This year marks the 25th anniver­sary of R.E.M.’s Reveal, the rich­ly lay­ered 2001 album fea­tur­ing Imi­ta­tion of Life, All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star) and I’ll Take the Rain. To cel­e­brate, Craft Record­ings will release Reveal (25th Anniver­sary Edi­tion) on Novem­ber 20, expand­ing the orig­i­nal album with The Black Ses­sions Revealed, a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased 17-song per­for­mance record­ed for Radio France in Paris on May 7, 2001.

Avail­able as a deluxe 2‑CD/Blu-ray set and expand­ed dig­i­tal edi­tion, Reveal (25th Anniver­sary Edi­tion) pairs the orig­i­nal 12-track album with the com­plete Radio France per­for­mance, which finds R.E.M. mov­ing between then-new Reveal mate­r­i­al and clas­sics span­ning their cat­a­logue, includ­ing The One I Love, Los­ing My Reli­gion and Man on the Moon. Reveal was a major suc­cess reached No. 1 in the UK as well as top­ping album charts across Europe and the major­i­ty of Reveal was record­ed in Dublin at the leg­endary Dalkey Lodge along­side Pat McCarthy.

All for­mats fea­ture reimag­ined cov­er art by long­time R.E.M. design­er Chris Bil­heimer. The accom­pa­ny­ing Blu-ray presents Reveal in high-res­o­lu­tion audio and 5.1 sur­round sound, along­side the music videos for Imi­ta­tion of Life, All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star) and I’ll Take the Rain, plus the album’s orig­i­nal EPK. Housed in a 32-page hard­cov­er book fea­tur­ing archival pho­tographs, the deluxe set also includes new lin­er notes by jour­nal­ist Bir­git Fuss, with fresh reflec­tions from Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills. 

The Black Ses­sions Revealed will also be avail­able sep­a­rate­ly as a 2‑LP set, bring­ing the inti­mate 2001 per­for­mance to vinyl for the first time. Addi­tion­al­ly, REMHQ.com will offer exclu­sive Neon Orange vinyl of the orig­i­nal Reveal album and Neon Pink vinyl of The Black Ses­sions Revealed, plus new anniver­sary merchandise.

Unlike most R.E.M. albums, Reveal was not fol­lowed by a tra­di­tion­al tour. Instead, the band played a lim­it­ed series of pro­mo­tion­al per­for­mances around its release, mak­ing those shows rare live doc­u­ments of the era. Among them was The Black Ses­sions. Per­formed in an inti­mate set­ting just days before the album’s release, the ses­sion cap­tures R.E.M. in the ear­li­est days of bring­ing Reveal to the stage. 

Released in May 2001, Reveal was R.E.M.’s 12th stu­dio album. Work­ing again with pro­duc­er Pat McCarthy, who had pre­vi­ous­ly co-pro­duced Up and would lat­er reunite with the band for Around the Sun, R.E.M. record­ed across Athens (GA), Van­cou­ver, Dublin and Mia­mi (FL), build­ing a lush, atmos­pher­ic col­lec­tion that paired expan­sive pop melodies with lay­ers of gui­tars, key­boards and elec­tron­ic tex­tures. The result was a record with a dis­tinct­ly lumi­nous character—an atmos­phere that emerged organ­i­cal­ly dur­ing the sessions.

“We were not think­ing about a buoy­ant sum­mer­time record, but that is cer­tain­ly what it turned into,” recalls Mills in Fuss’ new lin­er notes. “It’s very hap­py, and also kind of wist­ful in some ways. It looks at sum­mers present and sum­mers past.” That feel­ing car­ries through­out Reveal. “I’ve always said it’s our most under­rat­ed record,” Mills adds. “Not only are the songs and the per­for­mances good, but it cap­tures a feel­ing that holds through­out the entire record.”

Twen­ty-five years lat­er, Reveal (25th Anniver­sary Edi­tion) offers a fresh look at that dis­tinc­tive chap­ter in R.E.M.’s cat­a­logue, while The Black Ses­sions Revealed brings one of the era’s rare live per­for­mances to lis­ten­ers for the first time.

Pre-orders for all for­mats are avail­able today, while the first sin­gle – the live ver­sion of Imi­ta­tion of Life from The Black Ses­sions is avail­able now to stream/share.