R.E.M. At The BBC ［8CD+DVD］

Like many bands of their era, R.E.M. were no strangers to the BBC Studios. Perhaps they weren't beloved by the BBC's John Peel -- the station's grand patron of underground rock -- but R.E.M. did appear regularly on the BBC, logging their first broadcast in November 1984, when they were nervily plugging their second album, Reckoning. That concert is presented in full on R.E.M. at the BBC, a generous eight-disc box that chronicles all of the band's appearances on the British Broadcasting Company. A quick scan of the dates provides the real revelation of the set: while R.E.M. were college rock titans in America, they didn't crack the British market until 1991, when "Losing My Religion" and its accompanying album, Out of Time, turned the Athens quartet into superstars. R.E.M. scored their second BBC session around the album's release, playing a hushed acoustic set -- one that featured the non-LP "Fretless" and a Mike Mills-sung cover of the Troggs' "Love Is All Around" -- that crystallizes their warm, pastoral phase of the early '90s. The band is next heard in thundering, globe-conquering form in 1995, playing a full 25-song set at Milton Keynes. Fresh from Monster, this is R.E.M. at their loudest, filling arenas with sinewy ease. From there, the band disappeared from the BBC for three years, an eventful period that saw the group getting weird on 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi, then parting ways with drummer/songwriter Bill Berry after its supporting tour. Berry opted out after suffering an on-stage brain aneurysm, encouraging Mills, Michael Stipe, and Peter Buck to carry on without him. While the group's commercial fortunes wavered stateside, they turned out to be bigger than ever in the U.K., racking up six Top Ten singles there between 1998 and 2004. Given that success, that's the period when most of the music on R.E.M. at the BBC was recorded, which may seem to be an initial disappointment for fans who tuned out after the departure of Berry, but even a cursory listen to the group's Public Peel Session from 1998, their Glastonbury set from 1999, and their London Radio 2 show from 2004 shows that R.E.M. retained their Monster-era arena rock gestures while moving with a sense of grace and playing with no-nonsense toughness. This may be familiar to the dedicated whose allegiance never wavered, but for those who believed R.E.M. faltered after Berry's departure, R.E.M. at the BBC is a gateway into the band's last act. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine