New Adventures in Hi-Fi | 
 enlarge | Artist: R.e.m.
Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $11.97 (100%)
New (34) Used (128) Collectible (7) from $0.01
Rating:  176 reviews
Sales Rank: 21151
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 46320
UPC: 093624632023
EAN: 0093624632023
ASIN: B000002N9S
Publication Date: 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us | | • | The Wake-Up Bomb | | • | New Test Leper | | • | Undertow | | • | E-Bow the Letter | | • | Leave | | • | Departure | | • | Bittersweet Me | | • | Be Mine | | • | Binky the Doormat | | • | Zither | | • | So Fast, So Numb | | • | Low Desert | | • | Electrolite |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
New Adventures, despite its studiocentric title, is a snapshots-from-the-road record in the tradition of Neil Young's Time Fades Away and Jackson Browne's Running on Empty. Like them, it captures a where-am-I-and-why ambience, even with its concert and sound-check material reworked in post-tour sessions. This is very much a transitional album, its feel somewhere between the chamber-folk sweep of Out of Time and Automatic for the People and the distortion-pedal party that raged on Monster. It's the work of a band pretty near its peak consolidating familiar sounds and styles while tinkering with the edges. --Rickey Wright
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| Customer Reviews:
 REM - Better Than Monster February 13, 2008
Steven Sly (Kalamazoo, MI United States)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
REM kind of lost the plot after "Automatic For The People" with their next release "Monster". The album was an attempt to go back to a more hard rocking sound, but it was a major disappointment to my ears. I bought it and ended up selling it back to a used CD store. By the time of this album's release REM's time at the top of the charts had passed and album sales would steadily decline from then on. "New Adventures" was an album entirely written on the road during the "Monster" tour. Some of the songs were recorded in one take and the album has an overall stripped down feel to it. I think this is a decent REM release, not up there with their best, but also far from their worst. It is a rather long album consisting of 14 tracks. I believe that pairing down some of the filler might have made this a tighter collection and not have the rather bloated feel that the end product became. This would be the last REM album to feature the original lineup. Overall this is another nice REM album and worth owning for fans, but probably not essential.
 You Will Experience The World In Hi-Fi After Listening. October 17, 2007
Thumbs-up Tom
First of all, i'm a major R.E.M fan. Their records are inspiring, talented, and fun to listen to. New Adventures in Hi-fi is no exception. Of course, I would recommend others such as "Document" or even better "Fables of the Reconstruction/Reconstruction of the Fables" for the first-time buyer. Like the best CDs, you may need to listen to this about 3 times to "get" it. (I've owned this record for YEARS before I started to listen to it on a daily basis) But believe me, once you "get" it, you will see the world in a new light, new sound. You Will Experience The World In Hi-Fi.
 not my favorite September 28, 2007
Eric Furst
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
REM always sucks me in to buying their CDs. This one isn't my favorite.
 Diverting effort from R.E.M., nothing more July 5, 2007
Matthew T. Medlock (Cincinnati, OH)
At just over an hour, New Adventures in Hi-Fi is easily the longest R.E.M. album to date, and expectedly, one of the most bloated. The album sort of swings between the folksy pop of Automatic and the distorted glam of Monster. The middle road is the safe choice, the comfortable choice...but is it the right choice? Some of them sound like (and are) leftovers from the Monster sessions...even though most are better than almost anything that made the cut on Monster!
Problems arise on the likes of "Undertow" with Stipe going far too close to Ed Kowalczyk territory for comfort; "E-Bow Letter" sounds too much like the far superior "Country Feedback"; and there's late album filler like "Low Desert" and "So Fast So Numb." It is one of their most consistent albums since signing to a major label, but the consistency is "good enough" and almost never stellar. The highlights include the long, odd, and effectively looping "Leave," the straightforward rocker, "Departure," and the gentle distortion of the lovely "Be Mine." Those are well worth hearing, and the album gets a recommendation for fans, but don't expect to spin it as much as their best stuff from the 80s or Automatic.
Best cuts: "Leave," "Be Mine," "The Wake-Up Bomb," "Departure," "Electrolite," "How the West Was Won and Where," "Bittersweet Me," "Zither"
Aluminum Tastes Like Fear!! March 20, 2007
Khyber900 (Monrovia, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
...Probably one of the most evocative lines ever written in a pop song.
Many of the tracks for this REM record were recorded at sound checks during the Monster Tour. As a result, the guitars are loud, and the band shows a tough grittiness that comes from having been on the road for so many months. The melodic arrangements and jangly guitars of previous works are largely absent. The vocal harmonies of Stipe and Mills on prior works are also rare on this record. Stipe talks and raps like a Beatnik poet, and sings in a low tone similar to the Chronictown-Murmur-Reckoning days, but without the shyness or romantic lilt. His lyrics are ironic, dark, cutting, funny and, quite frankly, the best he has ever written. The mood is serious and reflective of a man who has worn blue jeans, eaten bad food, has been singing for 2 hours a night every night for the prior several months, and along the way has made observations about where the world is going.
The first 5 songs of this 14 song set are outstanding. After that, the CD is uneven and probably could have been cut back by 3 or 4 tracks to make a more consistent record, such as their prior release, Monster.
Part of the reason for this inconsistency is the fact that 5 songs were recorded in the studio and the remaining 7 tracks are more or less live takes. Some songs, like E-Bow The Letter, sound significantly louder and cleaner than others. (BTW: 3 of the first 5 tracks were recorded in studio). Sometimes the live format works (e.g., Electrolyte; Low Desert), but other songs (e.g., Leave; Departure) could've really benefited from some modern production techniques to create space, clarity and allow for some thoughtful overdubs of guitar hooks, or vocal harmonies. Some of the tracks sound like attempts to rewrite some of the songs on Monster.
Nonetheless, if you pare this CD down to say 10 or 11 songs, you have a collection that is as good and memorable as any of the great REM records. Now for the songs that make my list:
How The West Was Won; The Wake Up Bomb; New Test Leper; E-Bow The Letter; Bittersweet Me; Be Mine; Low Desert; Electrolite; Binky the Doormat; Zither.
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