Reveal | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | May 14, 2001 | |||
Recorded |
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Genre | Alternative rock | |||
Length | 53:43 | |||
Label | Warner Bros. | |||
Producer | Patrick McCarthy and R.E.M. | |||
R.E.M. chronology | ||||
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Singles from Reveal | ||||
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Reveal is the twelfth studio album by American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on May 14, 2001, on Warner Bros. After having adjusted to former drummer Bill Berry's departure and releasing Up to mixed response in 1998, R.E.M. released the more upbeat Reveal, co-produced with long-time collaborator Pat McCarthy. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics.
In 2002, R.E.M. allowed each track of the album to be remixed by different producers and members of the music industry. The resulting remix album, r.e.m.IX, was available as a free download from R.E.M.'s official website. In 2005, Warner Bros. Records issued an expanded two-disc edition of Reveal which includes a CD and a DVD, as well as the original CD booklet with expanded liner notes. The vinyl LP edition was re-released in August 2023.[5]
After the electronic experimental direction of Up (1998), Reveal was referred to by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic as "a conscious return to their classic sound,"[6] although Matt LeMay of Pitchfork noticed that Reveal relies "more heavily on synthesized sounds than any of their past albums" with an "increased reliance on burbling, jittering synthesizers".[7] Erlewine himself later acknowledged the album is "heavy on keyboards,"[8] whilst Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner said it was "effects-heavy."[9]
The lead single, "Imitation of Life", became a UK Top 10 hit as well as the band's first number-one single in Japan, but floundered at the bottom of the U.S. singles charts. Additional singles from Reveal were "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" and "I'll Take the Rain". Building on examples from their previous album Up, "Beat a Drum", "Summer Turns to High", and "Beachball" are musical homages to The Beach Boys, of whom both Mike Mills and Peter Buck are major fans.
Radiohead's Thom Yorke was going through a period of extreme depression during the late 1990s, which led to severe stage fright. Around that time, Yorke and Michael Stipe were close friends, and Stipe advised Yorke to tell himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening" whenever he felt he was losing emotional control. This motto eventually became the chorus of Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely", from Kid A (2000). In turn, this song supposedly inspired Stipe to write Reveal's "Disappear".[10] In a 2019 interview with NME, Stipe recounted telephoning Yorke after realizing the shared inspiration, apologizing for supposedly stealing the concept behind their song, only for Yorke to respond by stating that it was more R.E.M.'s song than Radiohead's upon hearing Stipe recite the lyrics to "Disappear".[11]
The album's opening track, "The Lifting", is a prequel to "Daysleeper" from R.E.M.'s 1998 album, Up, and features the same character.[12]
Aggregate scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Metacritic | 76/100[13] |
Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [6] |
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [14] |
Entertainment Weekly | B[15] |
The Guardian | [16] |
Los Angeles Times | [17] |
NME | 7/10[18] |
Pitchfork | 5.0/10[7] |
Q | [19] |
Rolling Stone | [20] |
Spin | 7/10[21] |
The Village Voice | B−[22] |
Initial critical response to Reveal was positive ("Probably because it's more melodic than the one before," remarked Peter Buck[23]). At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 76, based on 20 reviews.[13] Q magazine gave high praise to the album, awarded it the full 5 stars, and listed it as one of the best 50 albums of 2001.[24] Robert Christgau stated: "Not as bad as it first sounds, but also not as good as they thought when they released it, or they wouldn't have, I hope. Suffused with somnolent tempos and pensive arrangements, the romantic trials and spiritual quests of struggling rock and rollers can be pretty hard to take, so why should we care about the ditto of wealthy movie producers with a record contract to fulfill and 21 individually acknowledged string players on call? Even a movie producer who knows the names of Japanese carp and French emotions that he'll happily print out in the booklet now that he's e-nun-ci-a-ting ev-ry sing-gle word?"[25] Kludge included it on their list of the 25 best albums of 2001.[26]
With early comparisons to Automatic for the People, the critical reaction to Reveal was warmer than the notices which greeted Up in 1998, particularly in the UK, where it reached #1 with healthy sales, reaching platinum status there. In the United States, Reveal peaked at No. 6 (with 10 weeks on the Billboard 200) and was certified Gold (500,000 units).[27] The album was also certified Gold in Canada (50,000 units) in 2001,[28] and Gold in Germany (150,000 units).[29]
In 2004, the German version of Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 483 in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.[citation needed]
In April 2021, almost exactly twenty years after the album's release, Michael Stipe stated that Reveal had possibly overtaken New Adventures in Hi-Fi in being his favorite R.E.M. album.[30] Similarly, in a 2023 interview Mike Mills described Reveal as the R.E.M. album that "rewards a reappraisal", noting: "I think our hidden gem is Reveal. There's some true beauty on that record. [...] It's not a rock record per se, but it's a beautiful-music record. It's the one that might best reward a further look. It's supposed to feel like summer. Obviously we're not looking for the Beach Boys here, but it is a summer record that's supposed to catch the feeling of no school. You've got endless possibilities because it's summertime and you can go anywhere and do anything, and you're not bound up by the rest of the year's restrictions. I think it's just joyful and captures that in a nice way."[31]
All songs written by Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe.
In 2002, Warner Bros. released a DVD-A version of Reveal containing a new 5.1-channel mix of the album as well as the stereo mix presented in "Advanced Resolution" 96 kHz/24-bit. The 96 kHz/24-bit mix, however, has a mastering defect. The defect takes place on the first track "The Lifting", in which the beat skips at the 0:29 mark. This defective DVD-A was used in the 2005 CD+DVD-A reissue, and the 96 kHz/24-bit mix is used on the HDtracks store as well as the iTunes Store and Apple Music service. In 2017, Apple removed "The Lifting" from the iTunes Store and Apple Music service due to the defect. In a 2018 Twitter post, Mike Mills acknowledged the defect as well as the removal and stated that the issue was noted and should be fixed soon. However, as of 2020, the defective version of "The Lifting" has been added back to iTunes and Apple Music and is still present on the HDtracks store.
The February 2001 master of Reveal differed from the March 2001 master of the album, which ended up being the final version. Compared to the official, the differences of the Reveal Advance 2001 disc include:
Neither of the unreleased tracks or any of the alternative mixes have ever been released commercially. However, the band allowed the Murmurs.com fan community to offer downloads of "Fascinating," which had recently been covered by Fischerspooner. In September 2019, R.E.M. made a later version of the song "Fascinating" available to benefit global organization Mercy Corps' Hurricane Dorian relief and recovery efforts in the Bahamas; this version was rerecorded in 2004 at Nassau's Compass Point Studios.
R.E.M.
Additional personnel
Weekly charts[edit]
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Year-end charts[edit]
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Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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Australia (ARIA)[64] | Gold | 35,000^ |
Austria (IFPI Austria)[65] | Gold | 20,000* |
Belgium (BEA)[66] | Gold | 25,000* |
Canada (Music Canada)[67] | Gold | 50,000^ |
Denmark (IFPI Danmark)[68] | Gold | 25,000^ |
Germany (BVMI)[69] | Gold | 150,000^ |
Italy (FIMI)[70] | Platinum | 130,000[70] |
New Zealand (RMNZ)[71] | Gold | 7,500^ |
Spain (PROMUSICAE)[72] | Gold | 50,000^ |
Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)[73] | Platinum | 40,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI)[74] | Platinum | 300,000^ |
United States (RIAA)[76] | Gold | 415,000[75] |
Summaries | ||
Europe (IFPI)[77] | Platinum | 1,000,000* |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |