Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables.

Often maligned by critics and REM alike.

Any thoughts?

not crap. always seemed like their 'dark southern' album - like if the chronic town ep had been doused in bourbon & kudzu, read some flannery o'connor, grown into an lp . everything after this seemed more polished & more pop. tossing it on right now...

for me, Fables is when they seemed to start to slip. I like a lot of it, and I like some stuff they did afterwards, but some of the mystery seemed to fade on this one. I always hated "can't get there from here." but like a lot of aspiring guitar players in the mid 80's, "driver 8" is one of the first songs I ever learned. I used to have cassette tapes of myself mangling the opening riff over and over, out of tune and tone be damned. Not crap, Fables.

"Feeling Gravity's Pull" is excellent risotto making music. Really. Buck's guitar here is very pleasing.

The banjo solo on "Wendell Gee" gets me every time.

Singer's unhappy, fat period. Too bad.

Not crap.

after having a proper listen today i realised it's actually as consistently excellent as the other IRS albums. it has an awkwardly muddled mix which seems to mire the songs somewhat but the song-writing is still top notch.

i guess all the albums between murmur, document and automatic for the people slip in and out of recognition. I've just never seen a particularly flattering review and i find that interesting.

NOT CRAP!

Hands down my favorite R.E.M. album. I like it even better than Life's Rich Pageant.

tommydski wrote:it has an awkwardly muddled mix which seems to mire the songs somewhat but the song-writing is still top notch.

I agree. It's been a long while since I heard this record, but I remember how bad it sounds.

It's doubly disappointing that this record sounds bad, because it was recorded by the great Joe Boyd.

Joe Boyd is responsible for the recording of many wonderful, timeless, fantastic rolk and folk-rock records. Among these:

-Pink Floyd: the "Arnold Layne" single
-Fairport Convention: "Liege and Lief," "Unhalfbricking," What We Did On Our Holidays"
-Incredible String Band: "Hangman's Beautiful Daughter"
-Vashti Bunyan: "Just Another Diamond Day"

These records, with their unfettered, straightforward, pristine sound (maybe "Arnold Layne" isn't totally pristine but it is still great), will sound fantastic forever.

REM was smart to want Joe Boyd to record this album. But it went terribly wrong!

I wonder wtf happened with this "Fables" record.

Some of the songs are good. I think my favorite was "Good Advices."

CRAP.

Please note that the crap-ola above was posted only to mark time until Bradley "Little America" Weissenberger shows up to set us all straight on this topic.

I remember an interview in which Peter Buck remarked that working with Joe Boyd made him realize that all a "producer" really does is sit around and read the paper.

I guess he and the band didn't click.

So I am no recording engineer. I do not understand how you fellas record music. I guess if it's the artist's intent for the record to sound as close as possible to how he/she/they truly sound, and this happens, then I would consider such a thing a success. Would I consider such a thing alone a fine work of art? Well, no. Because content matters to me, too.

That said, I love the content of this record very much. I think the songwriting, the lyrics and the playing/singing - all of these are wonderful to me. The recording? Yes, it may leave a little something to be desired, I suppose. But then again, here is my problem. I was first exposed to REM at a young age where what we had was faulty. We listened to them through a getto blaster or a walkman, and the medium was an audio cassette copy of another audio cassette. Of course then, the recordings did not sound polished. In fact, I remember thinking the muffled songs were part of their Southern Gothic charm. Because nothing ever sounded polished through our equipment, and so no charm was lent to the music of Led Zeppelin or the Who.

Now, I listen to this record on CD, and yes, it still sounds muffled. But I like it that way. This is how I remember it. If this is due to the recording engineer's inadequacies, then it seems a bit of a failure. If this is due to REM wanting it to sound "old," then I suppose that's a bit dishonest.

Though, I like when REM sounds ghostly no matter whether or not I recognize what I said above. I just can't help it. And I so very much like all the songs. Such beautiful songs! "Life and How to Live It", "Khoutek" and "Green Grow the Rushes" - all of these and the rest are so beautiful to me. This is one of my favorite batch of songs.