New R.E.M. Album "New Adventures in Hi-Fi" Due Out September 10
Here are the tracks, along with a commentary by Mike Mills and Peter Buck
provided to Billboard magazine.
How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us
(orig. titled "Hail Grant!") Features Buck on bass, guitar, mandolin, and
bozouki (a Greek stringed instrument). Says Buck, "I doubled it with the
guitars. It's supposed to sound Ennio Morricone-ish".
The Wake-Up Bomb
Buck says, "It was kind of about the glam rock scene. Michael was kind of
looking at the whole 'Dress like we do' scene when we were teenagers. All
that said, it is kind of a joyous pop song, too." Mills calls it "a big
loud stupid rock song."
New Test Leper
"It's about a person on a talk show," says Buck. "It's kind of a weird
folk-rock thing with surf guitar."
Undertow
Features touring musicians Scott McCaughey on ARP Odyssey and Nathan December
on guitar. Says Buck, "Whether it is literally or metaphorically, it's about
someone drowning... Being on tour seems like a drowning situation sometimes."
E-bow The Letter
Patti Smith singing on something that I helped write was just amazing," says
Buck. "She changed my life in a real literal way in 1976 when I saw her play
live. She changed my perception of what music was." As the title suggests,
Buck uses an E-bow on the track.
Leave
Features McCaughey again on ARP. The seven-minute-plus song begins with a
quiet acoustic passage before exploding into a rocker with a persistent
siren-like sound. "Scott's holding down a key and moving the octave switch
back and forth through the whole song," says Buck. "We could only play it
once every other sound check, because Scott's wrist would be numb by the end
of it."
Departure
"It's literally a road song," says Buck. "Michael wrote the lyrics on a plane
flight from Singapore to San Sebastian, Spain," he says.
Bittersweet Me
Says Buck, "For me, it's all snapshots. I remember ending up with the initial
riff at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in San Francisco. It was the first show
when Bill came back from his aneurysm."
Be Mine
Mills says, "We had one version that I recorded by myself on the bus that
will probably turn up somewhere as a B-side."
Binky The Doormat
"The title comes from the Bobcat Goldthwait movie 'Shakes the Clown'," says
Buck. "For some reason, Michael got really obsessed with that movie while we
were making this record."
Zither
Says Mills, "It was recorded in a dressing room. I think Scott was actually
in the bathroom with the autoharp. We like to do instrumentals."
So Fast, So Numb
Says Buck, "Someone said, 'Is that a drug song?' and I never have thought
about that. That is something that doesn't occur around us a whole lot, but
it seems like it is a warning to someone for behavior, maybe just emotional
behavior."
Low Desert
Says Buck, "Definitely a road song... It was called 'Swamp' and toward the
end of the tour, Michael said, "It wasn't a swamp song, I wrote the words
and said it was a desert song."
Electrolite
Mills says, "It was written on piano, so it has a different feel." Adds Buck,
"It's hard to drive over Mulholland [Drive in Los Angeles] and not feel like
a movie star, but I don't know what you feel like when you hit bottom and go
down the bottom of the hill."
--
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us.
R.E.M.
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.twbbs.org)
◆ From: allMINE.m7.ntu.edu.tw