Having followed their debut, Replenish, with the highly successful Glow, Rides is the third album from Reef. As before Gary Stringer's voice, which would take most of us a lifetime of chain smoking to emulate, is the most immediately recognisable element of the Reef sound. Throw in guitars aplenty and you have Reef. Unfortunately it's this predictability that may eventually be their downfall, yet there are signs of a change.

Songs such as New Bird, Wandering, Back In My Place & Who You Are are what we've come to expect from Reef. None of them are bad songs yet none can compare with the brilliant, Place Your Hands, the pinnacle of their first two albums. It's when Reef edge away from their previous offerings that Rides comes into its own.

I've Got Something To Say, with its acoustic start and Stringer's vocal melody, was an obvious choice as the first single from the album. Hiding has a definite hint of Cast about it, with a smidgen of Marc Bolan influence on the vocals. Sweety with its smattering of yeah yeahs and nah nahs is Reef at their most melodic. Jack Bessant takes over lyric writing and singing duties on the simple, yet exceptional Locked Inside and Love Feeder is as close as Reef get to repeating the brilliance of Place Your Hands on this album.

So, having gotten this far thanks to bruising guitar riffs and even tougher singing from Gary Stringer, Reef seem to have realised that its time to start spreading their creative wings in search of a less one dimensional sound. With this album Reef seem to have opted for evolution, rather than revolution as Rides is pretty evenly split between the brute force of old and the more beguiling nature of tracks such as, Electric Sunday. For now it just remains to be seen which path Reef decide to follow.

Having spent almost 20 years as a quartet, one had to wonder how the loss of Bill Berry would effect Athens finest. R.E.M. had previously stated that if anyone of them left then R.E.M. would be no more. Therefore with this album the impression that the remaining three members feel they have a lot to prove is everpresent. This insecurity manifests itself in that the band seemed torn between continuing the ever changing, experimental sound of their recent albums and producing an album immediately recognisable as an R.E.M. album.

Hope with its predominately electronic backing, Lotus with its shades of the Rolling Stones and the excellent The Apologist are the pick of the more experimental tracks on Up. The majority of the album however is made up of typical R.E.M. songs. Sad Professor & Walk Unafraid echo closely what was offered on New Adventures In Hi-Fi, while At My Most Beautiful could have been lifted directly from the Automatic For The People sessions. While none of this is a bad thing, R.E.M. have for a long while now prided themselves on not revisiting roads already traveled.

While the loss of Bill Berry will have an inevitable effect on the bands creative process, the only truly irreplaceable R.E.M. instrument is Michael Stipe's voice, which more than anything else defines the R.E.M. sound. The number of uninspired mundane tracks which made it onto this album may however have illustrated the effect on the creative process. Only Michael Stipe's voice manages to drag numbers such as Diminished & You're In The Air out of the mire.

Because of weak songs like those mentioned the jury is still out on whether being reduced to a trio is a mortal wound for R.E.M. If it weren't for the exceptionally high standard set by previous albums, R.E.M.'s future would be easily secured with this album. Unfortunately Up doesn't have enough to prove they have survived their loss, but with songs such as Daysleeper & Why Not Smile it isn't bad enough to prove the contrary. With this album R.E.M. may just have tried a little too hard.