Up | 
 enlarge | Artist: R.e.m.
Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Category: Music
Buy New: $224.99
New (1) Used (1) from $14.98
Rating:  451 reviews
Sales Rank: 173103
Media: LP Record
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 12.6 x 12.6 x 0.2
UPC: 093624711216
EAN: 0093624711216
ASIN: B00000FXPY
Release Date: October 27, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Factory Sealed LIMITED OUT OF PRINT high definition STEREO vinyl pressing. NOW OUT OF PRINT AND TREMENDOUSLY RARE. The nicest thing you can do for your stylus and your ears. The ultimate record -- the way music was meant to be heard. If you really understood that less then a 1000 titles have been pressed on vinyl over the last few years and that these pressings disappear so qiuckly from the market it will make your head spin. Do not second guess yourself on this masterpiece because once gone it's gone forever and will skyrocket in price on the collectors market.
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| Tracks:
| • | Airportman | | • | Lotus | | • | Suspicion | | • | Hope | | • | At My Most Beautiful | | • | The Apologist | | • | Sad Professor | | • | You're in the Air | | • | Walk Unafraid | | • | Why Not Smile | | • | Daysleeper | | • | Diminished | | • | Parakeet | | • | Falls to Climb |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
After R.E.M.'s somewhat ambitious 1996 album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, failed to ignite Billboard's Hot 100, you might have figured the band would return to the rock-solid bombast of Monster or the consumer-friendly pop of Green. But R.E.M. have enough cash not to worry about commercial failure, and they've already been to the top of the mountain, so for now they'd rather explore its lush valleys and secret caves. Up is an atmospheric journey as impressionistic as Enya and as evocative as John Barry. Some critics have compared it with the band's delicate and emotionally revealing gem Automatic for the People, but Up is more ambitious and creative. Sure, most of the songs are pastoral, but they're undercut with drama and sonic experimentation. The melodies are generally spare, the beats sparse. Guitars flicker in and out, providing tension and dynamics, while quivering strings, layered keyboards, and washes of feedback color the songs like textured lines of paint in an oil portrait. The only blatant pop song is the single "Daysleeper." The rest of the album ebbs and flows, each song a separate component of a complete artistic expression. The sound may be influenced by guitarist Peter Buck's cinematic jazz side project Tuatara or by Michael Stipe's celluloid excursions, but its source doesn't matter. What's important is that more than a decade after their sell-by date, R.E.M. continue to challenge and inspire. Things are definitely looking up. --Jon Wiederhorn
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| Customer Reviews:
 This one takes a while to appreciate August 15, 2008
David J. Riffle (Phoenix AZ)
The first time I dropped this into my car player, I just didn't have the patience to listen to the whole thing. I'm hip to the notion that if I want IRS era stuff, I play those discs. Of course, the, "big time", excursion followed, so I have those discs to play when I want. "UP", on the other hand is a whole 'nuther thing.
The way it works for me is to play it on my home system while I'm occupied with something like cleaning up. Here is where you must bring to the table two things--you must really like Michael Stipe's voice, and you have to enjoy aural wallpaper once in a while.
I will be the first to warn you that this album is not for everyone...not even for all R.E.M. fans. But, if you let it, it just might creep into your good graces.
DR
R.E.M. Raises Their Experimentation Up August 6, 2008
lain4ever (Los Angeles, CA)
One album in R.E.M.'s experimental period stands out. "Up" might be the coolest album in R.E.M.'s repertoire since "Green."
This obviously isn't the first time that R.E.M. played with weird off-kilter sound effects. "Monster" attempted to turn R.E.M. into a glam band, which didn't work. Thankfully, Radiohead made a breakthrough in the rock industry in 1996 with their electronic keyboards and funky mixing effects. R.E.M. took that funkiness and combined it with their low-key vocals from their I.R.S. years. The result is an experimental masterpiece.
This isn't the first time that Michael Stipe sang hushed lyrics, but this is the first time that R.E.M. started implementing more jazzy and spacey keyboard sounds. It is an extremely beautiful way to jazz up their sound, especially after their previous album somewhat tanked. And it's a wonderful thing that they're not biting off more than they can chew, as U2 did with their experimental hell in the 90s.
Even though "Up" probably didn't get the critical acclaim that it deserved, it's still great to know that Stipe is still pushing the envelope. With clever low-key techno jams such as "Hope," R.E.M. is one of those bands that never fails to excite me.
 After this disaster the should have disbanded July 22, 2008
EugeSchu (WI USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
They always said they were going to call it quits in 2000, but no, they had to go on making more uninspired albums. It's sad when artists persist after they have nothing to say. The 80s are long gone...and so is REM. RIP.
Not the R.E.M. I know & love July 3, 2008
OH Packerfan (Cincinnati, OH United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Look I'm all for the ability of artists to change, mature, and evolve over time. Indeed, I don't want artists to keep churning out the same record, again and again. Green is not Life's Rich Pageant; Out Of Time is not Reckoning. And that's a good thing. But this, this is just awful. Whether you like the earliest REM (Murmur, Reckoning), REM at its hit-making prime (Automatic for the People, Monster), or their most current incarnation (Accelerate), this one is just a clinker. Even the best of artists occasionally produce bad stuff (see young, Neil: Trans, re-ac-tor, Everybody's Rockin', Arc). This is that disc for R.E.M. A song by song review is overkill & unnecessary. I paid $2 for this on a whim at a used record shop. I wish I had my $2 back. Avoid.
 An uneven transitional effort where truly strong songs are pulled down by kitchen sink noodling June 28, 2008
Christopher Culver
When drummer Bill Berry left R.E.M. in the wake of a brain aneurysm, the remaining three members vowed to go on. UP, released in 1998, was the first album featuring this new reduced lineup. In many respects, it marks the end of R.E.M. as we knew it. On some songs, namely "Suspicion" and "At My Most Beautiful", Michael Stipe adopted a new vocal style, subdued and cutesy. It may have won the band a whole new fanbase of teenagers (one recalls the band performing "At My Most Beautiful" on the television show Party of Five), but it's about as far away from the hipster college rock of the band's early days or even the exuberance of their first major label recordings. The departure of Berry left the band without a timekeeper, and though a session drummer is present in some places, in the main rhythm is held through sequencers and other electronic effects. There's little in the way of jangly guitars here.
Stipe's lyrics had become progressively clearer over the years, and UP was the first album where they are even printed in the liner notes. Two songs, "Sad Professor" and "Daysleeper", are first-person vignettes from the life of an alcoholic academic and night-shift stockbroker respectively. The latter works, and was even issued as a single, while the former just grates. "Walk Unafraid" and "Falls to Climb" both deal with the difficulties of peer pressure, whether rebelling or sacrificing oneself for the greater good, and stand as two of the high points of the album. "Lotus", a tongue-in-check paean to hallucinogens, is the band's only psychadelic effort, and is catchy enough. While it is often no suprise that few songs here became radio staples, the powerful "Dimished" deserved more attention than it gone.
UP has always seemed to me an album where the band had grand designs, but ultimately didn't succeed in fulfilling them. The distribution of those songs with traditional instrumentation and those with new electronic gadgetry is fairly random, and the 14 tracks here include dead weight that could well have been trimmed.
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