[5] It has sold around seven million units, growing in cult status years after its release, with several retrospectives ranking it among the best of the band's recorded catalogue.

[9] In an interview with Mojo, bassist Mike Mills said: We got into the studio feeling very happy and relieved that everyone was okay, especially [drummer] Bill.

Once we'd been through a crisis like that [Berry's collapse from a brain aneurysm on tour], making a record was a piece of cake.

As such, the band's touring musicians Nathan December and Scott McCaughey are featured throughout, with Andy Carlson contributing violin to "Electrolite".

After the tour was over, the band went into Seattle's Bad Animals Studio and recorded four additional tracks: "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us", "E-Bow the Letter", "Be Mine" and "New Test Leper".

In part due to the nature of the recording process, several of the songs are about travel and motion—including "Departure", "Leave" and "Low Desert".

The photograph used in the album cover was shot by Stipe in Nevada during a road trip to Georgia from Los Angeles.

Several publications lauded the album for its rich diversity, including Rolling Stone, which said "The sequence of songs and the range of emotions on New Adventures convey a narrative that has all the dynamics and contradictions of life itself.

At the same time, however, Melody Maker criticized the album's empty and flat sound caused by recording in arenas and soundchecks.

Not only are all of Michael Stipe's lyrics on the album about moving or travel, the sound is ragged and varied, pieced together from tapes recorded at shows, soundtracks, and studios, giving it a loose, careening charm."

[25] It was also featured on several year-end best-of lists for 1996: All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe.

"How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us" "The Wake-Up Bomb" "New Test Leper" "Undertow" "E-Bow the Letter" "Leave" "Departure" "Bittersweet Me" "Be Mine" "Binky the Doormat" "Zither" "So Fast, So Numb" "Electrolite" Technical personnel While New Adventures in Hi-Fi began the band's sales decline in the United States, it topped the charts in over a dozen countries and reached #1 on the Top European Albums for five consecutive weeks.

In 2005, Warner Brothers Records issued an expanded two-disc edition of the album which included a CD, a DVD-Audio disc containing a new audio mix of the album (in 5.1-channel surround sound, high resolution, AC3, Dolby Stereo, and DTS 5.1) done by Elliot Scheiner and the original CD booklet with expanded liner notes.

[77] Due to issues related to the 2021 global supply chain crisis, all CD variations of the remastered reissue were delayed to mid-November 2021.