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Back in December, it was announced that Concord Bicycle Music had picked up the rights to R.E.M.’s Warner Bros. catalogue. Now, the first major reissue project from that deal has been announced: a remastered 25th anniversary deluxe edition of the band’s most successful album Out of Time to be released on November 18. This new package will be released in several configurations: a 3 CD/1 Blu-ray set, a 2-CD set, a 3-LP set, a single LP of the original album and as a digital download.
Out of Time was R.E.M.’s second Warner Bros. album, released in March of 1991. As the band continued to expand their musical stylings, alternative music was also becoming mainstream. “Losing My Religion” was released as a single preceding the album’s release and became R.E.M’s highest charting single reaching #4 on the Billboard charts. Propelled by “Religion” and the second single, “Shiny Happy People,” the album would hit #1 on the charts in the US and UK and eventually be certified four times platinum by the RIAA for U.S. sales alone. “Religion” would pick up Grammys for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Music Video, Short Form while Out of Time would win for Best Alternative Music Album, beating Nirvana’s Nevermind.
The new box set includes the original album on Disc 1 followed by nineteen demo tracks on Disc 2. The third disc contains a concert from Capitol Plaza Theater in Charleston, West Virginia performed on April 28, 1991 and aired on NPR as an installment of their Mountain Stage program. It was one of only a few shows R.E.M. performed that year as they were not touring to promote Out of Time. The Blu-ray has the original album both in Hi-Resolution Stereo and Hi-Resolution 5.1 Surround. It also contains 8 music videos and an 18-minute EPK which contains studio and performance footage. The new liner notes by music journalist Annie Zaleski features interviews with the band members and producers of the album. The 2-CD edition contains the first two discs of the deluxe edition and the 3-LP edition replicates those two discs as well.
Out of Time was first reissued back in 2005 as a CD/DVD-Audio edition. That release premiered a 5.1 surround mix of the album by Elliot Scheiner. It is currently unknown, but likely, that this is the same mix that will be heard on the Blu-ray of this new release. Also, four singles were released back in 1991 to promote the album. They contained several B-sides and live performances, none of which seem to be included here. “Fretless” and “40 Second Song” are represented on the demo disc but there is no version of “Rotary Eleven” included.
If you’d like to travel back to the height of the alternative music era and revisit one of R.E.M.’s biggest albums, we’ve got the tracklisting and preorder links for you below.
R.E.M., Out of Time: 25th Anniversary Edition (Concord/Bicycle Music, 2016)
3-CD/1-BD Box Set: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2-CD Set: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
1-CD Remaster: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
3-LP Set: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
1-LP Remaster: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
CD 1 – Original Album
- Radio Song
- Losing My Religion
- Low
- Near Wild Heaven
- Endgame
- Shiny Happy People
- Belong
- Half A World Away
- Texarkana
- Country Feedback
- Me In Honey
CD 2 – Out of Time Demos
- Losing My Religion 1 – Demo
- Near Wild Heaven 1 – Demo
- Shiny Happy People 1 – Demo
- Texarkana 1 – Demo
- Untitled Demo 2
- Radio – Acoustic – Radio Song 1 Demo
- Near Wild Heaven 2 – Demo
- Shiny Happy People 2 – Demo
- Slow Sad Rocker – Endgame Demo
- Radio – Band – Radio Song 3 Demo
- Losing My Religion 2 – Demo
- Belong – Demo
- Blackbirds – Half A World Away Demo
- Texarkana – Demo
- Country Feedback – Demo
- Me On Keyboard – Me In Honey Demo
- Low – Demo
- 40 Sec. – 40 Second Song Demo
- Fretless 1 Demo
CD 3 – Live At Mountain Stage
- Introduction
- World Leader Pretend
- Radio Song
- Fall On Me
- It’s the End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
- Half A World Away
- Belong
- Love Is All Around
- Losing My Religion
- Dallas
- Radio Song
- Disturbance At The Heron House”
- Low
- Sawn Swan H
- Pop Song 89
Blu-ray
- Out Of Time — Hi-Resolution Audio
- Out Of Time —5.1 Surround Sound
- Radio Song – Music video
- Losing My Religion – Music video
- Low – Music video
- Near Wild Heaven – Music video
- Shiny Happy People – Music video
- Belong – Music video
- Half A World Away – Music video
- Country Feedback – Music video
- Time Piece – EPK
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The Mountain Stage show, as nice as it is to have it, isn’t complete. Not very surprising, as REM’s expanded reissues have shortened most of the live material they’ve included by leaving out one or more tracks from the original sequences, presumably to keep the live content limited to a single CD.
REM’s final encore at Mountain Stage, “Get Up”, is missing here, as well as a set of 6 songs played with guests Billy Bragg and Robyn Hitchcock.
The reason they don’t include the b-sides is because of the clearinghouse digital collections with all that material that came out a few years back, one for IRS records and the other for the Warner years. That was the right call to make as, otherwise, these reissued albums would have to have another disc or two tacked on to house all of that material.