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New Adventures In Hi-Fi | 
| Manufacturer: Warner Bros.
Category: Digital Music Album
Buy New: $9.99
Rating:  177 reviews
Sales Rank: 24318
Genre: pop-music
Media: MP3 Download
Running Time: 0 Minutes
ASIN: B0017IZRB6
Release Date: March 18, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 172 more reviews...
 In which our heroes begin a late model breakdown December 3, 2008
Tim Brough (Springfield, PA United States)
After the big noisy fuzz-bomb that was Monster and the problem plagued tour that followed it, R.E.M. were at an impasse. They had long ago tired of the album-tour-album cycle of rock, they had begun seeing themselves as too predictable (hence "Monster's" utter detonation of their trademark sound) and they were now one of the biggest bands on the planet. Their confusion and drifting of focus began to really show when "New Adventures In Hi-Fi" finally came out in 1996.
First, the album was a meandering 60-plus minutes long, the lengthiest R.E.M. disc to date. It also contained the longest song they'd ever recorded, "Leave," clocking in at 6 minutes. Unlike "Monster" or Automatic for the People, the sound of the album is indistinct, shifting between the soft alt-folk of "Electrolyte" and glam "Monster" leftovers like "Wake Up Bomb." For the first time, the band made an album that seemed to be forced into an R.E.M. template; they became a well-oiled cover band mimicking themselves. When you had the pressure that must have entered when Bill Berry had his near-fatal aneurysm, the exigence of "New Adventures" made the story more compelling than the music.
Recording during sound-checks and hotel stays during the Monster Tour helps explain the lack of cohesion, and if you strip the filler ("Zither," "So Fast So Numb" would have made my cut list), "Adventures" sounds pretty good. I've always held a soft-spot for the spaghetti-western derived "How The West Was Won and Where it Got Us." Both "New Test Leper" and "E-Bow The Letter" (with eerie vocals from Patti Smith) continue R.E.M.'s long history of odd experiments that work. "Bittersweet Me" and "Wake Up Bomb" are the songs that should have been the singles before "E-Bow." And finally, there's "Electrolyte," where the band sums up the coming end of the century in a song that should be a classic.
As "Electrolyte" draws to its close, Stipe sings "I'm outta here," and it strangely predicted the band's future. Berry soon announced his health was sending him into retirement, and the remaining trio soldiered on, but lost the chemistry. The next albums, Up and Reveal, were the band's least coherent and - well - least R.E.M.-y. Long time producer Scott Litt went absent after this. "New Adventures In Hi-Fi" was the band's road album, but is also the moment when they left the road and got lost in the wilderness.
REM - Better Than Monster February 13, 2008
Steven Sly (Kalamazoo, MI United States)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
REM kind of lost the plot after "Automatic For The People" with their next release "Monster". The album was an attempt to go back to a more hard rocking sound, but it was a major disappointment to my ears. I bought it and ended up selling it back to a used CD store. By the time of this album's release REM's time at the top of the charts had passed and album sales would steadily decline from then on. "New Adventures" was an album entirely written on the road during the "Monster" tour. Some of the songs were recorded in one take and the album has an overall stripped down feel to it. I think this is a decent REM release, not up there with their best, but also far from their worst. It is a rather long album consisting of 14 tracks. I believe that pairing down some of the filler might have made this a tighter collection and not have the rather bloated feel that the end product became. This would be the last REM album to feature the original lineup. Overall this is another nice REM album and worth owning for fans, but probably not essential.
 You Will Experience The World In Hi-Fi After Listening. October 17, 2007
Thumbs-up Tom
First of all, i'm a major R.E.M fan. Their records are inspiring, talented, and fun to listen to. New Adventures in Hi-fi is no exception. Of course, I would recommend others such as "Document" or even better "Fables of the Reconstruction/Reconstruction of the Fables" for the first-time buyer. Like the best CDs, you may need to listen to this about 3 times to "get" it. (I've owned this record for YEARS before I started to listen to it on a daily basis) But believe me, once you "get" it, you will see the world in a new light, new sound. You Will Experience The World In Hi-Fi.
 not my favorite September 28, 2007
Eric Furst
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
REM always sucks me in to buying their CDs. This one isn't my favorite.
 Diverting effort from R.E.M., nothing more July 5, 2007
Matthew T. Medlock (Cincinnati, OH)
At just over an hour, New Adventures in Hi-Fi is easily the longest R.E.M. album to date, and expectedly, one of the most bloated. The album sort of swings between the folksy pop of Automatic and the distorted glam of Monster. The middle road is the safe choice, the comfortable choice...but is it the right choice? Some of them sound like (and are) leftovers from the Monster sessions...even though most are better than almost anything that made the cut on Monster!
Problems arise on the likes of "Undertow" with Stipe going far too close to Ed Kowalczyk territory for comfort; "E-Bow Letter" sounds too much like the far superior "Country Feedback"; and there's late album filler like "Low Desert" and "So Fast So Numb." It is one of their most consistent albums since signing to a major label, but the consistency is "good enough" and almost never stellar. The highlights include the long, odd, and effectively looping "Leave," the straightforward rocker, "Departure," and the gentle distortion of the lovely "Be Mine." Those are well worth hearing, and the album gets a recommendation for fans, but don't expect to spin it as much as their best stuff from the 80s or Automatic.
Best cuts: "Leave," "Be Mine," "The Wake-Up Bomb," "Departure," "Electrolite," "How the West Was Won and Where," "Bittersweet Me," "Zither"
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