In some quarters, REM‘s last album was hailed as the best of their career. Who are these people? Are they fucking mad? ‘I’ll Take The Rain’ is the second single off of ‘Reveal’, and sounds like the fifth: a knackered old donkey of a record that makes hardcore Stipe fans weep, because, like, these are such personal lyrics, because you can almost – almost – work out what the mad old bastard’s singing about. Were REM always secretly this bad? Or is it something they’ve been working on?
Louis Pattison