In contrast to the sound of R.E.M.'s previous two records, the music of Monster consisted of distorted guitar tones, minimal overdubs, and touches of 1970s glam rock. Peter Buck described Monster as "a 'rock' record, with the rock in quotation marks." He explained, "That's not what we started out to make, but that's certainly how it turned out to be. There's a nudge, nudge, wink, wink feel to the whole record. Like, it's a rock record, but is it really?" Mike Mills told Time, "On past albums we had been exploring acoustic instruments, trying to use the piano and mandolin, Read more on Last.fm.
This is Peter Buck in Sonic Youth mode, save for the fact that Buck pursues melody in lieu of noise. REM’s heaviest record is all fun, dumb lyrics and arena sized call and response riffs. In a nutshell, it’s like a thinking mans Cheap Trick with garage production quality.