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R.E.M. began their Warner contract in 1988 as the biggest band to emerge from the college-radio-fueled American underground. Fifteen years later, they released In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, the first overview of their long stint at Warner Records. During that decade and a half, R.E.M. had a turbulent journey. At the outset, their legend and influence as one of the key &mdash; if not the key &mdash; bands of the American underground was firmly in place, but their success kept growing, culminating in a breakthrough to international stardom in 1991 thanks to "Losing My Religion" and Out of Time. For a few years there, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, standing as role models and godfathers for the alt-rock explosion of the '90s; even as grunge ruled the U.S. and U.K., R.E.M. were having their biggest hits with the brooding Automatic for the People (1992) and the guitar-heavy return-to-rock Monster (1994). Then, midway through the decade, the road got a little bumpy. The Monster tour was plagued with problems, the most noteworthy being drummer Bill Berry's on-stage aneurysm in 1995. He left the band the next year, not long after the band parted ways with Jefferson Holt, their longtime manager who was immortalized in their 1984 song "Little America." Singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, and Mike Mills struggled to find their footing as a trio as they tackled more ambitious projects that found an ever more selective audience. Truth be told, this transition started on the final Berry album, 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which found R.E.M. expanding their sonic template to acclaim from critics and hardcore fans, even if they started to see the audience they won over the previous decade start to shrink.All this means the Warner era for R.E.M. doesn't represent one particular phase of their career &mdash; during their time at Warner, they went through two phases, with the first half being the culmination of their rise and the second being their awkward return to cult status. This divide is clear and fairly easy to pinpoint. In his track-by-track liner notes (neatly mirroring his notes for the 1987 rarities comp Dead Letter Office), Buck claims that dividing line is pre- and post-"Losing My Religion," which is true at least as far as stardom goes, but it could be argued that the classic period ended with Automatic, since that follow-up to Out of Time showed that R.E.M. could not only live with the fame, but flourish within it. Everything that followed Automatic came from a different narrative and derived from a different starting point, one that was removed from the jangle pop that lay at the heart of their first ten years as recording artists. Related, yes, but quite different &mdash; more self-conscious, heavily produced, and deliberate, occasionally reaping great results but just as often sounding labored. It was a great contrast to early R.E.M., where the music seemed to flow naturally and easily. Though it has no early IRS material, In Time paints this contrast effectively, not only through the Green and Automatic material, but even through more recent material &mdash; the new song "Bad Day" and the 2001 revamp of "All the Right Friends" (contrary to Buck's claim in the liners that the band did cut this for IRS; it even appeared as a bonus track to a European reissue of Dead Letter Office). Both are built on a swirling, jangling folk-rock guitar line, propulsive rhythms, intertwined vocal harmonies, and urgent vocals from Stipe. In other words, they sound like classic R.E.M., and they should &mdash; they date from the '80s and bear co-writing credits with Berry. Unfortunately, they sound much fresher than the other new song, the overly fussy "Animal," which is the problem with In Time in a nutshell: the two phases of R.E.M.'s career don't sit well together, but here, they're given close to equal space. R.E.M. the quartet does get more time than R.E.M. the trio, and the latter did produce some really nice tracks, which are chronicled here: "The Great Beyond" is a minor masterpiece, "All the Way to Reno" is the best of their faux-lounge phase, and "Imitation of Life" and "Daysleeper" are good classicist R.E.M. Still, the immaculate production of Pat McCarthy's work with Buck, Mills, and Stipe has a denser, heavier, more laborious feel than Scott Litt's work with Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe, and the two not only don't fit together, the oddity of the pairing points out that there are a number of missing singles &mdash; a full 17, if international releases and radio-only hits are counted (and, given the nature of '90s rock, they do count). And these aren't minor songs, either; they're modern rock radio staples: "Pop Song 89," "Texarkana," "Drive," "Ignoreland," "Bang and Blame," "Strange Currencies," "Crush With Eyeliner," "Bittersweet Me," and "Shiny Happy People," the latter of which is roundly hated by the band yet nevertheless should be on a hits compilation for the sake of completeness. Of course, not all the songs could fit on a mere 18-track compilation &mdash; and if they went for a double-disc set, they'd be better off with a career-spanning set &mdash; but the song selection leaves something to be desired, even if it does present a reasonably accurate portrait of R.E.M. the adult alternative pop band, and it certainly does point out the inconsistencies of the band's Warner work. So, in that sense, In Time is an effective collection, but it also remains a little disappointing since it not only could have been done better, but by its very nature, this compilation can't help but point out the creative cul-de-sac R.E.M. found themselves in at the end of their Warner career. It's not the fate that anyone would have predicted in 1988.[In Time was also released as a double-disc limited edition, encased in a see-through plastic slipcase and containing a poster of the trio, plus an extended booklet containing Buck's track-by-track notes for the 15-track collection of B-sides, compilation tracks, rarities, and oddities. Longtime fans should not see this as Dead Letter Office, Vol. 2. For one thing, by Monster, R.E.M. had run out of interesting non-LP rarities and started releasing an endless series of live versions as B-sides. Before that, a lot of the B-sides were instrumentals, not full-fledged songs. Those full-fledged songs were saved for various-artists compilation albums, and of those, there are two brilliant songs &mdash; "Fretless" and "It's a Free World Baby," two Out of Time outtakes that Buck admits should have been on the album. Apart from that, there's only one more real non-LP song of note here, and that's the New Adventures outtake "Revolution," which is of equal quality to the album. After these three songs, there are some good B-sides that nevertheless aren't much more than B-sides: the acoustic version of "Pop Song 89," the rushed spoken word lark "Chance (Dub)," William S. Burroughs singing "Star Me Kitten," a good alternate version of "Leave," and worthy live versions of "Turn You Inside-out" and "Country Feedback." Of course, it's hard not to notice that there are roughly 25 B-sides and compilation tracks that could have made the cut, and while none of them are consequential, longtime fans may wonder why such enjoyable instrumental throwaways like "Memphis Train Blues" were left behind, or why there's a seeming aversion to any of the good cover versions the band did during the '90s (including Syd Barrett's "Dark Globe," Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner," Iggy Pop's "Funtime," and Richard Thompson's "Wall of Death"). Cuts like these may be missed, but this bonus disc is still a worthy way to get most of the non-LP highlights R.E.M. released during the Warner years, particularly because "Fretless" and "It's a Free World Baby" are so good. Finally, initial pressings of In Time carried a misprint on their spines that billed the collection as the best of 1998-2003, which could be seen as a revealing Freudian slip, in a way.]&mdash; Stephen Thomas ErlewineThe main peril of writing about R.E.M. is that otherwise rational people tend to form torturously private relationships with this band. I am one of them. As with any long-term engagement, there's a back catalog of injury: some of us felt slighted by R.E.M.'s eager dash to the big leagues; some can't get over "Shiny Happy People"; still others considered the band officially defunct when Bill Berry quit (consider, for a moment, the integrity of a band that makes a drummer's departure seem catastrophic). But now comes the ultimate challenge: helplessly watching R.E.M. sink into the classic-rock Lethe.The symptoms came on fast: "The One I Love" gets a round of Clear Channel airplay on the flashback circuit, and the next thing you know there's a greatest hits package out there whose chronology begins with the band's seventh record. They're old. We're old. The upside is that I'm less likely to receive any mail telling me SUCK IT YOU PIECE OF SHIT REM R0X0RZ.Questionable though it may be for these paragons of rock rectitude to milk the vile "two new songs" format for their latter-day hits collection, *In Time, in its own safe way, logically picks up where * Eponymous left off. So discuss the lopsided sequence and the strange curatorial choices ("The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" but no "Drive"?), but let's not forget that R.E.M.'s best tracks come pretty close to the pinnacle of what one can do with a riff, a verse and a chorus.The obligatory Two New Songs included here are actually a song and a half: "Bad Day" spent about 15 years as a half-completed B-side famous for carrying the germ of "It's the End of the World As We Know It". The lyrics are new&mdash;angry and direct&mdash;but you can still scream "I feel fine" over the chorus, which has retained the original chord progression. "Animal", the other new track, is one of those vaguely Middle Eastern stomps that Buck's Rickenbacker occasionally throws up (see also: "I Could Turn You Inside Out", "You"), and has a great singalong hook, with Stipe gleefully yelping "What's the big deal?" as the harmony slides into a minor key. It would have been right at home on R.E.M.'s most substantive 90s offering, New Adventures in Hi-Fi.As something of a commercial non-starter, Adventures is represented here by only two tracks: "E-Bow the Letter" and the cutie-pie "Electrolite" (whose space might have been more deserved by "Bittersweet Me"). Monster is, wisely, all but erased from the band's discography&mdash;only "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" made the cut (although sadly not the live Letterman version with vocals by Dan Rather). Up, the band's first album as a trio, is correctly represented by the majestic waltz "Daysleeper" and "At My Most Beautiful", which marks the start of R.E.M.'s current Brian Wilson fixation. The inclusion of "All the Right Friends", off the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, severely stretches the definition of the word "hit," but the song (written in 1979) is baggage-free fun that deserves another shot. Of course, Automatic for the People is the clear winner here, at least by Warner's standards: this disc includes no less than four of its songs, which should make you feel pretty stupid if you a) own it, or b) don't.The bonus disc on the album's pricier edition promises "rarities and B-sides," but don't get your hopes up; it's long on live performances of hits and short on the kind of drunken studio fuckery that made Dead Letter Office such a blast. The highlights here are a fantastic trip-hop version of "Leave" (less a remix than a rescue operation, really), and a spare demo of Reveal's "The Lifting" that shows the precise moment at which the producers should have stopped fiddling with the material. There is one very welcome Dead Letter Office-esque track, though: "Star Me Kitten" narrated by W.S. Burroughs in a series of depraved howls.And there you have it: a great album that you probably already own piecemeal, impossible to pan but even harder to endorse. In Time will make a handy proselytizing tool for weaning your niece off Matchbox 20. To you, it's an unintentional reminder that R.E.M. are a classic and still-relevant band not because of, but in spite of, their commercial success.&mdash; Michael Idov, Pitchfork

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