I am weirdly fascinated by R.E.M.’s 13th album, Around the Sun. It was a commercial and critical flop (though there are some people who really liked it), and I think Peter Buck’s assessment, circa the release of its follow-up Accelerate, though unduly harsh, has the right general sentiment:
[It] “just wasn’t really listenable, because it sounds like what it is: a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can’t stand it anymore.”Peter Buck
I don’t think it’s not listenable (and Buck probably doesn’t either, really), but I remain intrigued by how the whole album is so refined and carefully constructed, yet utterly tepid.
And then I came across this, which is actually a follow-up to the person’s full review, and it made me laugh out loud because that’s the kind of mood I was in:
Random music thought: The song “Aftermath” is actually pretty decent, but could have been better if the tempo had been boosted. It feels like it’s always running about two beats behind where it should be, if that makes sense (I am not a musician or even musician-adjacent).
