When I was 13, I thought R.E.M. was just about the coolest band in existence. (That should give you an idea of the kind of 14-year-old I was.) Michael Stipe wrote exactly the kind of "deep" lyrics that appealed to my self-conscious intellectualism even if I seldom had any idea what he was talking about. They had an air of esotericism & sophistication about them while never forgetting that they were supposed to be a rock & roll band. I listened to them a lot in high school, so it's a little surprising that I never paid money for an R.E.M. album. They were one of the 1st bands that I stocked up on when the file sharing & CD burning era came around; I pirated & burned all of their LPs up until the then-current Reveal. All except Automatic for the People, which I stole from my sister. Since it's the only R.E.M. album to appear in this series, I'm going to take this opportunity to add a few overarching remarks about their career in general.
Automatic for the People is a moody, serious album, saturated in the kind of darkness we hadn't heard from the band since Fables of the Reconstruction. But rather than themes of folklore & the pain & beauty that coexist in the American south, Automatic is mostly about just plain old death. Still, it lives on the pop side of their discography, post-Document when they allowed themselves to be rock stars (a trajectory that peaked with Monster). The production is cleaned up; the vocals no longer sound like somebody threw a blanket over the microphone; Mike Mills's backing vocals are still present but mostly stay out of the leads' way; the lyrics are no less inscrutable but they occasionally throw in a more straightforward song. This album particularly showcases Bill Berry's big, booming arena-sized drums, thanks to producer Scott Litt. The drums are so huge they almost come as a shock in opening track "Drive," & they're followed by a bombastic string section arranged by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Between the strings, which show up again on "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite," "Everybody Hurts" & "Nightswimming," the dusty late-night organ & Mike Mills's accordion, the instrumentation weaves a shroud of ethereal mystery that covers the whole album.
This atmosphere sometimes manifests in downright spookiness, like the fingerpicked licks that open "Drive" & "Monty Got a Raw Deal" (this time in bouzouki). Then there's the art rock of the squealing atonal guitar leads that complicate the life & death reflection "Sweetness Follows." The doo-wop shuffle & wordless backing vocals of "Star Me Kitten" evoke another kind of mystery, this time somewhat Mazzy Star-esque. I know I said at the top that R.E.M. never forgot to be a rock band, but "Ignoreland" is the only real rocker here, with its driving power chords, gang shouts & bloozy harmonica. The only real tonal outlier is "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite," whose execution is a bit too cheerful. Even "Everybody Hurts" with its positive message feels more like an exhausted reminder than a cheesy affirmation.
For a while I pretended to understand Michael Stipe's lyrics, & for a while after that I pretended they were all nonsense. Today I think I understand that his artistry depends on the interplay between what he sings & how he sings it. With one of the most emotive voices in rock, Stipe could sing entirely wordlessly & you would still get what he was communicating. He often chooses words for sound rather than meaning, & the heart of a song lies at the intersection of what the words are giving & what his delivery is giving. Every once in a while, though, he decides to let you in on exactly what he's thinking about. "Try Not to Breathe," whose vaguely folk-inspired melody & 6/8 pulse are reminiscent of the band's earlier "Swan Swan H," is a sensitively-written song from the perspective of a dying elder. The speaker wants to die with dignity, on their own terms, & implicitly critiques the Western culture's comprehensive fear & avoidance of death at all costs. Then there's the gorgeous, piano-driven "Nightswimming," which along with Smashing Pumpkins's "1979" is one of the iconic '90s songs about longing for the simpler days of childhood. I've written before about double nostalgia, that curious feeling where somebody else's nostalgia for a time you never experienced triggers your own. I remember being on a family beach vacation in summer 2000, lying in bed after everybody else had gone to sleep listening to Michael Stipe singing about his childhood in the late 1960s. Maybe that's why if I had to choose, I'd say Automatic for the People is my favorite R.E.M. album. I could make a case for Reckoning or Life's Rich Pageant, but neither of those got me through a family vacation, & that's got to count for something.
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