>For mysterious reasons, Meadowlands (Absolutely Kosher, 2003) was surrounded by hype only comparable to Radiohead's. Their "emo-pop" had suddenly become fashionable. By reducing the worst excesses of lo-fi pop (read Guided By Voices and Pavement) and the most trivial aspects of neo-pop (read Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control), and by finding a middle way between the Pixies and the Kinks, they had reinvented punk-pop for the new generation (This Boy Is Exhausted, Faster Gun, and the most Kinks-ian of them all, Such A Pretty Lie). They sometimes settle for mildly aggressive power-pop ditties such as Hopeless and Everyone Choose Sides, and occasionally sink in the molasse of yawn-inspiring ballads (Thirteen Grand). The bombastic Happy and the lengthy 13 Months in 6 Minutes are good examples of how tedious their emo-muzak can get; while Per Second Second is a tense rubber band of a song that weaves a surreal tribal dance a` la Pere Ubu with verve a` la Beach Boys. Boys You Won't Remember shows how they could best spend their energies: imitating the anthemic country-rock of Neil Young. Not a complete disaster, but certainly the most over-rated album of the year.

Hell be fine

>Automatic For The People (Warner Bros, 1992) confirms a year later the crisis that was latent, taking inspiration from the weakest songs of the previous work, accentuating the orchestral arrangements and the elegiac mood. Given that the group has reached a very sophisticated level of "storytelling", the fact remains that many of these songs are no more original or no more ingenious than many pop ballads.
Considered by many to be R.E.M.'s masterpiece, Automatic is more than anything a senile and self-indulgent album, which is worth more as a work of sophisticated "pop" than as a work of innovative "rock".