Named after a quippy assessment of the band by its own guitarist, Peter Buck, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 is the first set from the band to span their career in full - both their heady, pioneering college-rock days on I.R.S. Records as well as their move to further international acclaim on Warner Bros. Naturally, it also includes three new tracks: a new single, the aptly-titled "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" (available to download October 18) and two additional tracks from the sessions to the band's latest album, this year's Collapse Into Now.
It's easy to be cynical about the timing of this release, coming less than a week after the band's split. But the ability to collect the band's full greatest hits in one spot is actually rather neat. The only other Warner compilation on the market is 2003's In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, while the I.R.S. era has been anthologized to death, most recently with 2006's And I Feel Fine...The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987. (Both sets, in fact, had their own deluxe editions with various rarities here and there.) The song selection is certainly arguable (as it was when we did our own Reissue Theory on a full R.E.M. hits set earlier this year), but the 40 songs herein aren't a terrible place to start.
The package is available November 15 and can be ordered (along with the track list) after the jump.
R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 (Warner Bros. 529088-2, 2011)
Disc 1
- Gardening At Night
- Radio Free Europe
- Talk About the Passion
- Sitting Still
- So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)
- (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
- Driver 8
- Life and How to Live It
- Begin the Begin
- Fall on Me
- Finest Worksong
- It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
- The One I Love
- Stand
- Pop Song 89
- Get Up
- Orange Crush
- Losing My Religion
- Country Feedback
- Shiny Happy People
Disc 2
- The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
- Everybody Hurts
- Man on the Moon
- Nightswimming
- What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
- New Test Leper
- Electrolite
- At My Most Beautiful
- The Great Beyond
- Imitation of Life
- Bad Day
- Leaving New York
- Living Well is the Best Revenge
- Supernatural Superserious
- ÜBerlin
- Oh My Heart
- Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter
- A Month of Saturdays
- We All Go Back to Where We Belong
- Hallelujah
Disc 1, Track 1 from Chronic Town (I.R.S., 1982)
Disc 1, Tracks 2-4 from Murmur (I.R.S., 1983)
Disc 1, Tracks 5-6 from Reckoning (I.R.S., 1984)
Disc 1, Tracks 7-8 from Fables of the Reconstruction (I.R.S., 1985)
Disc 1, Tracks 9-10 from Lifes Rich Pageant (I.R.S., 1986)
Disc 1, Tracks 11-13 from Document (I.R.S., 1987)
Disc 1, Tracks 14-17 from Green (Warner Bros., 1988)
Disc 1, Tracks 18-20 from Out of Time (Warner Bros., 1991)
Disc 2, Tracks 1-4 from Automatic for the People (Warner Bros., 1992)
Disc 2, Track 5 from Monster (Warner Bros., 1994)
Disc 2, Tracks 6-7 from New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Warner Bros., 1996)
Disc 2, Track 8 from Up (Warner Bros., 1998)
Disc 2, Track 9 from Man on the Moon: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Warner Bros., 1999)
Disc 2, Track 10 from Reveal (Warner Bros., 2001)
Disc 2, Track 11 from In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 (Warner Bros., 2003)
Disc 2, Track 12 from Around the Sun (Warner Bros., 2004)
Disc 2, Tracks 13-14 from Accelerate (Warner Bros., 2008)
Disc 2, Tracks 15-17 from Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros., 2011)
Disc 2, Tracks 18-20 are new tracks
Near Wild Heaven: R.E.M. Bundle Warner-Era B-Sides for Digital Box
"Weird Scenes Inside" Rhino's Record Store Day Slate
R.E.M. "Unplugged" Set to Complicate Your Life on Record Store Day
Review: R.E.M., "Green: 25th Anniversary Edition"
part rehash, part rehash, part outtakes, part rehash
Three tracks from Collapse Into Now, only one track from Monster... and still no "Drive"?
Whatta stinkin' pile of poo this comp is. I will work backwards.... The sheer ego of including THREE!!! songs from their album that came out a few months ago that no one bought and then adding 3 further barrel scrapings from those sessions as "new" tracks which effectively makes 15% of this two CD set covering 31 years coming from the bands last year? No "Drive" ?? Are you F'n kidding me? And no room for"Pretty Persuasion", "Can't Get There From Here", "Superman", "Bang And Blame", "Bittersweet Me", "e-Bow The Letter", "Daysleeper??? !!!! Yeah, who needs them, I suppose! But somehow "Leper' gets included? And yet there is room for something as wretched as "Country Feedback"! and finally. Not even the decency to give us the Hibtone Radio Free Europe?
Well. I say Good riddance to one of the most pretentious bands on the planet.
C'mon. True fans already have pretty much all their stuff, including b-sides and imports. Compilations are for casual fans and the curious. We can quibble all day about the individual selections( What? No Perfect Circle?), but it's only two discs. Their last two albums were actually pretty strong, so I guess they want to give the songs from them another airing. Finally, the calculus is about right (it makes sense that Murmur and AFTP have the most songs, and Around the Sun, just one. And you know a HUGE box set will come out in a couple years.
Six tracks from 2011 is EXACTLY what everyone wants.
There's really nothing to be cynical about in the timing of the release. If you go back and read the band's press release on their break-up, they mention (I think Michael Stipe does) that it was while they were working on "this greatest hits album" and thinking about what's next that they decided it would be a good stopping point for the group.
It made me think, when I read the presser, "Hmmm...guess they have a new comp coming out".
So this must be it.
I'll pass. The 2CD versions of "And I Feel Fine" and "In Time" make this completely unnecessary.