Released on 26 September 1994, "Monster" was the ninth studio album by American indie rock band R.E.M., produced by Scott Litt, the album was an intentional shift from the style of their previous two albums, Out of Time and Automatic for the People, by introducing loud, distorted guitar tones and simple lyrics. The album spawned four singles "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?", "Bang And Blame", "Crush With Eyeliner", "Strange Currencies", & "Tongue".
Recorded in early 1993, pre-production took place at Kingsway Studio in New Orleans under the supervision of Mark Howard, guitarist Peter Buck said that the band wrote 45 songs, including "a whole album's worth of acoustic stuff" which they demoed.According to Howard, the sessions were experimental. The sessions were hampered by several events, including Berry and bassist Mike Mills falling ill on separate occasions, Buck and Stipe leaving to visit family members and the deaths of Stipe's friends, as Kurt Cobain and actor River Phoenix, the band wrote and recorded "Let Me In" in tribute to Cobain and dedicated the album to Phoenix, whose sister Rain provided background vocals on "Bang And Blame".
Unlike R.E.M.'s previous two albums, Monster incorporated distorted guitar tones, minimal overdubs, and touches of 1970s glam rock. Peter Buck described the album as "a 'rock' record, with the 'rock' in quotation marks." He explained, "That's not what we started out to make, but that's certainly how it turned out to be. Mike Mills said: on past albums we had been exploring acoustic instruments, trying to use the piano and mandolin, and we did it about all we wanted to do it. And you come back to the fact that playing loud electric-guitar music is about as fun as music can be. Stipe's vocals were pushed down in the mix. Buck's guitar work on the album was inspired by the tremolo-heavy guitar playing of Glen Johansson of Echobelly, who supported R.E.M. on some of the Monster Tour. The album's music has been described as grunge, alternative rock, and glam rock.
The cover art features a blurred drawing of a bear's head against an orange background. The concept originated when Stipe showed cover artist Chris Bilheimer a balloon he wanted to use as the album cover and told him to play around with. Bilheimer changed the color of the balloon (which was originally green), and re-photographed the bear head. When he was down to the last few frames on a roll of film, he took a few photos without bothering to focus the shots, which he and Stipe ended up liking the best.
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