R.E.M. Album Deep Dives #10: New Adventures In Hi-Fi

[@gabrielgarbow3784]

This is my favorite R.E.M. album, hands down. I can totally understand why I'm in the minority on that, but at the time it came out, the sound on here just hit me the right way - and stuck. To my ears, this collection of songs holds together really well. While the style of the songs is fairly eclectic the consistent range of guitar and drum tones and vocal treatments bridge the differences just enough without making everything sounds same-y. I remember singing "New Test Leper" quietly to myself a million times over the years, walking back and forth from college classes, while trying to learn guitar, or pretty much any time the album comes on.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I absolutely respect that this is your favorite and I do like the album on the whole. New Test Leper is a phenomenal song and reminds me of the R.E.M of old. I think it is a lot to digest in one sitting which is probably why I feel it doesn’t hang together as well for me but I know people who also say this is their favorite. The new 2022 remaster bumped this album up at least 4 places in my R.E.M album rankings and close to my top 5 now. Thanks for watching!

[@davidmaholchic6146]

My fave also love love love

[@ThePhantomBeatlemaniac-t2r]

@@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486 It's funny, but I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard people suggest that this great album is too long or too much. I have exactly the opposite reaction. I was listening to it in sequence the other day, and was AMAZED at how quickly it all seemed to go by, and then it was over. One of R.E.M.'s best for me, for sure. "Up", now...that's a different story, with too many slow and draggy and meandering songs in the middle. I'm generally a "less is more " guy, but I wouldn't prune "New Adventures" at all, for all its perceived excess, just as I wouldn't prune the loaded Beatles "White Album". Each cut on each LP justifies its place there, for my money. In a way, I kind of think "New Adventures" IS R.E.M.'s "White Album".

[@jeromegigon6184]

Certainly my favorite album!! I love leave so much!!! I love R. E. M since I was 13.,they wrote the soundtrack of my life!!

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

Thanks Jerome! I love R.E.M too and have been a fan since I was 15.

[@jeromegigon6184]

@@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486 😉🤙🇨🇵

[@thomaswery3087]

Love the guitar tone on alot of the songs

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

Bittersweet me is incredible

[@ThePhantomBeatlemaniac-t2r]

Played this album again today in the car. I just love it. Something that struck me this time was that of all the 25th Anniversary re-releases by R.E.M., this has the most consistently enjoyable bonus tracks. Some of the others have a lot of rough demos and the original instrumental compositions before Michael put words and melody to them, which are fine too. But "Hi-Fi"'s bonus tracks consist entirely of full songs, including some surprisingly delightful covers.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I would agree. It was such a well put together package!

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

How the west was won is so fantastic

[@curly_wyn]

There’s a part of me that REALLY wants to put this record at #1 in their catalog, but I have it at #2…but holy shit, it’s a sprawling record that just has everything! You get both jangle and distortion, both intimacy and stadium anthem feel, but light and dark..it’s just amazing, especially with my favorite tracks: New Test Leper, Electrolite, Be Mine, Bittersweet Me, How the West Was Won and Where it Got Us, E-Bow the Letter and Departure. 🖤🤍

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I had this album ranked lower until the 2022 remix came out. That was such a revelation. Another one that sounds great on vinyl.

[@JeremiahPickardMusic]

This is one of my favourite albums ever, not quite my favourite R.E.M. album, Automatic takes that. But it is the most inspiring and influential on my own music. I feel R.E.M. are my biggest inspiration as a musician and artist and this is the biggest. It sounds like the album I'd like to make, not that I can begin to make something as good as this, but the type of songs, the immense layering and the combination of electric and melancholic acoustic numbers. It's a fantastic album which I will continue to listen to and enjoy for many years.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I had so much more appreciation for this album after I heard the remix. The CD does not do it justice. This is such a great eclectic album and a great swan song for Bill Berry.

[@MP-TheNewGuy]

I believe that is Mills on guitar on Be Mine. I like this album. If it suffers from anything, it is too long and a bit unfocused. I think it could have benefited to being edited down to a single vinyl. Although I would release the cut songs as an EP. My first cuts would be The Wake Up Bomb and Zither. The other cuts I'm not sure. This is probably my third favorite Warner Brothers release behind Automatic and Green. Favorite songs off of it are Undertow, Leave, Be Mine, E-Bow, Binky, Departure, Electrolite... Lots of favorites. R.E.M. has such an amazing catalog of songs and albums.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I have to wonder if the pressures and additional workload of writing and recording on the road contributed to their health issues?

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

Electrolyte may be my favorite song on the album

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

It’s such a brilliant song

[@davidmurray2539]

Totally brilliant album. Such a wealth of creative talent these guys possessed. In all of the genre across the ages, you'd have to place REM at or very near the top of their field. Their work is infused with so much intelligence, imagination, and seeking discovery in people and places. Incredible!

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I think this deserves every bit as much respect as Automatic for the People. Their last great album in my opinion.

[@johnmiller3689]

Really love this album, so many stand outs, wake up bomb into new test leper, bittersweet me, the energy of so fast, so numb. I really like the disjointed nature of this record, it just perfectly reflects being on the road and nature of how they recorded it. They were playing several of these songs on Monster tour, remember being blown away by Wake Up Bomb. I did worry when Stipe sang "I'm out of here" at the end of Electrolite, thought they were done. The ball and chain in the video seems like a message as well! Do you think of the Monkees with the dune buggys? 😅 I have the OG vinyl but do agree that remixed vinyl was incredible.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

This really was the end of an era and their last consistent album. Yes that is a great catch with the dune buggy/Monkees comparison!

[@aaronmuthaalamare4165]

Awesome video Jeff! That’s funny the song that actually drew me to this album and band is The wake up bomb possibly my favorite REM track, because of that song i actually started to like them! I had 4 of their albums before i got this one and none of them appealed to me until i heard that song and I’ve been slowly liking more of their material! Great video brother 👍🤘🤘

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

Haha! I’m glad that song was the gateway to R.E.M for you. I don’t hate it but it’s not a favorite for me. 👍👍

[@ChrisPropfeMusicallyObsessed]

Another great video in the series, brother. I love this album now. You guys encouraged me to pick up the reissue. I don’t know why I never picked it up when it originally came out?

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

I never understood the brilliance of this album to 2 years ago with the reissue

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I was lukewarm about the album before I heard the remaster

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

Hell yeah I love this album

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I have a new appreciation for it.

[@davidmaholchic6146]

Love wake up bum

[@danielsinnott2343]

I really enjoyed this video. New Adventures is my favorite album by REM which might be sacrilegious to some but I just love it. Leave, E-Bow, So Fast So Numb, Electrolite, Bittersweet Me are some of my favorites but I honestly love them all. A truly underrated masterpiece from an amazing band.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I appreciated this album a lot more after hearing the latest remaster from a few years ago. It’s such a brilliant and overlooked album in their catalog.

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

Undertow is awesome

[@ThePhantomBeatlemaniac-t2r]

What a fantastic album! Appraised from the perspectives of both boldness and diversity, "New Adventures In Hifi" is ambitiously impressive enough to be accurately described as R.E.M.'s White Album, with little exaggeration. Deciding to create an album from scratch on the road, in sound checks, and dress rehearsals was a masterstroke of inspiration on the band's part. It enhances the LP's variety further still that this approach was augmented by studio cuts. The result is a work of art where you never quite know what's coming next, and each track is a potential surprise. I like every song. The crunchier compositions are better realized than on "Monster", with more of a sense of play or purpose, without the prior album's coldness. It's always fun when Michael Stipe tackles glam, as on the bitchy "The Wakeup Bomb", and "Leave" is one of the band's masterpieces. "Binky The Doormat" is a wicked thing, and Mike Mills' solo turn on "Be Mine" is a standout on an LP full of standouts. And you've really got to hand it to a band that has the balls to release something like "E-Bow The Letter" as the first single, even if it seems to have been a move towards career suicide in retrospect.

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I like this album so much more than Monster because there is that sense of carefree playfulness rather than the self-conscious stab at grunge.

[@ThePhantomBeatlemaniac-t2r]

@@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486 Jeff, you described "Monster" well for me here too. I do enjoy a lot of the songs now, but the whole thing comes across as kind of thought out and calculated, and "hey, look at us, we're doing grunge now!" On "Hifi" the songs seem more organic and more spontaneously conceived, with feeling.

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

Speed racer hell yeah

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

I love be mine also

[@farrellmcnulty909]

Yes, "Be Mine" is fantastic.

[@theflipside-vinylcommunity]

I like wake up bomb but I get it.

[@mthivier]

Last album to feature Bill Berry. 😞

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

More on that in the next installment!

[@sashwap]

re: stipe’s hernia, he said it was caused by belting out the chorus of “undertow”

[@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486]

I believe it! It was totally worth it, Michael.