Lifes Rich Pageant Capitol/IRS ****

There are interesting times ahead for REM and their dwindling fanbase; much as this writer admires the band, one can sense they're going nowhere fast, even if recent albums Accelerateand Collapse Into Nowcontain many fine, exciting moments. Released 25 years ago, and now remastered with 19 unreleased demos, Lifes Rich Pageantpoints to a time before late- 1980s superstardom gradually, unwittingly, dragged REM into a downward spiral from which, detractors claim, they've never escaped. Of course, we weren't to know that back then, because what we had here was a newly fashioned unit, their former enigmatic state replaced by a stance that wanted to (and did, for a while) take on the world and win with what was, pure and simple, the reinvention of guitar rock. See remhq.com

Download tracks: These Days, Fall on Me, Cuyahoga