R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (1992)

Dan:

I imagine that all fans of R.E.M. have opinions regarding their favorite albums. Some love the primitive Murmur; others have an affection for Up (1998) or Around the Sun (2004). I've declared my preference for Fables of the Reconstruction (1985) and Document (1987), based on their roles in my personal prog discovery journey. 

Favorites notwithstanding, I think it would be an oversight to omit Automatic for the People, which is R.E.M.'s most commercially successful album (with Out of Time (1991) ranked equally by Wikipedia). I'm not fond of Out of Time, which just goes to prove that it's hard to evaluate R.E.M. albums on anything but subjective criteria. That said, it's hard to argue against Automatic, unless you absolutely reject popularity as relevant. It yielded six singles, comprising half of the album's total. "Man on the Moon" is hummable by most people who may not even know of R.E.M.'s existence. "Everybody Hurts" is just as familiar.

A good portion of the credit for Automatic's success must go to producer Scott Litt who oversaw multiple recording locations and brought in John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame to arrange the orchestration of strings and a lone woodwind (oboist Deborah Workman). I wouldn't say that this puts R.E.M. in Steely Dan territory as far as production is concerned, but the band had obviously come a long way since Murmur.

Mainly I just like this album, even though part of me wants to rebel against commercial success, which is more how I felt in 1992 that I do now 31 years later. It's not that the album gets better with age, and it's not something I need to turn to very often. It's just an amazingly consistent album that deserves the attention it continues to receive. 

Steve: 

From what I've seen from reviewers who came of age on the world wide web, Automatic for the People is a consensus choice for best R.E.M. album among those who don't gravitate naturally to the IRS-label era (i.e., Murmur through Document). While I've always identified with the earlier era, I have familiarized myself with all of R.E.M.'s albums, even though few of them share characteristics of the IRS period that endeared me to the band in the first place.

I believe that the ongoing popularity of Automatic for the People has less to do with the prevalence of hits than it does with the overall sound of the album (which has aged very well) and the resonant themes that pepper the album. Contrast this to Out of Time, which had a similarly "unplugged" sound, and much bigger hits ("Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People"), which in my opinion have now far outworn their welcome. Those hits always sounded too contrived to me, as though the band’s popularity was going to their heads a little too much. (Incidentally, R.E.M. was the first band I remember having an "unplugged" special on MTV around this time).

On Automatic for the People, popular songs like "Man on the Moon" and "Drive" have aged much better. "Man on the Moon," in particular, still tugs at the heartstrings, especially because I still associate it with the Andy Kaufman biopic of the same name. But the song isn't empty sentimentality - Pete Buck's slide guitar makes for some really nice coloring in the arrangement, and the chorus of the song resolves the questioning verses like a good song should. Likewise, although I was initially turned off by "Drive" because of its simplicity, closer listening reveals a gradual build in the instrumental base, hitting some grungy guitar bits that really help move the song along.  

Aside from the singles, one deeper cut that I find interesting is "Sweetness Follows", a quiet but ominous song, with lots of atmosphere and chilling harmonies. It's not the kind of song that will grab you on first listen, but give it time. On the louder side, "Ignoreland" provides a welcome injection of rock power on an otherwise subdued album. 

Following Automatic for the People, R.E.M. made further attempts to experiment with their sound, but not always successfully. Monster, with its loud distorted guitars, is often cited as the weakest link in their discography, and R.E.M. never truly regained the popularity they enjoyed in the early 1990s. But for a few years, they occupied that coveted space overlapping both commercial and critical success.

R.E.M. - Document (1987)

Dan:

Document was R.E.M.'s fifth album, released two years after Fables of the Reconstruction. It arrived in the midst of my R.E.M. frenzy about the time Steve was headed to college, where I expected his classmates were also in R.E.M. frenzies. After all, the band was from the college town of Athens, GA. But Steve rebelled and got caught up in the Canterbury prog scene, leaving his old dad alone to pick his way through popular rock bands of the day.

I was glad to discover Document, which continued a strong run of albums from Michael Stipe and company. Like Steely Dan before them, success led to more polished production and, in Document's case, a harder edge. It worked for me, especially the few songs that I tended to play over and over. 

The song I played the most was the album's closer, "Oddfellow's Local 151." Following a sustained twang from Peter Buck's guitar, a cool repeated riff sets the tone. Stipe's lyrics take the listener to a place behind the firehouse where a dude named Pee Wee holds court over the locals. I had created a clear mental image of this place and the characters involved. The song never details Pee Wee's agenda, which could have been anything, so I supplied my own. The song turns out to be far more mundane than I imagined; Pee Wee was one of a bunch of drunkards who slept in their cars near a bar called Oddfellows behind the firehouse near where the band members lived. And here I was thinking it was the Klu Klux Klan! Regardless, I still think it's one of R.E.M.'s best songs if only because of the riff.

Other excellent songs on Document include "Welcome to the Occupation," "Disturbance at the Heron House," and "Exhuming McCarthy." Although falling short of taking any discernible social or political stance, the songs are at least about something, in contrast to some of their earlier albums that included songs that made little lyrical sense. Songwriting seemed to be taken more seriously as the band matured. 

Steve:

R.E.M.'s commercial fortunes were definitely rising around the time I went to college and Document was released. I never owned a copy of my own until fairly recently, and I still don't know many of the songs that well, but re-listening to it for this review had me nonetheless impressed. They were still in their "indie" sounding phase, not yet the stadium rockers they would be in a few years' time, but their sound is muscular, well-organized, and full of interesting musical ideas. 

"The One I Love" is the first R.E.M. song I recall getting serious radio play. It's a well-constructed piece, with a ringing guitar hook introducing the song and punctuating the verses, some neat lyrical hooks, not to mention a clever subtext that most listeners might miss if they don't listen closely. But that song was nothing compared to "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)", which was played at nearly every party I attended while at college. None of us could follow the rapid-fire verses (except the "Leonard Bernstein!" part, of course), but when it came to the singalong chorus, we'd pipe in "It's the part of the song that we knowwww" and then congratulate ourselves for our edgy cleverness.

Document was indirectly responsible for my discovery of what became one of my favorite bands, Wire. The song "Strange" (from Wire's debut album Pink Flag) appears on Document, which planted the first seed of my interest. The following year I saw Wire's A Bell Is a Cup Until it Is Struck album in the racks with a hype sticker quoting Michael Stipe saying how influential Wire had been to him. It was my first Wire album, and I still regard their albums highly today.

While I never did quite regain the love that I had for R.E.M. after their first three albums, revisiting Document makes me think that I may be missing out. Each song held my interest and had a good riff, lyric, and/or musical idea. Many people consider Document to be the band's peak, and I can see why.

R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

Dan: 

I thought Steve discovered R.E.M. in 1983 when the hype surrounding their Murmur album was reaching a fever pitch. I never caught that early fever myself and continue to regard Murmur as primitive (which may be why the indie college band fans loved it). As one of two bands from Athens, Georgia to remerge in the late 70s (the other being the B-52's), R.E.M. leveraged their cult following into an international phenomenon. 

By the time Fables of the Reconstruction was released, I too was in an R.E.M. frenzy. I remember going to Spec's with Steve to find their earlier recordings and coming home with Reckoning, which we played often. Such visits were like little adventures, not knowing what we might find. Surfing the Internet for music is just not the same. 

R.E.M. were touring in 1985 to support Fables, so Steve and I decided to attend the concert in Miami. He was about 15 at the time and I was 40. (Once again, he was probably the youngest person in attendance, and I was the oldest). There was an opening act, which Steve will brag about, but which I did not place much importance on. Then the first notes of Peter Buck's guitar pierced the room, and R.E.M. opened with "Feeling Gravity's Pull." It was an electric moment for me, as the crowd reached for their lighters and cheered. I felt pretty old at that moment, but I knew the music as well as anyone there. 

Michael Stipe emerged wearing a skirt, as several girls jumped on stage to grab Peter Buck. Mike Mills and Bill Berry stayed away from the action taking care of business on bass and drums, respectively. I truly enjoyed the concert, which was one of the handful of rock concerts I've ever been to. (I've been to many more live jazz performances, but that's another set of stories).

My favorite songs on the album are "Gravity's Pull," "Life and How to Live it," "Can't Get There from Here," and the closer "Wendell Gee." "Wendell" is perhaps the best actual song on the album because it's about someone and something; Many R.E.M. songs, especially from early albums, don't make much literal sense and Stipe has admitted to being afflicted by the "stream of consciousness syndrome." 

I followed R.E.M. through Lifes Rich Pageant, Document, Green, Out of Time, and Automatic for the People. Monster was a big disappointment that I never overcame. For me, their best work ended with Automatic, and the older Document rivals Fables for top honors in my rankings of R.E.M. recordings.

R.E.M. got cute with the title of Fables. The full title of the album was Fables of The Reconstruction / Reconstruction of the Fables. Side A was titled "Fables of the Reconstruction." Side 2 was designated as "Another Side - Reconstruction of the Fables." For a Georgia- based band, the meanings of these titles were certainly intended to be more than cute. I'll invite readers to ponder any hidden meanings.

Steve:

Although I first heard R.E.M. by way of their first single, "Radio Free Europe", the first time I became interested in the band and heard a full album was with Fables of the Reconstruction, contrary to Dan's guess above. In our post about New Order's Low Life album, I wrote about my summer of 1985 when I got a job as a 16-year-old in a big record store and learned a lot about what I then called "college rock", but which is now more often described as "80s Alternative". Fables was one of the key albums that I heard daily in the store during that time, and its strange, languid folk rock really grew on me. Apparently, the band thinks it is their worst album - at the very least, they never made another album like it. The fact that it quickly became and remained my favorite R.E.M. album put me in a difficult position as a fan of the band, as each subsequent album moved further away from what I liked about the band in the first place. (Dan comment: yeah, me too!).

"Feeling Gravity's Pull" is one of their weirdest songs. Not only does it open Fables, but it gave me my first impression of the band (notwithstanding "Radio Free Europe", which I hadn't heard in a couple of years by that time). Imagine hearing Elvis Costello for the first time by putting on Imperial Bedroom and having "Beyond Belief" be your first introduction to the man. Not a complete departure for him, but definitely of a different breed than the rest of his material, and even the rest of that album. "Feeling Gravity's Pull" opens with a dissonant guitar note sequence played through what sounds like a Leslie speaker, and as the song progresses it acquires spooky string sounds, as Michael Stipe sings about the sensation of falling asleep while you read. Most of the songs on the album have that hazy, drifting-off-to-sleep quality, but it's an uneasy, troubled sleep. That's a neat mood to capture.

For the concert Dan mentioned, I originally wanted to take this girl at school I wanted to ask out. She had never heard of R.E.M. (admittedly, not many people had at this early point in their career) and politely declined because of the "it's a school night" rationale. I remember I was denied the chance to accept a free ticket to see Rush in 1982 on the same grounds. Oh well, what can you do. We were only teenagers, much younger than my own daughter is now, and I'd probably tell her the same thing. If my preferred date had gone with me, I might not be writing this today, because in her stead, my father Dan came with me to the show.

Incidentally, Dan insinuated that I would probably brag about the opening band, and indeed I will. The Minutemen, a punk band from California, opened for R.E.M. on that tour, and their style was so unusual that it was admittedly a little off-putting at the time. However, the longer-term effects of that show were considerable: I bought a couple of their LPs a week or so later, and my interest in them snowballed to the point where within a month or so they were my favorite band. Just as my fascination with the band and my eager anticipation of their next move was at its peak, singer/guitarist D. Boon died in an auto accident, abruptly putting an end to the band. That was my own JFK moment. Still hurts to this day, and my fandom hasn't faded a bit. Today, the Minutemen are hailed as innovators and a model of independence and ingenuity outside the confines of genre classifications and corporate labels.

So thanks, R.E.M.!