REVEAL R.E.M. Warner Bros. 2001
'Living standards have improved beyond recognition. So have leisure opportunities... For a few hundred quid we can holiday at the utmost ends of the earth. We should be having a whale of a time. But mostly we aren't.' (The Times August 28 2000.) A year later Reveal, the latest album from American rock band R.E.M., dramatises these thoughts.
Musically it is upbeat. The band crescendo eagerly into the penultimate chorus of Imitation of Life before the verse is quite finished; the brass warbles contentedly through Beachball. But lyrically it is an album for those content to take the rain, convinced that summer is no longer an option; it is an album for those who have 'missed the big reveal' and whose picture of life is becoming incoherent like a colour photo melting into its constituent colours.
