John Darko
In the lead-up to R.E.M. releasing Up in the Autumn of 1998, there fierce talk in the British music press of it having a more ‘European’ sound: of electronic elements and synthesizers. Upon release, fans learned that Up wasn’t Bowie doing Low — but it was different. And much of it was moody. Gone were Out Of Time‘s mandolins, the acoustic strum of Automatic People For The People and the re-electrified sound of Monster and New Adventures In Hi-fi. Drummer Bill Berry had quit the band soon after the latter’s release, his departure hastened by suffering an aneurism on stage during the Monster tour. For the recording of Up, the four core members of R.E.M. had become three and during one 1998 interview, Michael Stipe said, “A three-legged dog is still a dog. It just has to learn to walk in a different way”.
At least, that’s how I remember it.
I also remember loathing Up’s piano ballad “At My Most Beautiful”; doubly so when Warners released it as a single. I was still an R.E.M. completist back then: when UK single releases came as two-CD sets loaded with bonus tracks. For Up‘s singles, that meant mostly live or alternative versions that weren’t available elsewhere.
So now we ask: why didn’t those b-sides and extra tracks make the cut for the 2CD 25th anniversary edition of Up, released last Friday by Craft Recordings? What we get in 2023 is a chunky cardboard box (the type usually reserved for multi-disc sets) with refreshed artwork containing a remastered Up, a second disc of a previously unreleased Party of Five ‘rehearsal’ show from 1999 – which is worth pulling up for Peter Buck’s guitar work on “Country Feedback” – and some papery stuff: a poster, some ‘polaroids’ and a comprehensive lyric booklet with fresh liner notes.
Listening to the newly remastered version of Up this week, I still find “At My Most Beautiful” too insipid but the final three cuts, all tee-d up by the terrific “Daysleeper”, remain a masterstroke of song sequencing. If R.E.M. had axed “AMMB” and the livelier groove of “Lotus” (which is much more effective on the live disc) from the front half of Up, thus allowing “Airportman” greater proximity to “The Sad Professor”, R.E.M. would have made something with greater equivalency to Bowie’s Low. Build your own playlist or burn your own CD to see what I mean.
But what of the 2023 remaster’s sound? The original master done by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound was neither terrible nor remarkable. Analysed by MAAT’s DR Offline MKII software, it registers a dynamic range album average of DR9. Not great – but not the worst. (Click here to learn what this number means).
Craft’s remaster was handled by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering who shines a little more light into the mix, improving (ever-so-slightly) the layer separation and detail extraction. However, Ludwig also steps down the dynamic range average to a slightly more audiophile-antagonising DR8.
On paper, that’s not quite as good as the original but sat in the listening chair, I’ll take the new version’s extra pep over the comparatively murkier 1998 original. Up still contains too much dynamic range compression for my liking, sounding hard and edgy in places but the differences between the new master and the old one aren’t large enough to advise you to hit ‘Buy Now’. Most people should stick with their original CD and not sweat the live disc, which is after all a ‘rehearsal set’ complete with flubbed lyrics and do-overs. This edition of Up is for R.E.M. die-hards only.
Further information: R.E.M. Up 2CD at Amazon
