Consumer Guide Album

R.E.M.: Green [Warner Bros., 1988]
The "air" side combines the bite of their realest rock and roll with the shameless beauty their cult once lived for--it's funny and/or serious and/or rousing and/or elegiac right up to "The Wrong Child," a title that speaks for itself and heralds the shit to follow. Which they dub the "metal" side, with heavy tempos and dubious poetry that make good on their intermittent moments only during the funny, serious, elegiac "I Remember California." B+