Life without a drummer

The durable rock group R.E.M. moves on without regular drummer Bill Berry in their latest release, Reveal, an album as strange as it is difficult to grow into. The band dabbles in techno and drum samples, yet retain that characteristically melancholic mien that has been R.E.M.’s, and vocalist Michael Stipe’s, living through the years.

Not that they’ve dispensed with a percussionist altogether; but in a number of songs, a drum machine is very audible, making the absence of Berry all the more conspicuous. And track number 7, Beat a Drum, could in fact be a tribute to their former drummer, who retired from the band before Reveal was recorded.

There is no discernible reason for the drummer’s wanting out, save for possible musical differences if not sheer exhaustion through all these years of touring and recording. R.E.M., after all, has been around since the early ’80s, with their now classic first album Murmur selling a bit higher than the usual CD tag price, as with their other CDs on the old IRS label.

The track that opens the album is The Lifting, a somewhat weird amalgam of sounds, Stipe’s ragged, bluesy voice rising above the pasty mix of equal parts melody and distortion. Is this psychedelia in the year 2001? R.E.M. has never been one to be predictable, and so explore the thin line between pop and space oddity.

This is quickly followed by I’ve Been High, as if the band were on withdrawal symptoms, but none the worse for wear for having landed in one piece on terra firma again.

Stipe’s pride of melancholy shines through, something which he has perfected dating back to the songs New Test Leper or Everybody Hurts in the early to mid-’90s.

In All the Way to Reno, a lazy drawl complements the easy, relaxed tempo, the guitarist taking his sweet time to lay down the melodic track. Here we get a glimpse of the visual aspect of R.E.M., as the tune sounds like it was made for a movie, film being one of the side projects of Stipe (as in Being John Malkovich and Man on the Moon.)

However, songs like Disappear and Saturn Return may at the outset seem meandering, but Stipe could be merely testing the range and dynamics of composition.

Summer Turns to High is another atmospheric tune that sort of lifts off again, so to speak, as a kind of remembrance of past summers that had us venturing past terra firma and on to terra incognito, or becoming cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.

The band is again in its element in the music video hit Imitation of Life, with a conventional drummer providing the backbeat. It is in the vein of their past hits like What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? and Losing My Religion, in the similar manner it lends itself easily to visuals.

The music video that shows an outdoor pool party in reverse mode may be an unconscious manifestation of the band to get back to their roots, even if their present sound seems light years removed from the IRS days.

I’ll Take the Rain, the second to the last song, verges dangerously to the sentimental, but Stipe’s patently wasted vocals imparts to it a poignancy altogether hard to define. Some of the lines play themselves back vaguely in the head, only to fade away again in lambent obscurity.

The track that closes the CD, Beachball, features a use of horns reminiscent of the Style Council, and a spiraling melodic line that can leave the listener in vertigo.

Reveal shows R.E.M. in perfect depress mode; it’s an even more "downer" of an album than New Adventures in Hi-Fi. But they continue to surprise and churn out challenging music, much like their contemporary U2, which however has not had the ill fortune of losing their drummer to retirement.

Stipe’s voice is still a delight to listen to, America’s version of Bamboo, former vocalist of Rivermaya who has since retired to a bookstore and marital bliss in the Bay Area, or so we last heard.