permanent state of not knowing”. Instead of striving for one reductive, minimal, so-called truth, Stipe’s writing – like his sexuality – overflows with possibility.
It’s a cliche that queerness’s encompassing of attraction to more than one gender means we are greedy; our desires are seen as unfixed and ambiguous, posing a potential threat to everyone. The natural response may be to push back and defend ourselves against the stereotypes – but there’s also power in claiming them as our own, in revelling in the unsanitised aspects of our own identities. The excesses of Monster hold a particular appeal for Stipe’s fellow equal opportunity lech queers: those who recognise the perverse appeal of indulging the maximalist, monstrous aspects of our desires.
It is my favourite R.E.M album and different to their others
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