The other day a little album by the name of “Out of Time” turned 30. There was some discussion of it around music twitter. Sir Steven Hyden shared his massive manifesto ranking their top 100 songs. I pulled my Dad’s original 1991 CD copy off my shelf and popped it in the CD changer. Inevitably, I texted him about it.
I like talking to my parents about music because they both like music, but they aren’t super neurotic about uncovering hidden gems like me. Basically, I can be like “hey Mom was Joy Division a thing?” and she can be like “what the fuck is Joy Division?” Then I can know that JD was more of a cult following back in the day. They were both hurting the day Eddie Van Halen died.
The thing that’s fascinating about R.E.M. is they were such a critic’s band but they were also HUGE. Their first album Murmur, despite not making THAT big of a splash with sales, was second on the 1983 Pazz And Jop poll, first was fucking THRILLER. By 1996, they were getting an $80 Million advance from Warner Bros, the biggest contract ever at the time.
They remain a band of many contrasts. They’re such an 80’s college rock band and also such a 90’s alt-rock band. Such a committed underground act and such a Pop act. Not really a bro act, like Oasis or something, but certainly not a band that’s often considered for the gays, so to speak, and yet Michael Stipe is Queer!
Before I start going off completely, though, I want to explain what I want to do here. The thing is, I feel like with bands like this you get one of two perspectives online. There’s the studied fan who has all their ducks in a row. They remember when “Losing My Religion” was on the radio, they remember how it inspired them to dig up every interview they could. They’ve heard all the demo versions. They basically know everything they could know about the band and their opinion is likely to never shift again. Then there’s the age old “young person listens to old album for the first time” piece. Here’s Snail Mail on Automatic for the People.
I want to document my whole “getting into R.E.M” phase. I want you know what I think of something in the beginning, I want to read that book on Athens and see if it changes my perspective. I want to know what Murmur sounded like on cassette. I want to surround myself with some of the other music released around the same time and see if the R.E.M. record was the one I’d be taking home from the record store that week. I don’t know how long it’s going to take and I’m probably not going to devote an entire newsletter to it again, but I want to just plug away at it week-to-week and hope you enjoy the journey (or whatever).
I know what you’re gonna say. Why R.E.M? Aside from “I have felt like listening to them a lot this week,” here’s a list of reasons.
1. I feel like everyone has a different take on R.E.M. Some people just like hate “Shiny Happy People,” but I don’t (I’m gay). Some people insist that Murmur is still their best album (Document is clearly better and it’s still not the best, idiot). There’s parts of the story that are pretty set in stone, but there’s a lot up in the air.
2. It’s fascinating to me that they survived the 90’s. I think most people don’t like their 00s output that much, but they were a band you could catch at a gig in 1985, 1995, and 2005 (without anyone being like, why?) and that’s relatively rare.
a. I think the answer is kind of obvious that a lot of bands were instantly catapulted into the mainstream in the 90’s and they couldn’t handle it mentally, many had members tragically die, a lot of the bands imploded in some way. Bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth—they were already institutions, they knew how to operate as bands. Getting a song on MTV wasn’t going to ruin their life. R.E.M could make their most popular album ever, then return a year later with one of their best ever. They could tour Monster a whole bunch and then, again, make one of their best albums. Nirvana, Alice n Chains, not so much.
b. But even stylistically, R.E.M. sort of just carried on. The 90’s (in rock music, at least) seemed to desire a clean break from the 80’s so a lot of sounds became instantly uncool (Bruce Springsteen). In the 00’s, heavy post-grunge guitar distortion became passé for guys like The Strokes and Vampire Weekend, meanwhile Linkin Park is getting all the kids into Jay-Z and electronics. So, Nirvana’s vision of “punk” at least sort of took a backseat for a minute. R.E.M. was just kind of always around with their stylish lyrics and solid instrumental style.
3. I think R.E.M. is just prime territory for one to have a lot of different ideas of how the songs work. “Everybody Hurts” is too direct right? The chorus is just “Everybody hurts, sometimes.” Kind of a shitty lyric. But then those strings swell up at the end and you’re like “wait a minute, what’s this about?”
4. I want to tell people about how “Nightswimming,” like, HAS to be gay. “I'm pining for the moon/And what if there were two/Side by side in orbit around the fairest sun?” COME ON. But seriously, being a sort of “classic American rock band” nowadays, R.E.M. is naturally going to attract some brospective, and Bros, they tend to miss things.
I’m hoping to provide important insight such as: look how hot Michael Stipe was in 1990:
So, let’s get going: MURMUR (1983).
I spent a week listening to this on my commute into work. I’ve heard it before; just at random I’ve been like “I’m gonna listen to Murmur” then I go “that was cool” then I forget about it. I haven’t done a ton of reading about it, I’d like to do more on the context surrounding the albums later on, but I will say that the number one song in the country on April 12, 1983, when this album came out, was none other than “Billie Jean.” Violent Femmes released their self-titled record the next day and David Bowie released “Let’s Dance” ONE DAY AFTER THAT, a wild three days. That seems like an interesting mix of old school artists jumping up to a different level of popularity (with a hell of a lot of electronics) and younger indie bands coming up to create a new scene.
Some things are immediately transparent just from listening. R.E.M is always naming songs things and then not really explaining them with the rest of the lyrics. Why Michael, why do you start chanting “Catapult” in the middle of Catapult? I really don’t know. What is a “Moral Kiosk?” There’s a certain ennui to the whole R.E.M. experience, lots of references to overarching American themes, occasionally vague and opaque “analysis” of these things.
“Radio Free Europe” I always assumed was descriptive of, uh, America. Maybe commentary about how Radio isn’t really free in our country, that programming is limited by corporations, and much of the AM talk shows were basically just televangelist type stuff. I read in Simon Reynolds’ post-punk history that David Byrne of Talking Heads tried to emulate the energy of the preachers he caught listening to the radio while driving around the middle of the country on Speaking in Tongues. Being from the south and not the city, I thought R.E.M. might have gotten some exposure to bad radio while driving around (“calling out in transit,” Stipe repeats).
Alas, Radio Free Europe is actually an American propaganda tool to spread anti-communist rhetoric in Eastern European and Asian countries so maybe it’s a little bit closer to just an anti-cold war song, the band calling out this type of mind control: “defyin' media too fast/Instead of pushin' palaces to fall.” Either way, disillusion with media would certainly be a theme for the band. They put “Pop Song 89” as the first song on their first album with a major label and “Radio Song” as the opener on their second. “Radio Free Europe” is probably the album’s greatest song and I’d assume an early calling card for them.
In terms of sound, you certainly get a whiff of post-punk. It’s just a dry and clean recording, the melodies approach pop music a bit, but don’t completely devote themselves to radio song structure. The band all works together to craft certain moods, rather than the classic rock guitar soloist, sex god singer set-up. You could sort of say they actually accomplished the Gang of Four mission to enter the entertainment(!) industry and maintain the ability to critique it. In the beginning, they also happened to sound a bit like them. “9+9” also has the kind of mathy chorus breakdown the world had seen The Pretenders pull off a couple years earlier.
Rather than the dance music and reggae muses of the UK post-punkers, however, R.E.M. incorporates the folk music tones of their surroundings in the south. There’s a little bit of twang to the thing. I don’t really think you could ever say that R.E.M. went alt-country or anything, but throughout their discography a stray pedal steel guitar appears or some spindly little acoustic guitar thing. Perhaps basically only on this album, there’s a general homespun feel too.
The lyrics are seriously extremely vague so, the “sexuality” question has little to grab on, at least at first glance. Stipe changes Laocoon to a woman for some reason. Oh yeah and “Catapult” starts with “we were little boys/we were little girls” a la SOPHIE. Mostly the experience of this album is, the tempo is flying and the band is tight and “got to punch/right on target” sounds awesome.
In sum, my early take is. Murmur rules. It makes sense that a debut with this strong of a sound and style was able to win over critics and begin building the band a fan base. I think it’s cool that they were more willing to creep out from the shadows and deliver more populist hooks in the future and I think there’s some potential directions on here that I’m glad they didn’t follow up on. “We Walk” has a renaissance faire vibe? No thanks! But thankfully the R.E.M. experience got to continue, they seemingly always burst at the seams with ideas.
-Donovan Burtan