Yeah, that was a weird one. The last R.E.M. album I bought or listened to. It’s way too long, and like New Adventures I think the sequencing is all wrong. Chop it down and move stuff around, you’ll have a stronger album.
The whole tone, even the cover, are representative of a strange era at that time where all of these popular alternative bands reached a certain point in their career, and started to kind of go… I don’t know, adult contemporary? Pearl Jam had No Code. I’m not… entirely sure where I’m going with this, but it coincided with my undergraduate experience and it was a strange and disconcerting phenomenon for me.