Following the announcement of their split last week R.E.M. are set to cap their 31-year recording career(Read my tribute here) with a first ever definitive greatest hits album, that spans both their IRS and Warner Brothers years, it’s due from Warner Bros Records on November 14th.
40-song retrospective — ‘R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011’ — includes tracks from both the I.R.S and Warner years plus three brand new songs
Featuring new song, ‘We All Go Back To Where We Belong’
After R.E.M. ignited the blogosphere on September 21st with the news that they had decided to “call it a day as a band” via a statement on their website, the beloved band have announced that they will release their final album, ‘R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011’, on Warner Bros. Records on November 14th. The album is a 40-song career-spanning retrospective that collects, for the first time ever, songs from R.E.M.’s entire back catalogue, including the pioneering American band’s years on both the I.R.S label (1982 to 1987) and Warner Bros. Records (1988 to 2011).
R.E.M. formed in 1980 when singer Michael Stipe met guitarist Peter Buck in an Athens, GA, record store where Buck worked. After recruiting bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, R.E.M. released its first single, ‘Radio Free Europe,’ in 1981, followed by 1982’s ‘Chronic Town’ EP, capturing the imagination of a new generation of music lovers and bringing “guitar pop back into the underground lexicon,” as All-Music put it. Widely credited with inventing the college-rock genre, R.E.M. became the most influential American alternative rock band in history — inspiring such artists as Sonic Youth, Pavement, Nirvana, and Radiohead — for achieving multi-platinum mainstream success while maintaining their distinct identity.
Over the course of its career, the band has released 15 studio albums: ‘Murmur’ (1983), ‘Reckoning’ (1984), ‘Fables of the Reconstruction’ (1985), ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ (1986), ‘Document’ (1987), ‘Green’ (1988), ‘Out of Time’ (1991), ‘Automatic For The People’ (1992), ‘Monster’ (1994), ‘New Adventures in Hi-Fi’ (1996), ‘Up’ (1998), ‘Reveal’ (2001), ‘Around the Sun’ (2004), ‘Accelerate’ (2008), and ‘Collapse Into Now’ (2011). They have sold more than 85 million albums worldwide.
“Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey,” says Mike Mills of choosing the songs that appear on ‘R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011’. “We realised that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together.”
In addition to liner notes written by band members Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe, the album also features three new songs that R.E.M. finished after they completed their last album, ‘Collapse Into Now’: ‘A Month of Saturdays’, ‘We All Go Back To Where We Belong’, and ‘Hallelujah’, which were recorded over the summer in Athens with ‘Accelerate’ and ‘Collapse Into Now’ producer, the estimable Jacknife Lee. The band came roaring back with those two albums in the last two years, achieving some of the best reviews of their career and enabling them to go out at the top of their game.
The tracklisting for ‘R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982 – 2011’ is as follows:
Disc 1:
‘Gardening At Night’
‘Radio Free Europe’
‘Talk About The Passion’
‘Sitting Still’
‘So. Central Rain’
‘(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville’
‘Driver 8’
‘Life And How To Live It’
‘Begin The Begin’
‘Fall On Me’
‘Finest Worksong’
‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’
‘The One I Love’
‘Stand’
‘Pop Song 89’
‘Get Up’
‘Orange Crush’
‘Losing My Religion’
‘Country Feedback’
‘Shiny Happy People’
Disc 2:
‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite’
‘Everybody Hurts’
‘Man On The Moon’
‘Nightswimming’
‘What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?’
‘New Test Leper’
‘Electrolite’
‘At My Most Beautiful’
‘The Great Beyond’
‘Imitation Of Life’
‘Bad Day’
‘Leaving New York’
‘Living Well Is The Best Revenge’
‘Supernatural Superserious’
‘Überlin’
‘Oh My Heart’
‘Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter’
‘A Month of Saturdays’
‘We All Go Back To Where We Belong’
‘Hallelujah’
