Quick list of things to before this run on R.E.M:

• Steven Hyden’s Perfect Circle series is a pretty unbeatable run down of R.E.M’s career, despite his claims about being a story as opposed to the Coming from a professional writer and lifelong fan his writings should be your first point of call because…
• I knew very little about R.E.M going into this. I’m in my early twenties and R.E.M as a music phenomenon was something that, barring the most famous of singles, passed me by. I assume this site’s audience will be more knowledgeable and emotionally attached to R.E.M than I am, and there are cultural contexts of the band’s impact that I just won’t understand. I guess my story of R.E.M will be one of experiencing these albums for the very first time and writing my impressions for you all to see. We have all got to start somewhere. Might as well do it 1500 word articles.
• I probably should have done the Chronic Town EP first. We’ll cover that when we get to Dead Letter Office. Again, a mistake made by ignorance.

Now that we have done that, let us begin:

 

For a group defined as a quintessential “Southern Gothic” band, an interesting thing about R.E.M. is that none of the group originally came from South America. Living in many different areas of the country, the group would meet in Georgia, Athens under a love of post-punk, sixties rock and American Folk t0 create a sound that would combine all those influences into a single sound, one that would come to define so much music from the more literary and moody areas of rock that came after it.

With the group all coming together from such disparate areas, the band’s debut album Murmur can be seen defined by movement and place. This was true behind the scenes; after the pop orientations of their debut EP, the band moved between studio and producers (settling on the pair of Mitch Easter and Don Dixon) in the hopes of creating a sound that would evoke a timeless feel.  On the record itself, Murmur’s main images concern groups and travelling. Pictures of railways, of pilgrimages, of groups struggling through terrain looking for unknown places are the most prominent images that can be grasped on first listens from Michael Stipes’ cryptic calls. The cover perfectly captures the mood for the music that comes ahead, with the kudzu plant attacking the landscape around it, but on the back a railway, a means of escape, is made clearly visible.

Murmur creates a place that feels like…nowhere in particular. It is folk music set in a bizarre dreamscape, in the stasis where R.E.M gets its name, detailing a formless group travelling throughout ever changing spaces that stops abruptly when the music does. The feel is accentuated through every band member: Bill Berry’s echoing drums, tighter than two-headed cow’s chuff; Mike Mills bass ranging from post-punk moodiness to sweet melodies rivalling, maybe even surpassing, Paul McCartney; Peter Buck chimes, cries and clangs that show him and Johnny Marr coming to two similar conclusions on two separate continents.

And then there is Michael Stipe, the man who loses himself amongst the weeds. Whether that is his voice constantly moving and echoing throughout the landscape, his diction focusing more on mood than clarity or the puzzling images that are his words. Here he cultivated an impenetrable reputation both entirely earned and pretty exaggerated. Much of his word choices are down to sound more than meaning, but that in turn supplies an emotional centre meaning we are never lost. And while Stipe has said much of the lyrical content on the album was gibberish, much of it spouted through improvisation, the recurring images are still all there no matter how faded. Much has been said about the appropriateness of Murmur’s title, but a murmur is definitely the correct word, moodier than a whisper and clearer than a mumble. As well as being about movement, Murmur is also clearly an album about communication, with songs ranging from radios without singles to children trying to speak and being spoken to. Arthur Rimbaud, whom is a noted influence on Stipe, wrote a passage that I would like to think had inspired the title, mood and ideas of the album:

Beneath the curtain’s movement, the children
Speak low as happens on dark nights.
Thoughtfully they listen to a distant murmur;
Often shudder at the clear gold voice
Of morning, chiming a metal message
In its crystal globe, and chiming again.  – “Orphan’s New Years Gifts” (II i-vi)

 

Michael Stipe has said it was just called Murmur because it is one of the easiest words in English. I prefer my version.

The strange ambient sounds that introduce the album in “Radio Free Europe” prepare us for the world ahead. The only mention of an actual place on the entire record, we arrive at this “Europe” on boat, a place where media stations and trains stations mix together in a woozy state (though Stipe insists this is one of the songs he was “babbling” on). Whilst Stipes voice calls and echoes out Berry drums chug along like transport, triangles chime alongside Buck’s ringing guitar arpeggios and Mills switches from bright and busy bass lines to thudding piano notes; typical of R.E.M’s much noted democracy, no one person outshines the other.

Whereas the first song was quick and busy, the verses of “Pilgrimage” are sparse, with six repeating notes of guitar and piano and light drumming reverberating across quiet space in the same manner as the vocals. Amidst the moroseness, the lyrics repeat lines about taking fortunes and the image of luck next to images of almost impossible two-headed cows. But as the pilgrimage “gains momentum”, so too does the band, with larger drum fills and a fuller sound coming from both guitars. Regardless of the darkness, people still plough on.

By all purposes, initial impressions of “Laughing” present a brighter song to the former. After all, it has laugh in its name, and Buck’s strings are some of the brightest on the entire album. However beneath the surface is a both a moody bass from Mills, and lyrics concerning the Greek tragedy of Laocoön and his two sons. Although there is laughter in the song – laughter itself tied to music “tunes” – that laughing appears to be the cathartic laugh that releases energy after a terrible event.

After cryptic and dreamlike images, Stipes delivers some of the clearest most precise epigrams in “Talking about the Passion.” But while images of empty mouths and lines like “Not everyone can carry can carry the weight of the world,” he reserves the most puzzling and grammatically incorrect lines to be in French. Between this and Talking Heads “Psycho Killer”, what is it with American art rock groups and speaking French? Either way it is one of the album’s most beautiful tracks, the heavenly harmonies and Rickenbacker brightness in the verses clearly showing the Byrd’s influence often attributed to the band.

My favourite track on the album, though, is “Moral Kiosk.” This song is the one most like the Smith’s, with the chimes of the previous songs making way to melodic cries of the guitars bending strings. The passion extends to the lyrics, with an enigmatic sexuality bubbling over the surface with images of idle hands and Horae, the goddesses of fertility and natural justice. That last part in turn adds to the images of morality and hypocrisy, not just the central image that keeps the narrator’s safe, but words of scandal and shock. The amount of sanctuary the “Moral Kiosk” gives is unclear, but what I do know is when the harmonies come in at chorus with tribal drums, it is one of the most elevating musical moments I have ever heard.

“Mortal Kiosk” is the band at its most rock, but “Perfect Circle” is the most like a country ballad. The 12 string guitar is accompanied with gorgeous clanging piano keys to a beat that has you swinging like a group around a campfire in, well, a perfect circle. Apparently this track was written primarily by Berry, and it closes the first side on a gorgeous and uplifting mood, even if the lyrics of gallows and heaven assumes suggest a darkness to come.

The opening of side two reacts to that darkness by reverting back to childhood. The verses of “Catapult” continue with sullen guitar work from both lead and bass, with Berry laying thick on the snares and toms to create a buzzing sensation, with that and Stipe’s voices sounding like the coward in the hole. However, when it gets to the repetitions of the title, the music because almost joyous, the bright guitars here reminding me of early Who records.

The focus on children continues in “Standing Still,” though here it is more directed to children than from their position. Another folkish creation with jangling guitars and a stabler bass than in previous songs, this has lines that Stipe has wilfully said don’t mean anything, but there are also lines that focus on the idea of being listened to.  Although the poppy calls of “I can hear you” are liberating in their choral cries, the final line of the song is “Can you hear me?” Like many things in Murmur, there are no answers.

“9-9” with perhaps the greatest and most prominent bassline on the whole album, whose dark chimes are so loud that you almost do not here the murmuring muttering in the background. This is a sign for the song itself, the most cryptic song on the entire album, and also the band at their most aggressive. If Stipe didn’t have the temerity to stay on rhythm and key, this could be like a Fall song, but the idea of sounds being the prominent focus on Stipe’s vocals becomes obvious in between the clear words, when he moves to simple and effecting grunts and struggles.

As a nice counterpoint, “Shaking Through” is a lovely composition whose opening strums wouldn’t sound out of place on Help/Rubber Soul era Beatles records. The lyrics are still as open ended and as obtuse as ever, but here are delivered in such a glorious way that, particularly on the “Shaking through/opportune” chorus, it becomes some of the most uplifting moments on the album. With references to the womb and the “Children of today”, I consider this to be a song about childbirth, which more than suits the just plain happy nature of the music, with the beautiful piano work by Mills and chord work from Buck overpowering everything in their wake. Though the final coda still brings back into this moody world the music is now trying to escape from.

This makes the next two songs, all about movement, all the more poignant as result. Despite that morose bringing material following on from “Shaking Through” we immediately return to gorgeous and bright arpeggios from Buck in “We Walk.” The simple and repetitive rhythm from Mills and Berry gives a marching momentum as Stipe recalls walking up the landing, stairs, hall and woods in a seemingly never ending way. Despite the beauty of the music, the repetition accumulates a sort of horror, especially when paired with images of the bath (“oasis”) that French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in, and by the ever growing that ends the song (apparently created by rolling the balls on a pool-table).

With that thunder, intuition would have it that the album would end on a open chorded, ambient track like that other famous 80’s band we covered on this series. Instead, almost as a way to break out of sleep, Murmur ends with maybe its most urgent track in “West of the Fields”. This as it turned as was the perfect ending, with Stipe and rare co-writer Neil Bogan bringing together images and ideas that have been throughout the entire album.  animals, Greek mythology, communication, dreams and a never ending travel. However, all that wouldn’t matter without the rest of the band, and they also bring to this track their most outstanding traits. Bill Berry creates a drum sound that is tight and thunderous, Mike Mills is almost funky in his ever fluctuating bass, and it is all coloured with the beauty of Pete Buck’s guitar and backing vocal, acting as though there was a Doppler effect as the band rushes through the fields. What they find there though remains uncertain. As it should.

Despite not listening to much R.E.M until having to listen to them for this Record Club choice, Murmur – in its puzzling dreamy haze and tight and creative songcraft – is among the best albums I have listened to for this series. It’s the type of music that you think wouldn’t ever find an audience, but of course it did. It did to the point that Rolling Stone would name it Best Album of 1983, a seemingly shocking decision in the same year as  Synchronicity, War, Swordfistrombones and of course all time best selling album Thriller. But still,  despite only listening to it this week, despite the others having amazing iconic moments, despite all the competitors rightful prominence in culture, I don’t think any of those albums are as perfect in their vision as this one. Though perfection is nothing in replace of ambition, this record fortunately has both, to the point that one writer, when talking about “Sitting Still”, thought that this style would make them inaccessible to a wide audience. Reading this in hindsight is adorable.

Still it is still somewhat true. R.E.M weren’t looking for that fame yet, if they ever were. They were still travelling in strange lands…

What do you think, though?

 

R.E.M. Album Rankings

1) Murmur