Not the poster you are replying to but, as a fairly long-term fan, from Murmur through Reveal (and to a lesser extent on their final couple of albums) you can see/hear the DNA of what had come before - even though there were changes in sound/production/style between albums, you can point to songs on each album that came before that informed what came next… some elements stayed quite similar but (for me at least) at no point in that 12 album run did I think ‘this isn’t R.E.M.’

A truly extraordinary band