As was already made clear on the Reckoning song “Letter Never Sent,” R.E.M. had a certain artistic pining for the location that they, for a long time, had called home. With Fables of the Reconstruction that feeling was extended to a whole album. Still a young band that was unaccustomed to the realities of touring and moving locations, the biggest shift would come with a move to a studio in London, England. There they hoped to expand on their sound with a new producer in Joe Boyd, more known then as producer of Fairport Convention then the still unrecognised Nick Drake (whose lyrical inflections, lines beginning after quaver stops, I believe would go on to influence Michael Stipe in later albums).
Both the location and producer change indeed had an influence upon the already cemented R.E.M. sound, but not all in the way they expected. The move was reportedly a time of turbulence, wherein the band did not get on well with the producer and the band did not get on well with each other. The band talk of this period as the closest they ever came to disbanding. Crucially, of course, they didn’t, and in many ways the darker tones of Fables reflect the process of bringing themselves together again. There’s an idea said by comedian Patton Oswalt where, to paraphrase, the music on this album is like the act of creation, with every song on the album creeping along to ultimately find a place of confidence and unity. But it is not as though the dark parts of the album are unrecognisable to the R.E.M. oeuvre. What we have here is the band taking a dark period where everything felt it was crumbling, incorporating that feeling into their style, and eventually bringing it all into a unifying light. Therefore this is not music of creation, but of recreation. Reconstruction, if I may be so bold.
Of course that isn’t the only reason for that album’s title. The tension of the music also reflects the racial and societal tensions of American Reconstruction. It is not as though R.E.M. was not already diving into the political, but here they were moving ever closer to the polemical. With distance from their homeland, R.E.M. sought fit to define this album on very American themes and ideals. Yet, despite the conceptual nature of the title, I would not call Fables of the Reconstruction that much more “Southern Gothic” than the records that came prior to it. The hallmarks are all there for previous records: Dream-like landscapes, mixing pronouns and perspectives, the folk influenced tales. But what makes this stand out more than the other is a greater sense of directness. Stipe said that during this time he was starting to create more concrete narratives, and although the impressionistic riddles are still all there they are placed around a tighter framework.
The mood and style of these songs though ultimately shows a connection between the two album covers, one of a burning book and the other a trinket with an ear insignia behind a proscenium arch. These are tales around the campfire of a burning book, the ideas flying out of it like burning paper. They are song where the act of listening is crucial to the tale (I mean, more than normal, obviously).
Both previous album introductions were on some level about adjusting your filter into a dream world. With “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” that interpretation is very much on the surface, with the narrator reading the passage of a book before falling into a dream. It’s here that the music of R.E.M. becomes close to psychedelic, with the inclusion of dark ominous strings to add to the tension. This helps to maybe R.E.M’s most eerie composition, with the guitar work by Buck adding a sense of gloom with chromatic riffs and palmed chords that are menacing in their metallic sounds. The mood particularly escalates in the chorus, where Berry’s slow portentous playing adds to Mill’s bass notes keep stepping up in the same manner that the lyrics are commanding him to. The music sounds like the gravity that is pulling the narrator down. That is of course except for the bridges and outros, which break into a lush sound folk sound of jangly guitars and melodic strings, the music equivalent of the “reason [that] had harnessed the tame”.
“Maps and Legends” also refers back to previous albums, but mainly how the song is a tribute to their frequent collaborator Rev. Howard Finster (who also designed the cover for Talking Heads Little Creatures). Here the band move back to more country-folk feel, accentuated by Bucks guitars and backing vocals to tell the tale of this man. Here he is seemingly painted as a smart sage (“he sees what you can’t see, can’t you see that?”), so much so it paint him over the maps and legends which have “been misunderstood”. The final words of the song are “he’s not to be reached anymore”. They would not collaborate with Finster after this albums release.
Both the guitar and bass on “Driver 8” chug along in a way that evokes the feel of the train on the tracks and the destinations that it passes. Whilst Driver 8 is given a break, on a very surface level this would be an excellent song to drive to. With the added harmonica it has the feel of dangling your feet whilst living in the back of train carriages, the sort of scenario that happens in Steinback novels. The lyrics themselves give the same mythic feel, the character being given a generic number that adds mystique to the character though given the title of this album I wouldn’t be shocked if Driver 8 is some kind of slave left nameless by a master.
Another interpretation of the last two songs is that they about older men and their relationship with a changing world. This reading is definitely reinforced by the next two songs that complete Fables’ first side. “Life and How to Live it” suggests it from its very title, telling the tale of a strange carpenter figure and how he goes about building structures, which in turn serves into building a philosophy. The music, as we’ve established, reflects the building process, particularly how the guitar builds up for the first thirty seconds before the song explodes in to action, as though it was the process of breaking ground. From there the drums provide a tight and sturdy structure, and the bass melodic provides the colours and insides of the house which we live in.
The next song is so much about an older man that it is literally called “Old Man Kensey”. This song was assisted in the writing process by a man called Jerry Ayers (the only Jerry Ayers I could find holds a world record in pumpkin carving. I presume it’s not the same man). Aged maybe, but not experience, as the lead character seems to need to learn everything from reading to counting to stand. Through the dark guitar work, Stipe’s singing and lyrics seem increasingly more at the end, at the end abandoning the subject because he finds it such an enigma. I’m sure there is some kind of irony here, somewhere.
Where Side One began with chromatic scale and slow creeping melodies, “Cant Get There From Here” begins with the kind of dance like rhythms that could have easily been on Reckoning (it also helps to fuck up the grammar check on my computer). Much of that is the work of Mike Mills, who here plays some of the most straight up funky riffs he has allowed to have been. It certainly helps that it is here that he is given the actual job of lead singer, with Stipe instead using his nasal vocals as back up amidst an ever growing horn section, all in all making the counter-points that defined much of R.E.M’s singing dynamic even more apparent. Lyrically it is still Stipe though, and here the lyrics about struggling to get to another place could have itself come from Murmur. Seeing in that light shows to demonstrate how much the band dynamic has progressed in such a short amount of time.
“Green Grows the Bush” returns back to more of a folk sound, which is certainly appropriate as its title from an English folk song. But from this inspiration they go to do what is without question the band’s most political song so far, painting a picture of workers that acts a kind of parable. In the vagueness of the song and the context of time it could have been about mistreatment of immigrants there for work, but in the Reconstruction context it could also be about slavery; the line “Pay for your freedom” could certainly work for both. Either way, the almost too beautiful melody by Buck acts somewhat ironically to the events occurring.
“Kohoutek” is probably the most traditionally “R.E.M.” song on Fables of the Reconstruction, and it kind of suffers as a result. But if this is the low point of your album it is nothing to complain about; it is still a pretty work that combines beautiful Buck jangles with the Mill’s trademark melodies. And its beauty works perfect for the subject of the song in hand, with the Comet Kohoutek being used a metaphor for a young romantic relationship, of a girl whose ribbons and bangles are emphasised to the point of being a folk like character. The man in question appears to build bridges and tear them down, showing again the images of literal construction being prevalent through the album. Also, in an album that so emphasised the aged, this song’s also naïve perspective definitely makes it stand out in that regard, if not musically.
“Auctioneer (Another Engine)”, meanwhile, stands out in just how claustrophobic and sort of ugly it sounds (in a good way!), especially with the clashing voices of the chorus. It combines the train imagery with some more oblique slavery references; the menacing way the auctioneer is introduced with orders to “listen” gives quite a demonic element to the character, as well as how he can callously say “What is at the other end, I don’t know another friend/ Another wife, another morning spent”. All the while Berry drives the engine that is this track, playing in a tense way that sounds particularly faster than normal even if that isn’t necessarily true.
After such an anxious moment on the album, it’s nice that the music at the end of Fables of the Reconstruction attempts to return to some kind of beauty. “Good Advices” returns to jangle pop with aplomb for a song that in many ways could have burst into abundant strings very easily, but stays quietly muted and presenting a certain kind of wisdom. Music wise, anyway. From the lyrics we are presented with a somewhat unreliable character, who think a good course of action is to “keep your money in your hands” and who’s most cogent advice is to “keep your hat on your head”. With him emphasising still how far we are from home, the tune of “Good Advices” may be beautiful, but towards the end of the album still leaves us with uncertainty.
Which makes all the more sense then that Fables of the Reconstruction ends with what is one of R.E.M’s sweetest songs in a catalogue full of sweet songs, “Wendell Gee”. Peter Buck apparently disliked the song for quite some time, which is a shame because we have missed out on a good live version of a song that just feels like it should be played live with lighters in the air. In the context of the album, this country ballad in its piano swaying glory acts as an aforementioned “unifying light”, but for the entire album, where the darkness of so much of the record makes way for a bright union. The lyrics seem to reflect that too, with the final character performing the last act of building on an album about construction, creating a sanctuary amidst the colours of the wind. Well, a sanctuary built from chicken wire that turned to lizard skin. Stipe can’t let us be completely content with knowledge of the band’s world can they?
Like the other two of the “Southern Gothic” trilogy, Fables of the Reconstruction is a record unified by its collective messiness, only here it is ironically much more structured to be like that. From the compositions that truly come together in the bridges, to structures and institutions that are continuously built to be knocked down, to old men with supposed wisdom that by the end just leaves you confused, it is a perfect summation of a turbulent time in the band’s life (though not the most turbulent, as we would find out) and an unsettling time in American history. Still, after all that darkness, maybe it is time for a celebration. A pageant, if you will…
What did you think, though?
R.E.M. Album Rankings
- Murmur
- Reckoning
- Fables of the Reconstruction
P.S: My ranking of Fables of the Reconstruction as the lowest is essentially a process of elimination. I assume that will be the case many times on this run.