REM • Lifes Rich Pageant
This is not to say that Lifes Rich Pageant is an exercise in deliberate murkiness. Michael Stipe's growing influence on the band was evident in the more socially aware songs here. But no one will accuse Stipe of writing easy lyrics, even as the melodies display pop sensibilities. It seems oddly appropriate that the nearest thing to a hit on the album, "Superman," is a cover. It's the song that doesn't belong, which on this album makes it belong all the more. Original IRS pressings of Lifes Rich Pageant are not hard to find for a few dollars, making this reissue seem curious -- until you hear it. The difference in volume between old and new is immediately apparent, the original LP sounding much louder. Its compression and resulting lack of dynamic shading are obvious. The reissue is far more nuanced and layered, the jangly guitars and cryptic vocals sounding better delineated and more intelligible. The surfaces are much quieter as well, the 180-gram MoFi LP possessing an eerie, digital-like absence of noise. Mobile Fidelity reissued REM's first two albums, Murmur
and Reckoning, in the mid-1990s, years before Music Direct became involved with the
label. They've remained two of the more sought-after titles, probably because of the added
clarity they bring to this decidedly cloudy music. The same holds true for Lifes Rich
Pageant. While REM's Document is in MoFi's queue for later in the year, I would
love to see re-reissues of Murmur and Reckoning -- on LP and hybrid
SACD, please! |
ith its
fourth full-length album, REM reached an enigmatic high point. Lifes Rich Pageant
is a collection that compels while confounding -- a collage of images and ideas that seem
at once disparate and then connected in a peculiar, abstract way. How do "Feathers
hit the ground before the weight can leave the air"? What exactly is "Myles
Standish proud"? And why is the apostrophe missing from the album's title? There is
the quality of a Kandinsky painting or a John Ashbery poem here, an oblique yet luminous
beauty that illustrates the notion that disorder is simply an unfamiliar kind of order.