Cuttings

LOSING THEIR PRECISION REM Monster (Warner Bros/All formats) AND MONSTERS go ‘Grrrrrrrr!" Well, what else were they going to do? As the final chords of 'Find The River" ebbed away and the listener struggled to grasp the enormity of what had just been heard, one instinctively felt that when REM made another album - if REM made another album - it could not be ‘Automatic 2: More Songs About Death And Dying'. So perfectly realised, so beautiful in its dignified exploration of the darkest themes, ‘Automatic For The People' brought the late chapter in the REM story to a most unequivocal close. How could its perpetrators make another relatively quiet contemplative record without starting to repeat themselves? What would be the point? Leaving aside the response that seeing as the perpetrators were REM, the most consistently inspired band of their generation, the results would most likely be wonderful - and that would be the point - the volte face of ‘Monste