Life's Rich Pageant
| R.E.M.
Life's Rich Pageant
Lifes Rich Pageant is the fourth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1986. R.E.M. chose Don Gehman to produce the album, which was recorded at John Mellencamp's Belmont Mall Studios in Belmont, Indiana. This was the only album the band recorded with Gehman, who moved them from the more obscure and dense sound of their earlier albums to an accessible, hard rock-influenced quality. The album was well-received critically. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
R.E.M.'s pivotal 1986 album is remastered and reissued with an intriguing bonus disc of full-band demos. 10.
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Rolling Stone
On Lifes Rich Pageant, producer Don Gehman has done an outstanding job of hardening R.E.M.’s sonic jolt.
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The Guardian
Whether or not their later stuff really is that bad, REM were once unbeatable.
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Drowned in Sound
[The] joie de vivre is intoxicating, and unlike many a transitional record, it’s a genuine hoot, an unexpected blast of sunshine between the darkness of Fables… and the fires of Document.
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U Discover Music
‘Lifes Rich Pagent’ was a watershed album for R.E.M. on which Michael Stipe gained in confidence as a frontman and began to clearly enunciate his lyrics.
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Pop Matters
Lifes Rich Pageant might very well be the best R.E.M. album from the '80s.
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All Music
Fables of the Reconstruction was intentionally murky, and Lifes Rich Pageant was constructed as its polar opposite.
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Stereogum
Life's Rich Pageant is perhaps the perfect amalgam of R.E.M. It is both fully accessible and still cloaked in mystery.
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The Quietus
Life's Rich Pageant arrives in sexy ‘deluxe’ packaging, complete with superfluous poster and postcards.
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Sputnik Music
Life's Rich Pageant is an excellent album.
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Slant Magazine
The refinement of the songs on Life’s Rich Pageant are highlighted by the reissue’s second disc.
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BBC
REM can do anything they want, including conquer the world.
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XS Noize
Sound wise the band had turned from rhythm to melody and lyrically they had converted from inactivity and fear to hope and a plan.
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American Songwriter
There’s a shambling charm to even the most bumbling performances, though, and it’s fascinating to hear the songs take shape. This is the sound of a band learning to embrace its potential, awkwardness and all.
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Uncut
Lifes Rich Pageant was nevertheless a startlingly great leap forward.
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Diffuser
R.E.M. TOOK A BIG STEP FORWARD WITH ‘LIFES RICH PAGEANT’.
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SPIN
Their cleanest, biggest-sounding production and most straightforwardly bold political statement.
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No Ripcord
The band needed to get somewhere and they needed to prove that they could do it. And, they did.
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Seattle Pi
Lifes Rich Pageant is without a doubt one of R.E.M.'s very best efforts.
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Collapse Board
R.E.M. were unique in that they had the ability to create something compelling from overused song-forms and conventional instrumentation. To this day it remains a rare occurrence.
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Popstache
Their fourth album exemplifies why history sees R.E.M. as one of the most important bands to come in the wake of punk.
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Huffpost
With apologies to all you Trekkies and Marty McFly fanboys, musical moments like that remain the closest our civilization has ever gotten to time travel. Time travel so powerful it can even take you back — gulp — 25 years.
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Beats Per Minute
Time has only been kind to Lifes Rich Pageant, and, hopefully, not much more time will be required to it to take its place in the rock and roll canon as the practically perfect album that it is.
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Spectrum Culture
Lifes Rich Pageant may not be one of the titles immediately name-checked when arguing for R.E.M.’s place as one of the truly great bands in pop music history, but among its bracing songs is plenty of evidence as to why they once inspired affection like few others who helped define college radio during what was arguably its richest period.
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Glide Magazine
This deceptively simple, imaginatively-arranged rock and roll sounds both fresh and contemporaneous with the likes of Dr. Dog and My Morning Jacket.
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Festival Peak
An American Beauty.
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The Wrap
Charming.
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Treble Zine
A turning point album that would begin a new era for one of the most relevant bands in rock.
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The Austin Chronicle
Brawny . . . elated . . . messianic.
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Wallace Wylie
R.E.M. were unique in that they had the ability to create something compelling from overused song-forms and conventional instrumentation. To this day it remains a rare occurrence.
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Under the Radar Mag
Very nice-sounding.
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Only Solitaire
R.E.M., from the beginning, chose the "from genius to boredom" itinerary, and the very fact that it took them so long to reach point B only strengthens their genius.
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No Filler Podcast
R.E.M. did a lot of interesting things on this album, utilizing banjos, organs, and pianos, all while maintaining both the edge and the softness of their brand of alt rock that would soon propel Michael Stipe and co. to mainstream mega-stardom.
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Treble Zine
Genius.
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Adrian's Album Reviews
Great guitar work and is a thrill from beginning to end.
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Mark's Record Reviews
The pinnacle.
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Record Collector Mag
Pageant is the beginning of REM Phase Two, and it’s charming, mysterious and suffers not one bit from this revisit.
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Aphoristic Album Reviews
There’s some tough competition with the likes of Murmur and Automatic For The People for the title of best R.E.M. album, but Lifes Rich Pageant is my pick.
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John McFerrin Music Reviews
AWESOME.
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My So-Called Soundtrack
The great remastering job on Lifes Rich Pageant is enough to pick up the reissue, but the addition of The Athens Demos truly makes it a no-brainer for any R.E.M. fan.
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Neon Filler
How should Lifes Rich Pageant be seen now? Quite simply one of REM’s best albums and one of the best albums of the last thirty years.
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Contact Music
Extraordinary.
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Life's Rich Pageant
It showcases a band crossing over to the other side not by joining the establishment, but by dragging the establishment with them. And in doing so, they took what could have been the end of their career and made it the beginning. It’s right there in the first song: “Begin the Begin.”
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The Solute
Lifes Rich Pageant with its apt title is full of a lively party atmosphere that makes it, in my opinion, the band’s most joyous record.
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Record Rewind Play
I’m never quite sure what the true and only answer is to the question “What is your favourite R.E.M. album?”, but if I recast it by thinking about which album I would pick if I could only ever listen to one album again for the rest of my days, then surely it would be Life’s Rich Pageant.
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Robert Christgau
I mean, this is music for mushheads, and that it retains an undeniable if rather abstract charm only proves that there's a little mushhead in all of us.
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Virgins and Phillistines
A great record from one of the best American bands of all times.
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Eric Mack Attacks
Life’s Rich Pageant was a significant baby step, an album that wasn’t necessarily a game-changer as far as the genre is concerned, but within the context of the band’s career, it was huge.
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Vinyl Writers
It’s thrilling to hear them begin to begin in real time.
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