Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#55 R.E.M., REVEAL

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vs.

#74 Super Furry Animals, RINGS AROUND THE WORLD

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have three Designated Cheerleaders today! First up, for REVEAL, it’s @bermanmatt.bsky.social. Take it away, Matt!

I was never a huge R.E.M. fan when they were an active band, but in recent years I've enjoyed digging through their catalogue and getting up to speed on it. So when Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy came through recently doing their R.E.M. tribute band thing I decided to pick up a ticket to it - having never seen the real deal in concert - and it was a blast.

There was a funny moment near the end of the show. While they'd already moved on from playing just earlier R.E.M. - they'd played straight through Life's Rich Pageant, but were now ping-ponging about R.E.M.'s discograghy - Michael Shannon announced they were gonna do a song off "Reveal," and the audience groaned. And Michael Shannon called us out on it, "Big fans of Reveal, huh?," he said, then told us that he loved the album.

Which makes him pretty rare, I think. When R.E.M. released "Reveal" in 2001, I'm pretty sure the universal response to it was: Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you still putting out albums? Why does anybody need any more R.E.M. at this point in our lives or at this point in your career? Why are there so many goddamn keyboard swirls on this album? Did you think people liked Up?

Well lemme tell you: that song they did off "Reveal" was "The Lifting," and it kicked ass.

So of course that's the album I spun after the show. It's been a cool surprise to discover that absence does make the heart grow fonder when it comes to listening to R.E.M.'s late period stuff. Unburdened by the presence of an actual band still trudging along from release to release, their late period albums have aged surprisingly well. They may have even been (gasp!) ahead of their time? "Reveal" is not the jangly mumblecore of early records or the arena-filling wry rock and chamber pop of their '90s heights. "Reveal" is the music of an aging band given the sudden (if unwanted) freedom to explore new terrains: Melody driven, keyboard focused, at times both sparse and heavily orchestrated, "Reveal" shows off an older band comfortably exploring what it means to be freed of both a drummer and expectations. And with one very mixed bag post-Berry album under their belts ("Up"), they were better situated to turn his loss from a liability into an opportunity this time around.

When they make the most of that opportunity, the album is gorgeous. "The Lifting" trades on swoops and drones and hangs trippily around a soaring Stipe vocal line. They take full advantage of being a leaner unit by making a song like this even more lush. "I've Been High" leans into sparser synth textures, this time built around a frailer and introspective Stipe vocal line. "All The Way to Reno" sits firmly in the "Man on the Moon" style R.E.M. song tradition, but is again layered with the more expansive and technology-driven studio arrangements R.E.M. was now capable of playing with. "Summer to Turns to High" now sounds like an early foray into the Beach Boys-inspired electronic fields Animal Collective would plow to great acclaim almost a decade later on "Merriweather Post Pavilion."

Does every song work? I wish. There are some snoozers here. The first half of "Disappear" is a bland build-up to a far more interesting ending, "Saturn Return" fails to register. "Beat a Drum" is pleasant but hardly essential. There are enough moments here where the band just seems to be drifting to justify that audience groan. The lower points do seem like little but a band trying to build an interesting musical journey out of a musical fragment and the studio technology available to them.

But for every song that just sort of sits there, there is one that flies, and few fly as high as "Imitation of Life." Here all the studio stuff comes together in a song with a sense of purpose and passion, the synths and guitar augmenting each other beautifully, the swirling studio artistry highlighting and helping frame the sense of nostalgia and wistfulness at the heart of the song. There's a circular propulsion to it that shows off what the older and wiser R.E.M. could be at its very best.

So maybe "Reveal" isn't great through and through (sorry Michaels Stipe & Shannon!). It's a pretty fun album even so. "Reveal" is the sound of R.E.M. throwing off its own shackles and putting itself back together after Berry's retirement, moving forward into whatever that was going to let them be. Where "Up" showed a stunned and unfocused band grasping at studio artistry and moving in three different directions, "Reveal" is the sound of that band regaining its confidence and coming back together, purposefully moving as a unit away from the guitar buzz, jangle, and rhythmic interplay that powered their older work and towards textured studio craft and songs built around Stipe's unique melodic brilliance.

So maybe we didn't need "Reveal" at the time, but they did. And I'm increasingly glad they gave us this music and the stuff that followed. There was no guarantee they were going to figure out how to balance their instincts as a threesome. The fact that "Reveal" works so well in its best moments - and makes for a pleasant enough listen even in its weakest points - tells you that they did, and truly launched the final act of one of America's all-time great bands.

Thank you, Matt!

Also stepping up for REVEAL, we have @mrfasthorse.bsky.social. Take it away, Stephen!

The first album after the departure of their drummer Bill Berry, the iconic college rock band in the back nine of their career continued to pursue a sparser sound. In 2001 music had been infected by the bleeps and bloops, and it certainly makes an appearance here, a sound that really marks a moment in time.

One word that keeps coming to mind is “Melodrama.” It’s a very melodramatic record. This is the band that gave us “Everybody Hurts”, after all. The strings at the end of “Ill Take the Rain” to me sound like the climax of a sad movie’s soundtrack. Same with the bridge on “I’ve Been High” and the chorus of “She Just Wants to Be.” This album draws frequent comparisons to the Beach Boys, but maybe it’s just California and the movies that were the influence here. I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything from this album pop up in movies or TV (any music supervisors here?).

In general I feel the songs on this album may not hit right on the first try but ones that I find reward repeated listens. I find both the lead-off track “The Lifting” and also “Saturn Return” share some similarities with “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” from Wilco’s YHF. These songs play a song deconstruction shell game, showing you disjointed elements of the overall arrangement alone before you get the resolution of hearing all these pieces joined together. That’s not to say there aren’t songs with a classic REM feel (Disappear, Beat a Drum, and the classic Imitation of Life). But for the rest of the songs, give them a vibe/lyrics pass, and then just try to pay attention to the variance of sounds on this record. The torn speaker on The Chorus and the Ring, the weird little guitar textures tucked everywhere. They came along way from building an album around that one fucking tremolo pedal on Monster.

I spent three semesters working a crappy retail job as I finished up the hardest part of my college years. Often my only free time was spent on the lonely drive home with my 6 CD changer, thinking about the college fun everyone ele was having, and how soon rent was due. This album just never came out of the changer. When I listen to it now it’s definitely not for nostalgia, but more for communion. You were there with me, Reveal, with all your weird little bits. Even you, “Beachball.” Even you.

Thank you, Stephen!

Finally, for RINGS AROUND THE WORLD, it’s @bickley.bsky.social. Take it away, Chris!

Sticking Rings Around the World up against Reveal really highlights what makes Super Furry Animals such an essential band. I love R.E.M., and for a band starting their third decade with a 12th album, it's a perfectly cromulent listen. But while Reveal awkwardly seesaws between balladeering and electronic pussyfooting, Rings Around the World was a HD masterpiece: the sound of an accomplished band assured with what they were doing.

You could make a statistical claim that Super Furry Animals are the most successful outsider's band in the UK. They had the most top 40 singles without ever having a fabled top 10 hit to their name. They were too late for the golden Britpop boom (a blessing, some might say) and too geographically detached to be an accessory to the burgeoning US-weird-indie scene of the 00s, but maybe this purgatory was the Furries' greatest strength. They could do what they wanted without feeling confined by expectations. They could do death metal, techno, cinematic sweeps and progressive country and it all coalesces into a super furry ball of genius.

Super Furry Animals are a rare case of a non-gimmicky gimmick band. Their single The Man Don't Give a Fuck (heavily sampling a Steely Dan line) took the record for the most "fucks" in a song not once, but after its re-release, twice. But it slaps, so who cares? They owned a tank, of which Don Henley from the Eagles became the proprietor. Rings Around the World was the first record to be simultaneously released on both CD and DVD. Why? Because they could. Gimmicks usually mask a lack of something, but these notorious ploys were merely adjuncts to what is a certified hi-fidelity adventure.

Speaking of gimmicks, Paul McCartney features on Receptacle for the Respectable performing the vegetables, in homage to his uncredited role on the Beach Boys' Smile. There is a very small overlap in the Venn diagram of artists who could successfully rope a Beatle into performing on a song, and artists who would even have the idea of him to eat celery into a mic.

Rings Around the World is a crisp album. It sounds aurally perfected. The crunches of Sidewalk Serfer Girl could have disintegrated into a noise-war trench with another band, and Run! Christian, Run! is a HD rendition of their climactic Mountain People from Radiator.

Amidst the chaos of colours are some genuine pop bangers, though off-kilter bangers of course. It's Not the End of the World is a dreamy ballad and Juxtapozed With U is a witty delight. The word juxtaposed would not have entered the vocabulary of their contemporaries, let alone their lyrics. (Drawing) Rings Around the World (if a touch long, surprisingly for a 3:30 song) is more of a theme tune than a title track. After diving deep into Cymru on Mwng, this was the Super Furries sending sonic signals on a satellite expanse across the world.

I could cheerlead for most of R.E.M.'s records, and for Reveal, I heartily pat them on the back. But Super Furry Animals were a band producing awe and wonder, a feeling you cannot ascribe to Reveal.

Thank you, Chris!

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Thanks,

Kent