eMusic Review 0
There is no way to overstate how passionately some people hate this record. Arriving on the heels of the dignified Automatic for the People, Monster was a hand job in a seedy theater, and the album that got R.E.M. out of the cabin and back into the arenas, and asserted their place among the legions of grunge bands they'd inspired. It is, as Stipe put it at the time, "a dick record," leering and lascivious, unsafe to take on an unchaperoned date. If Big Black hadn't already nicked the title, they could have called it Songs About Fucking. Before this (and, one could argue, immediately after), the group provided the po-faced template for Conscious Rockers, so self-serious that they were on speed-dial for things like Greenpeace benefits and the Clinton inauguration. Monster proved that if they couldn't be bipartisan, they could at least be bi-curious.
Buck takes a lot of flak for his overuse of tremolo on this record, but the intention was to make everything on Monster of a single, snarling piece. The seasick swoon of "Crush With Eyeliner," buttressed by backing vocals from Thurston Moore, finds Stipe sarcastically sneering "I'm the real thing," a line that handily sums up… read more »
