"it's been a bad day...."

Pitchfork Media's review of R.E.M.'s In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 addresses those skeptical of the quality of R.E.M. post-Automatic For the People, begging them to remember that "R.E.M.'s best tracks come pretty close to the pinnacle of what one can do with a riff, a verse and a chorus."

And that's right. The more indie-minded pine, with each new R.E.M. album since Out of Time, for a new Murmur, a new Reckoning, a new "Radio Free Europe". And, sure, I'll cop to the assertion that, since Automatic For the People, R.E.M. have failed to make an album as consistently great as most that came before it. (Here is where, were this an actual conversation, the oft-derided Monster would come up--- although, I honestly think that album has too many merits to justify calling it a failure.) BUT: Green, Out of Time, and Automatic are nothing less than fantastic. And while Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, and Reveal all are (sometimes frustratingly) slapdash, there's nothing as unlistenable as, say, the Juliana Theory, or as much of a step down as U2's doomed, crash-and-burn techno project Zooropa. And for a band to maintain such a length run of high-quality albums, only tapering off after the 15-20 year mark, and to still retain their ability to craft a marvelous song (moments of inspiration ARE prevalent in latter-latter-day R.E.M.; not as frequently as they once were, but when they do crop up it's a delightful reassurance of the band's relevance, even almost 25 years into their career), and to craft songs of such alarming high quality, we not only shouldn't dismiss them--- we should be downright grateful to have them around. Even if you were as disappointed with Reveal as most.

A chronologically-sequenced version of In Time would follow their rise--- their gradual ascent to stardom with the Green album, their peak with Out of Time and Automatic For the People---, their near-destruction following the bowing-out of amiable, thick-browed drummer Bill Berry, and their descent from the public eye, disappearing into experimentalism. Nowadays, they're mostly indistinguishable from the Byrds-y jangle-pop that put them on the map in dorm rooms and college-radio stations 'round the globe. And while some would argue that In Time doesn't accurately reflect what R.E.M. does best, I'd beg to differ--- creating those jangle-pop soundscapes weren't what R.E.M. ever did best. What R.E.M. have always been best at is writing great songs. And In Time reflects that, albeit in a package that's not as consistently qualitative as it could have been.

In Time's going to get the requisite flak from many that comes packaged-dealt with any given compilation: sins of omission, comission, and this-really-wasn't-necessary-anyway-ission. I'll spare you the suspense: there are songs on here that shouldn't be, and songs floating in space somewhere that should have made their way onto In Time. And it subscribes to the school of thought that mandates that Two New Songs!! should worm their way onto every retrospective, a trend that often cements retrospectives as definitive career-enders, serving as if to say "this is our eulogy, and these new songs show why we should stay dead". Diamonds in the rough are few with such tracks (most famously, arguably, Tom Petty's "Last Dance With Mary Jane," available only on Petty's Greatest Hits compilation)--- most are, if anything, roughs in the diamond, inkblots on a relatively clean slate. R.E.M.'s "Animal" contributes absolutely nothing to In Time, but "Bad Day" is something different entirely--- as the aborted little brother of "It's the End of the World As We Know It," it's lurked around in semi-obscurity since '86, but now as a full-fledged song it's a glorious reminder of just how good R.E.M. can be. It feels less like a new way to gyp the fans and more like a song that just wouldn't have fit in anywhere else (and probably because the kiddies would tout it as a "End of the World" rip-off.... the morons). Besides, here they resurrect "End of the World"'s endearingly rapid-fire delivery, but instead of non-sequiturs about Lenny Bruce and birds and snakes and aeroplanes, we get cutting--- if bouncy--- political commentary like "shit's so stick you could stir it with a stick/ free teflon whitewashed presidency/ we're sick of being jerked around/ wear that on your sleeve."

As far as the actual songs, all said, they're a fine bunch. Perhaps the sequencing is a little off-base--- top-heavy on the great songs, bottoming out near the end with the un-stellar bunch--- but for the most part, the songs are good-to-great across the board. "Man on the Moon"'s unobtrusive pedal-steel and two-chord acoustics build to a rousing climax--- it's the perfect way to kick off the album, and Peter Buck calls it the "definitive R.E.M. song" in the liner notes. And he's probably right. If R.E.M.'s songs are, at their core, a great melody, a great riff, and a great chorus, "Man on the Moon" showed they have the formula down pat. Other songs from that era--- like the circular, melancholy grandeur of their breakthrough, "Losing My Religion," or the beautiful piano balladry of "Nightswimming," easily the prettiest song ever written about skinny-dipping--- don't follow the formula at all, and succeed outside of it. But they flourish, generally, through verse-chorus-verse mechanics and more brilliant melodies than you can shake a copy of Murmur at. "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" is like glam-grunge, and manages to make a line like "Richard says withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy" actually sound catchy in context; "Everybody Hurts" boasts the simplest, most direct sentiments of their career, and yet is somehow one of the most moving songs they've ever recorded; "Stand"'s bouncy organ and wah-wah guitars nail down easily the stupidest song of their career (well, debatably, depending on whether "stand in the place where you live, now face north" or "shiny happy people holding hands" sounds dumber to you), but parades its stupidity like the colorful feathers of a proud peacock, and makes itself intensely endearing and catchy in the process. Songs like "Daysleeper" and "The Great Beyond" are some of the grandest songs of R.E.M.'s career, and they didn't surface till the late '90s--- the latter was probably even the best song of its year, accompanying the Man on the Moon soundtrack in '99, and it still makes me feel fuzzy to hear "I want the hummingbirds, the dancing bears, sweetest dreams of you".

And so hardcore fans wouldn't feel gypped, a rarities disc is available as a limited-edition bonus. R.E.M. isn't enough of a strong b-side band to justify a whole disc of this stuff, so we get songs like the atrocious "Chance (Dub)" and the bad soundtrack song "Revolution", and odd stuff like William S. Burroughs intoning a Brando-in-Apocalypse Now-esque "Star Me Kitten." But then there's cool stuff: an acoustic "Pop Song '89," great live reworkings of "Turn You Inside-Out" and "Drive," and a beautiful live run-through of my favorite "sad" R.E.M. song, "Country Feedback".

Despite falling prey to the usual trappings that come with anthologizing one's self, In Time is what it is: a fine collection of songs, a fine culmination of what R.E.M. are, and an interesting primer for R.E.M.'s body of work.