Description
R.E.M. – New Adventures In Hi-Fi – 25th Anniversary Edition – Double Compact Discs
13 B-Sides and Rarities
25th Anniversary Edition
Stickered Box Set Includes Large Poster, 4 Postcards, and a booklet.
2 CDs In separate card sleeves
New Adventures in Hi-Fi has always been one of R.E.M.’s most ambitious and textured records, and the 25th Anniversary Edition makes that even clearer by opening up the process behind it. Originally released in 1996, the album was largely recorded on the road during their Monster tour, and that restless, in-motion energy is baked into every track. It doesn’t feel like a controlled studio project—it feels like a band capturing ideas in real time, wherever they happened to land, and that gives it a unique, almost cinematic flow.
This is R.E.M. at their most expansive. The album moves between distorted, driving rock and quieter, atmospheric moments without ever losing cohesion. Tracks like “E-Bow the Letter” lean into mood and texture, building tension through repetition and subtle shifts, while songs like “Departure” bring a more direct, guitar-forward energy. There’s a rawness to parts of the record, but it’s balanced by a layered, almost dreamlike quality that reflects how and where it was recorded—soundchecks, backstage rooms, and live environments all feeding into the final product.
Michael Stipe’s vocals are a key anchor throughout. His delivery is more abstract and impressionistic here, often prioritizing tone and feeling over clear narrative. That approach fits the album’s overall atmosphere—these songs feel like snapshots, fragments of thought and emotion tied together by movement and place. Lyrically, there’s a recurring sense of travel, distance, and disconnection, which mirrors the band’s experience of being constantly on the road.
What the 25th Anniversary Edition adds is perspective. With demos, alternate takes, and live material, you get a clearer sense of how these songs evolved. You can hear ideas forming, shifting, and sometimes transforming completely depending on the environment they were recorded in. It reinforces how experimental the process really was—this wasn’t a band following a fixed plan, it was a band exploring and capturing moments.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
Remastered
How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us
The Wake-Up Bomb
New Test Leper
Undertow
E-Bow The Letter
Leave
Departure
Bittersweet Me
Be Mine
Binky The Doormat
Zither
So Fast, So Numb
Low Desert
Electrolite
B-Sides & Rarities
Tricycle
Departure
Wall Of Death
Undertow [Live]
Wichita Lineman
New Test Leper [Live Acoustic]
The Wake-Up Bomb [Live]
Binky The Doormat [Live]
King Of Comedy [808 State Remix]
Be Mine [Mike On The Bus Version]
Love Is All Around
Sponge
Leave [Alternate Version]
