No reason in particular why; it’s just not something I’ve ever thought about much. I guess one of their live albums was in Dublin.
When I was coming up, it was the Pixies that were bandied about as the example of non-Americans having better taste, because Doolittle I think cracked the top 10 in the UK, but only barely edged the top 100 in the US in 1989 (the other big example was Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys doing better in the UK.)

<i>Up</i> is slow and keyboardy but I think a lot of the songs had nice melodies anyway. It’s a good album I don’t revisit much but I do play “Falls To Climb” the most of any song on it.

<i>Reveal</i> had “Imitation Of Life,” “The Lifting,” “Saturn Return” and a couple of others, so it wasn’t a turd or anything, but I don’t much feel like ever purchasing it.

<i>Around The Sun</i> wasn’t quite as unbearable as one has been told but I can’t name a great song on it.

I seem to recall that they very quickly ran into the waiting arms of their 1980s sound the moment they realized they’d berked with Around The Sun, because I remember them very quickly making bad comments about ATS in the press, like less than a year after its release they were already admitting it was a weaksauce album. But I don’t remember any great songs on Accelerate either, and that it seemed to get nice reviews was sort of infuriating to me at the time.

But yes, Monster sold five million copies I think, which is hilarious because we all know three fourths of that ended up in used bins, then I think New Adventures In Hi-Fi either didn’t go platinum or took like 15 years to do so or something like that, and THEN they signed the jillion dollar contract.

I don’t really want to make R. E. M.’s career from 1996 onwards seem like a series of Van Halen/Metallica-esque disasters (both bands’ ill-fortunes started in 1996, too), because it wasn’t THAT bad, but it’s still pretty clearly a real thing to me.

Your mention of Radiohead has me feeling like asking yet again if Radiohead are secretly gone, but who knows if anything’s been stated on that front. Thom Yorke’s son is now in his 20s and is making music with someone from Iron Maiden’s kid. That’s all I know. Oh and Yorke got a new wife, the old one he wrote “True Love Waits” died, very sad stuff. Don’t know what the others are doing, Jonny’s still doing soundtracks probably?

Regarding Brian Wilson’s impending demise, from your other post: if you didn’t know this already, he released an album of him playing his old favorites as solo piano with no vocals. It was called At My Piano and it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard in my life that could still be called basically listenable. I can’t believe his wife died before he did. It’s hard for me to imagine him releasing anything else, unless someone would like to bet me five dollars that he’ll outlive Garth Hudson.