About Time!

As part of the slew of greatest hits that are currently - or soon will be - plagueing the market, this album will probably be the most well-received.

R.E.M. have always been hailed by critics as the band that always managed to retain their integrity, whether or not the masses liked it. They didn't make music for the masses; they just made music - and if the masses liked it, so much the better.

This album shows how much diversity the band managed to plump into their music since signing on to Warner Bros, and yet still manage to sound familiar at the same time.

The Best Of album then zooms through examples of their musical variety: the harsh frenzy of 'What's The Frequency, Kenneth' and 'Orange Crush'; the folk bearings of 'Losing My Religion'; the happy pop of 'Stand' and 'Man On The Moon'; the dark dreariness of 'E-Bow The Letter'; and the sad sweetness of 'At My Most Beautiful' and 'Nightswimming'.

The inclusion of two new songs lets the listener in on how much they've really come full circle. The lead-off single 'Bad Day' - which some say harks of 1987's 'It's the End of the World As We Know It' - is a return to roots of the R.E.M. sound: rough, jangly guitar, a persistent bass line, and Michael Stipe's unintelligible lyrics. 'Animal' isn't of the same vein directly, but it's a throwback to the rough 'n' ready college radio style of the band's early years (think 'Catapult', 'Radio Free Europe').

Of course, as with every Best Of compilation, somebody will gripe about why some songs have been left out, and about the certain sense of "incompleteness" to the whole project.

No one expects them to put out every single song again, but why is there only one track from the mega-hit album Out Of Time, but THREE from the quieter follow-up Automatic For The People. (Gripers note: U2 didn't even feature a track from their October album, except as a hidden track.)

Also, why feature 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight' when there's a song like 'Crush With Eyeliner' waiting in the wings?

Of course, anybody who's been following the band's progress through will know why these songs were chosen: they band like to play them, and the band like to buck the trend and offer songs that are really "sneak peeks" instead of being in a "best of" selection. (You can bang and blame Peter Buck's previous job as a record store clerk.)

About half the songs in this compilation had any real chart success (this is not a "greatest hits" after all), and 'All The Right Friends', for instance, while being "taken" from the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, originally appeared on the Dead Letter Office compilation reissued back in 1993.

To push the point home, the limited edition comes with a bonus disc of rarites, oddities, B-sides, etc. It seems like a Dead Letter Office update in its content, but fans might gripe that they've left out more interesting gems here too. Not that this selection is bad, mind you. Live versions of 'Turn You Inside Out', 'Country Feedback', 'The One I Love'; alternate/demo versions of 'Leave', 'The Lifting'; and compilation cuts such as 'Revolution', 'Fretless' and 'Star Me Kitten' (with writer William S Burroughs on "vocals") make this batch of songs quite a unique catch.

The album is a great look at how the band went from being pop icons to being a band that managed to return to, and sustain themselves, as - dare I say it? - cult heroes, even without original drummer Bill Berry.

Few bands have managed to carry on with the same intensity without an original member in the lineup, and R.E.M. (who actually said they'd break up when one of them left) have managed to do just that.

I hate to run the same cliche about how they are one of the few bands left in the world that stick to their guns of integrity, but they are. And this album is proof of that.