From the website PITCHFORK : R.E.M. were a very different band when nobody was looking. During their early years on I.R.S. Records, they were hardworking and mysterious, touring constantly and writing songs that glanced toward subjects but didn't walk right up to them. After the quartet signed with Warner Bros., they would eventually embrace the role of Best Band in the World—an aspiration that's toppled nearly every other band that has aimed for it. When drummer Bill Berry left the group, R.E.M. became the band trying to find its way forward, then the band that bowed out rather than rethought or scaled back their operations.
Or, at least that’s how the story played out on their albums; on their B-sides, R.E.M. ranged toward the strange, the one-off, the experimental, the goofy. That sense of play makes their recent, massive rarities dump via iTunes—160-plus tracks—something of a revelation, despite coming a good three years after their break-up. The two sets are divided by record label. Complete Rarities: I.R.S. 1982-1987 gathers odds and ends from 1987’s Dead Letter Office, 1997’s In the Attic, plus the non-album tracks from the 1988 retrospective Eponymous. The more substantial Complete Rarities: Warner Bros. 1988-2011 compiles 23 years’ worth of major-label singles, promo items, remixes, live cuts, and alternate takes. If the recent Unplugged collection paints them as alt-rock pros who seeded some ambitious songcraft into the charts, then these two rarities comps prove that R.E.M. were kinda weirdos at heart.
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