R.E.M. were exhausted when they started writing the follow-up to 1989’s Green. By the time they’d finished, they had their first No. 1 record – and a pair of unforgettable hit singles – on their hands.
REM’s eighth album may not have been the strident mainstream rock record many expected as a follow-up to 1991’s breakthrough Out Of Time, but it’s a refined, multifaceted masterwork that pointed the way for a generation of alternative guitar bands.
The R.E.M. man talks guitar chemistry, raw riffs and Emerald Valley, his latest album with Filthy Friends, which also features Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker.