Which is better? #2

  • Fables
  • Pageant

0 voters

Roll up. You are wrong whatever you do.

2 Likes

I think LRP is a singular rock record, and maybe the best “rock” record the band ever made.

4 Likes

Fables has Mills’ best bass lines, I think. Life And How To Live It and Maps & Legends come to mind.

3 Likes

I have no idea which one is better. I love both. Fables is my favorite of all time but Pageant has an energy to it that is largely not present on Fables. Though released in summer, Fables reminds me of autumn, windows down taking in the foliage with the album at full blast. Also released in summer, Pageant reminds me of spring, a time of renewal and new beginnings. I also have a soft spot for it since Pageantry tour is when I saw them in concert for the first time.

5 Likes

Begin the begin reminds me of going on a bike ride many moons ago on a walkman, Gravity’s pull reminds me of being really unwell… this skews my opinion really badly :joy:

But… I love all the songs on Fables… conflicted, but I can listen to LRP and not get sad, so it wins I think?

2 Likes

I appreciate Fables on a high level…I mean, Driver 8. But Pageant just brings me such an overwhelming sense of joy every time I listen to it. Fables is not that kind of record, ha!

You guys are killing me!!! Too hard. I went with LRP by a nose

1 Like

Both are, obviously, phenomenal but I, personally, can’t go against Fables. One of the most perfect albums ever made.

Pageant.

For years I would have had Fables in the bottom 5. Might still.

Fables - It’s always been a toss up between it and NAIHF for my favourite album. Its mood, its sound, it caught me like nothing else has!

1 Like

Fables is my favourite REM album and like a lot of personal faves, was the least accessible for me at first listen.

I got into REM as a 12 year old with Out of Time. Growing up in a rock household (my Dad was a drummer), REM were the first band I discovered that felt like “mine” and not a Zep or Cream that was my Dad’s music.

Off the back of OoT, I started saving all my pocket money to invest in REMs back catalogue. Maybe one every other month, my Grandma even bought me Reckoning. There were no options for me at that age to hear them before I bought, so all I had to go on were the covers and song titles. I’d study them in the record shop and buy them in order of what I thought seemed the coolest.

I picked up Fables last, even after Dead Letter Office. I loved Feeling Gravity’s Pull and Driver 8 but nothing else grabbed me. It wasn’t until I was a bit older and I got one of those behind the music style books that talk about each songs individually. I started to understand the meaning behind the songs, the characters. I loved how it really was a tome of stories, Fables if you will. It conjured up these movie-like images of the deep south even though I only had a snapshot of what it looked like from REM photos. I started to imagine these crazy characters and then all of a sudden, the music just clicked. OMG, Good Advices is beautiful! Jeez, Kohoutek and Auctioneer really rock! OK, now the lyrics and harmonies in Wendall Gee are giving me Goosebumps!

I got there in the end and it remains my favourite to this day. It’s definitely not entry level REM but I believe it’s the most rewarding. I also personally believe it’s their most thematically interesting album. The melancholy of homesickness does come through, but it’s the idea of daydreaming about home, the deep south, and mythologising it a point that it became something magical in the imagination of a boy from the UK. Getting Fables actually added to the mystique of the other albums too. Kudzu, trestle Bridges- Fables brought that imagery into the mystique that the band held to me in my early teens.

Life’s Rich Pageant is a great rock record with some killer anthems.

And that concludes my TED talk as to why Fables wins :joy:

3 Likes

LRP - it alternates on a near daily basis with NAIHF as my fave album

I hear you! Fables is absolutely my favourite, but it took that night at the Olympia to finally make it click for me, after goodness knows how many years.

2 Likes

Pageant is my favourite album of all time so you know my answer.
Love both and Fables has some of my favourite R.E.M. tunes, like Life and how to live it, but Pageant is Pageant.

This is a tough one. I’ll have to pick Fables.

With Driver 8, Maps And Legends, and Wendell Gee (one of my all time favourites), it’s Faces for me. A tight call though