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Up was R.E.M.’s first album without Bill Berry, and it was almost their last. The sudden recalibration of creative and professional dynamics that had been established over the course of 17 years was almost too high a hurdle to overcome, and that uncertainty and gloominess certainly makes its way onto these 14 tracks. Filled with drum machines, sound loops and droning effects, it’s not an album that leaps out at you. In truth, my first few times through Up were a difficult process. The musical richness and emotional strength I had come to expect from the band were hard to find.

With time, I think I was able to put what I was expecting out of my head and listen to what was actually on the record, and gradually my opinion shifted. I still find the opening track, “Airportman,” fairly dull and uninteresting, and I’m less than crazy about number three, “Suspicion.” Song number four, “Hope,” is where things really start to pique my interest. Michael Stipe takes the vocal melody of a Leonard Cohen song and imposes it over a sequence of synthesizer loops, as he sings of someone hoping for something to believe in. Now, I am normally quite reluctant to try to provide any kind of literal interpretation of Stipe’s lyrics outside the context of a song; that way lies madness. But I first heard the lines “And you’re questioning the sciences and you’re questioning religion” at a point in my graduate studies where I was doing exactly that, so this song was quite a useful reference point. I do think that this album features some of Stipe’s strongest lyric writing in the band’s history, even as those lyrics rely heavily on the musical support offered by Mike Mills and Peter Buck. Many of the songs on this album are more direct than usual for R.E.M., and Up includes the full lyrics to every song on the album for the first time, so those who do want to brave the interpretative woods will find a few useful trail markers.

When Stipe writes a love song, he usually inserts some kind of cynical twist; I haven’t been able to find it in “At My Most Beautiful,” a Beach Boys-inspired song built around Mills’ piano and backup vocals. The momentary sunniness is quickly dispelled with the next track, “The Apologist.” The song’s protagonist is a member of a self-help group who gradually becomes more and more aggressive with his apparent humility and contrition, and the music captures that building tension perfectly. The rest of the album explores that darkness in different guises, such as the nocturnal desk jockey of “Daysleeper,” the drunk “Sad Professor” who hates how he’s wound up, and the criminal defendant who wants to convince a jury that he’s “Diminished.” The darkness is not quite unrelenting; “Walk Unafraid” is a rousing celebration of individuality with all its attendant mistakes, and Stipe takes a moment to ask someone who’s “been sad for a while,” “Why Not Smile?” The closing track, “Falls To Climb,” encapsulates the conflict; Stipe argues that “someone has to take the fall,” and decides, “Why not me?” In making that decision, he finally declares, “I am free.” It’s a fairly triumphant rebirth, and one that signals that R.E.M. is not quite finished yet.

1. Airportman (4:13)
2. Lotus (4:31)
3. Suspicion (5:37)
4. Hope (5:01)
5. At My Most Beautiful (3:35)
6. The Apologist (4:29)
7. Sad Professor (4:03)
8. You’re In The Air (5:23)
9. Walk Unafraid (4:33)
10. Why Not Smile (4:02)
11. Daysleeper (3:39)
12. Diminished (6:00)
13. Parakeet (4:12)
14. Falls To Climb (5:06)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 64:31

An Austin-based duo, Tree Wave is earning quite a name for itself, as much for its music as how it’s being made. Electronics wiz and musician Paul Slocum has fashioned a cluster of distinctly 80s technology into his own arsenal of instruments: a 386 PC with a dot matrix printer souped up to produce specific pitches, an Atari 2600 running Paul’s custom-programmed music software, and a Commodore 64. On the surface of it, this sounds like an act that’s going to be turning out some very twitchy, blippy music, right? You’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.

In fact, Tree Wave comes off sounding like an early new wave band in an age when the songs weren’t written much differently than before, but the real novelty was in how the sounds were made. Vocalist Lauren Gray’s take on the human element in this decidedly electronic brew can range from husky to airy depending on the particular song, and it strikes just the right counterbalance to Slocum’s dense wall of sound. There are occasionally some blippy, 8-bit elements to the backing tracks, but there’s also something unexpectedly full and orchestrated about the sound - unobtrusive synth pads and decent drum sounds keep things afloat, and if you’re shaking your head at the thought of a printer as a musical instrument, listen to the anthemic opening moments of “Sleep” and think again. Slocum has found a great balance between the novelty of how he’s making the music, and the music that’s being played (not to mention that he breaks Tree Wave’s apparent mandate in the opening track, “May Banners”, with some Byrds-esque guitar work). The novelty never takes over for sheer gimmickry’s sake. “Morning Coffee Hymn” and “Same” are also highlights.

Tree Wave is gaining quite a bit of attention from the music community and the media, so hopefully it’ll only be a matter of time the right label takes note and signs them for a full-length album and promotes them with a bit of tender loving care. Mainstream they’re not, but catchy they most definitely are.

1. May Banners (3:43)
2. Machines Fall Apart (3:06)
3. Sleep (2:56)
4. Instrumental 1b (4:00)
5. Morning Coffee Hymn (3:38)
6. Same (3:20)

Released by: Tree Wave
Release date: 2005
Total running time: 23:43

An interestingly retro effort, Perfect Life is a bit of a manifesto for Levinhurst: it aims to bring some ’80s new wave feel back into the present with the help of some modern technology. And Levinhurst does carry the necessary pedigree to accomplish this; leading the trio is Lol Tolhurst, founding member of The Cure, with Cindy Levinson handling vocals and Dayton Borders providing some synth and sequencer wizardry.

If I have a gripe with Levinhurst’s debut effort, it lies more with the track sequencing than anything. Kicking off with a brief, atmospheric instrumental, the album really doesn’t properly start until the percolating intro of “Let’s Go” hits, and while it’s a decent song, it’s very repetitive lyrically, and even those lyrics are pretty lightweight compared to many of the other songs; thematically, I understand why “Let’s Go” is where it is, as an invitation to the rest of the album, but it’s one of the album’s weaker songs, so it really undermines that point. “Sorrow” hits next, and it’s immediately clear when I hear it that this should’ve been the lead track (and the lead single, but I’ll return to that point later). It sweeps into a dark, electronic rhythm worthy of early Eurythmics or Depeche Mode, with Levinson providing some of the best vocals on the whole disc. This song is actually what tipped me off to Levinhurst in the first place (when I heard it on Free Zone on WICR, Indianapolis - just a wee plug there).

The excellent vocals and interesting approach to instrumentation carries over into “Sadman”, another excellent track, and “Lost” is a delightful track that has, compositionally speaking, what I’d describe as musical red herrings - the chord and melodic progressions sometimes lead you to places where you would’ve had no reasonable expectation of the song going. Maybe that’s an example of writing stuff cleverly that only other songwriters would pick up on, or maybe it’s an example of writing in that distinctive let’s-break-the-rules-of-how-this-is-done style of the ’80s, but it’s a neat track all the same. A brief instrumental, “Insomniac”, follows, and it smacks just a little bit of early Depeche Mode, and after that comes the perky, swirling, begs-to-be-danced-to “Despair” - seems like a bit of a contradiction, doesn’t it?

The lead single for Perfect Life is “Hope”, and “Hope” is a decent song, but it’s somehow not as catchy as “Sorrow” or even “Let’s Go”; all I can figure is that the band (or the label) wanted something with an upbeat mood coming out of the starting gate. If they wanted something that sounded “up,” even the last song, “More / Mad”, would’ve fit the bill. After checking the credits in the CD booklet, I wonder if I wasn’t picking up on something else: “Hope” alone was recorded in a different studio and put together by a different producer. Something about it is a little “noisier” than some of the other tracks, with heavy distortion introduced on some of the synth parts, and it just doesn’t seem entirely representative of the sound established on the rest of the album.

Perfect Life may not be a perfect album, but it does show great promise for Levinhurst. Hopefully they’ll get a chance to follow up on it.

1. Vinti (1:13)
2. Let’s Go (3:40)
3. Sorrow (3:30)
4. Sadman (5:41)
5. Lost (4:14)
6. Insomniac (1:33)
7. Despair (3:48)
8. Hope (3:03)
9. Behind Me (4:09)
10. Perfect Life (1:31)
11. More / Mad (7:06)

Released by: Full Contact
Release date: 2004
Total running time: 39:30

It’s official - there’s something Bill Clinton did that I may not be able to forgive him for. He brought Fleetwood Mac back together.

As I write this, I’m way, way behind on writing music reviews. Fleetwood Mac’s Behind The Mask is an album I bought when it first came out, and it’s taken me this long to get around to weighing in on it, even though at the time I liked it quite a bit - always have. What’s bad about that lag, though, is that Fleetwood Mac has since morphed back into something resembling the lineup from its 70s/80s heyday…and yet something less than it once was. And I’m having to fight down the urge to talk about that and bring that comparison up.

Behind The Mask was a transitional album into a new Fleetwood Mac era. Lindsey Buckingham, who had been the most demanding of the creative pistons firing in the Mac’s engine, had left the group behind after 1987’s Tango In The Night (and a guest stint on a new single for the 1988 Greatest Hits album), but this didn’t doom the group as much as I remember thinking it would. Say what you will about it taking two players to fill Buckingham’s shoes on stage and in the studio, the remaining members had already auditioned replacements for the all-important position of guitarist, and wound up with not one, but two, promising candidates: Billy Burnette and Rick Vito. Not only did both men have an excellent pedigree as steadily-employed, in-demand studio guitarists, they brought their own not-inconsiderable songwriting skills to the table.

And in an amusing demonstration of the question of band identity and how much of that identity lies with the guy in the mixing booth, producer Greg Landanyi made sure that this Fleetwood Mac didn’t sound drastically different from the last Fleetwood Mac that had walked into a recording studio. Buckingham even returned again to lay down acoustic guitar tracks on one song. (Another interesting guest musician credit I noticed on Behind The Mask is Steve Croes; credited here with Synclavier, Croes is a frequent collaborator and session player for Star Trek composer Jay Chattaway.) But in the end, the band’s sound hasn’t shifted a million miles away from where it was. For all of my thinking, in the aftermath of Tango, that Buckingham was going to take the sound with him, in retrospect Behind The Mask sounds more like Fleetwood Mac than, say, Out Of The Cradle does.

“Skies The Limit”, the well-chosen lead single “Save Me”, and the lovely duet ballad “Do You Know” demonstrate what Fleetwood Mac still had then that it doesn’t have now: Christine McVie. Her divine vocals, just-right keyboard and piano work and her songwriting…there was a time when I didn’t really rate her as a major factor in the band’s sound. I’ve since come to realize how badly I can misjudge things sometimes. Christine McVie keeps the ship afloat on this album. And “Do You Know” was a collaboration with Burnette, which shows that the new recruits more than earned their slots in the band. “Save Me” couldn’t have been better chosen as the first song to hit radio, as it has a vibe reminiscent of some of McVie’s best singles in the past; it’s a close conceptual cousin of Tango’s “Isn’t It Midnight” and “Little Lies”.

I’m still not that partial to Stevie Nicks’ songs here. Considering how much I grew to like her input on Say You Will (and that’s a big turnaround for me), I went back to this album determined to listen with an open mind…somehow her songs just don’t do it for me here. “When The Sun Goes Down”, a Vito/Burnette collaboration, demonstrates why these guys got the job - they’ve got the bluesy-electric-rock thing down, and this song doesn’t sound too far off from some of Lindsey Buckingham’s early numbers soon after joining the band. This isn’t to say that Vito and Burnette appropriated their predecessor’s style, but that they’re steeped in the same background. The two together were a really were a canny choice to fill his shoes.

Overall, I find myself looking back on Behind The Mask with fondness. Okay, even some of Nicks’ stuff, I admit it - I just have to be in a rare Stevie Nicks mood for it to hit me right. This could have been - though I’ll leave it to you out there to decide for yourselves whether or not it should have been - the Fleetwood Mac that stayed together into the new millennium. Where the tortured-perfectionist-artist / ex-lover dynamic may have produced some dynamite songs at one time, and I’m not denying that it did (though I grimaced to watch them hash it out again and again in a recent special about the making of Say You Will), I’m not sure bringing back the Buckingham/Nicks chemisty was right for the band. In time, this lineup could’ve been incredible. Behind The Mask shows that it was already very promising.

Thank you for once again reading my review of Say You Will.

1. Skies The Limit (3:45)
2. Love Is Dangerous (3:18)
3. In The Back Of My Mind (7:03)
4. Do You Know (4:19)
5. Save Me (4:16)
6. Affairs Of The Heart (4:22)
7. When The Sun Goes Down (3:18)
8. Behind The Mask (4:18)
9. Stand On The Rock (4:00)
10. Hard Feelings (4:54)
11. Freedom (4:13)
12. When It Comes To Love (4:09)
13. The Second Time (2:31)

Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 1990
Total running time: 54:26