Reveal

'Reveal' sees REM exhale, relax and ease into a new confidence with a collection of songs to fill your heart. Every track here sifts with a live energy that was previously polished out of 'Up', and they sound all the better for it.

Whilst this comes closer to 'Out Of Time' than anything else they've done, it never once sounds dated.

The rock energy that drove much of their early career has given way to a perfect sense for texture and sound. Reveal is a lush, dreamy pop mood-piece that hovers in the realm of rumination and introspection.

For all its daring, Reveal still ranks among the group's most instantly winning albums, the kind whose poppiest pleasures, like "All The Way To Reno (You're Going To Be A Star)" and the single "Imitation Of Life," eventually fade into the album's overall beauty.

As sonically beautiful an album as R.E.M. has made. [May/June 2001, p.114]

On Reveal, the sounds vary, but the songs cohere well. For a band into its third decade, making a record with no apparent weak link is an accomplishment.

The album straddles R.E.M.'s past and their future, sounding fresh, assured -- and on par with their best previous efforts.

Many adjectives have been thrown around in reference to this latest album: lush, atmospheric, beautiful, summery, melodic. All apply. This is R.E.M.'s pop record.

But if you go back to Up after hearing Reveal, you get the idea that this is the album they were trying to make then, and that this time they got all the way there and found a parking spot. The Eno-style keyboard textures have more room to breathe amid the largely acoustic guitars, with the arcane sound effects intricately woven into the songs.

Reveal is billed as the band's return to form, and mostly it is.... But like 'Up,' much of 'Reveal' is haunted by an ennui that's curious for a band that made their name by talking about the passion. [18 May 2001, p.79]

'Reveal' is the slippers, fire and photo album - but this doesn't mean REM have resigned themselves to the placid lethargy of age. It just means that they've found a place to sit back and take stock after a long, colourful journey.

Unlike U2, whose left turns have felt like oblique strategies in the band's pompous struggle to redeem rock, R.E.M.'s stylistic shifts tend to feel like survival skills. Vaguely psychedelic, filled with hazy shades of woo or whatever, much of Reveal moves with the graceful drag of 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction, yet with more ebb and flux. [June 2001, p.143]

With the exception of a few tracks, Reveal is a remarkably cohesive album of intense beauty and heady wisdom that inspires with its passionate strength. [Jul 2001, p.79]

On the plus side, the album sounds really nice.... The problem is, things get a little too lazy and hazy; Reveal's 12 tracks all move with almost the exact same dreamy, midtempo lope.

It's full of the same monochromatic balladry and hipster references of its recent albums.

What makes Reveal so disappointing is that the additions to the classic R.E.M. sound are all merely superficial. The increased reliance on burbling, jittering synthesizers actually makes the album a less engaging listen, turning many of its songs into messy sonic muddles.

Mike Mills's and Peter Buck's acoustic midtempo strummings and electronic ambience match 1992's Automatic for the People for lethargy, without the looming darkness or catchy sentimentality that made it compelling.

There's a welcome sunniness to much of the album, with "Beat a Drum" recalling The Beach Boys' "Feel Flows," and "Imitation of Life" displaying some of that classic Document-era jangle. The two songs are Reveal's only real highlights.