“Stumble” by R.E.M. (1982)

“Stumble” is the track that ends the Chronic Town EP and of the five tracks on the EP it is the most indicative of a band’s first recording, as its inconsistencies are both mildly maddening and weirdly charming. The track starts off with Michael Stipe laughing and what sounds like a zipper being unzipped followed by a drum and guitar intro. What follows after that is a solid melody that, when listened to chronologically, does lend itself to being a pretty great bridge to Murmur. But then there’s the zoo-like(?) vocalizations and effects at around the 3:45 mark that just seem out of place, and then once that’s done it thankfully goes back to the original melody that’s propelled by Mike Mills’ galloping bass. Don’t get me wrong: “Stumble” is a very good song; it just has some missteps in it. Luckily, the missteps don’t take away from the whole track. This song is a good litmus test because it probably does the best job of separating the casual R.E.M. fan and the diehard R.E.M. fan. If you like this song you probably will like an overwhelming majority of R.E.M.’s catalog up until New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

“Toys in the Attic” by R.E.M. (1987)

Monster took many people by surprise when it was released in 1994, what with its loud guitars and its overall let’s-be-rock-stars-now sound. And while it was easy to think that R.E.M. had embraced a new sound from out of nowhere (the previous albums Automatic for the People, Out of Time, and Green in particular didn’t possess a lot of straight-up rock numbers) the seeds for Monster were sown years previously with the band’s tinkering covers of Velvet Underground songs and Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic”—B-sides which were later compiled onto Dead Letter Office. I can understand if people find this cover to be blasphemous but I find it to be a fun re-working of a ’70s staple song. Michael Stipe’s lead vocals and Mike Mills’ backup vocals give this cover a refreshing garage band or two-take feel to it, and it’s also nice to hear Bill Berry and Peter Buck play like rock stars. R.E.M. weren’t always perfect when it came to playing loud rock (their wheelhouse really was with songs like those that appeared on Automatic and their first two albums) but “Toys in the Attic” provides a nice glimpse of the kind of who-gives-a-fuck energy that lived just below the surface of their initial southern indie sound.

“New Orleans Instrumental No. 1″ by R.E.M. (1992)

When I was in high school I had a t-shirt that had the front cover of Automatic for the People on the front of the shirt and the back cover on the back. I got a lot of mileage out of the shirt; it was a black shirt that had faded to a charcoal gray-ish color. One night during my freshman year at college I went to Taco Bell after class and a guy in his 30′s suddenly blurted out “Great album!” when I walked by. We started talking about the album and about R.E.M. and then he said (I’m paraphrasing from memory), “You know what’s great about Automatic, other than it’s a great album? My newborn and my two year-old fall asleep to it. Doesn’t matter how spazzy or fussy they are—more times than not they just fall asleep after a few songs. This album is a lifesaver.” I asked him if there was a song in particular that seem to do the trick more than others and he said: “Oh ‘New Orleans Instrumental’ for sure.” “New Orleans Instrumental No. 1″ is, as the title makes clear, an instrumental song that was recorded in New Orleans and it is one of the few instrumentals that the band ever made. It might sound strange to use a story about music putting kids to sleep as a segue to talk about a song’s greatness but it seems more than apt. “Instrumental” is a gorgeous little soundscape and a perfect bridge between “Everybody Hurts” and “Sweetness Follows”—two of the album’s darkest songs—and it helps kids fall asleep? That last part trumps everything, really, now that I have a newborn.

“Second Guessing” by R.E.M. (1984)

Here are the lyrics to “Second Guessing,” the song that opens side two (Right) on Reckoning:

“Why’re you trying to second guess me?
I am tired of second guessing
What will be your look this season?
Who will be your book this season?

(chorus)
Here we are, here we are, here we are

Why’re you trying to second guess me?
I am tired of second guessing
What will be your look this season?
Be in my club, write a book this season”

To just read the lyrics as they are is an exercise in being underwhelmed. There’s not much here quite frankly. But like so many of R.E.M.’s early songs the lyrics aren’t real weighty or meaty as much as they are vessels by which Michael Stipe can do his vocal thing—his semi gravel-y, Southern vocal thing. If you just read the lyrics you miss the Woooo-ooo-oooo‘s and the degree of singability the song has with the music that accompanies it. It is songs like “Second Guessing” that steer me toward the notion that the meaning of a song’s lyrics aren’t always important or central to enjoying the song. Sometimes, it’s better to just sing along and let the music soak into you and not really care what the point of it all is.

“Exhuming McCarthy” by R.E.M. (1987)

“You’re beautiful, more beautiful than me/You’re honorable, more honorable than me/Loyal to the Bank of America” are the opening lyrics of “Exhuming McCarthy.” The intro of the song involves a typewriter, the solo includes the audio from when Joseph Welch confronted Joseph McCarthy during the Army hearings, and in between Michael Stipe sarcastically sings about ’80s business acumen and jingoism. This is one of R.E.M.’s best unabashedly sarcastic songs. I’m kind of surprised that it hasn’t been used as an unofficial anthem by pockets of the Occupy movement, come to think of it. “Exhuming McCarthy” is the third song on Document and while “Finest Worksong” and “Welcome to the Occupation” are fine songs on a great album, this is the deep cut that ensures the album’s Great and Classic tags that have been rightfully affixed to it. “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” with their radio readiness are the tracks that get you to buy the album; “Exhuming McCarthy,” with its playful yet serious subject matter wrapped inside of damn perfect pop rock sound, is the track that will make you love one of the best albums of the ’80s.

“What If We Give It Away?” by R.E.M. (1986)

Back when vinyl and cassettes were the only music formats—back when there were two sides to an album—R.E.M. had a habit of naming each side, especially during their I.R.S. years. On Lifes Rich Pageant, the band’s environmentally conscious breakthrough album, side one was called “Dinner side” and side two was called “Supper side.” The third song on the supper side is “What If We Give It Away?” a track that starts with a pistol-shot of an intro but immediately downshifts to the kind of mellow southern brand of college music R.E.M. essentially invented. Known by casual fans as the album containing “Fall On Me” and “Superman” Lifes Rich Pageant was not only the first R.E.M. album to go gold but it was also the first album that highlighted Michael Stipe’s political voice (as well as his actual voice; gone, for the most part, was the purposely muddy vocals). All of R.E.M.’s early albums have one deep cut that is equal to or better than any of its singles and “What If We Give It Away?” is one of the best songs on this album; a serving of perfect mashed potatoes to accent an already damn fine meal.

“White Tornado” by R.E.M. (1987)

The B-side to “Superman,” “White Tornado” was recorded on the same day that “Radio Free Europe” was back in 1981 (and I’m pretty sure it was the original Hib-Tone version of “Radio Free Europe” and not the I.R.S. version, if I’m not mistaken). “White Tornado” clocks in at just under two minutes and is an instrumental song that could probably best be described as an attempt by a southern band to update the surf rock genre. I doubt that R.E.M. made this song as an homage to ’60s surf music but whenever I hear it I can’t help but to think that Peter Buck’s riffs are anything less than an ironic nod to the genre that brought us campy homoerotica disguised as imaginary California tourism advertisements. Of course, you may listen to this song and hear the simple instrumental that it is, complete with cascading drums, jangly electric guitar, and a pulsating bass. Either way, for a band that rarely made instrumental songs “White Tornado” does a good job of showing off R.E.M.’s diversity.

“Tongue” by R.E.M. (1994)

“Anybody can get laid”

The above lyric always taunted me when I listened to this song when I was sixteen years old and was still a virgin. The context of the song didn’t matter; it felt like Michael Stipe was personally fucking with me. Anybody can get laid—except for me. The high schooler’s dilemma. The melodrama, the self-deprecation, the exaggeration. I’m not looking for any retroactive pity or anything like that (I was a shy kid who weighed 90 pounds and had dental problems: if I were a publicly traded asset I would’ve eventually been downgraded out of the stock exchange; nothing had to be spelled out for me). No, I bring all of this up because I think it is fair to assume that most, if not all, of us go through spells of socio-sexual awkwardness and a song can become an odd reinforcement of that awkwardness. To me, at sixteen, “Tongue” felt and sounded like a make-out song—granted, a weird kind of make-out song that had that early-’90s-trying-to-emulate-the-’70s feel to it, but a make-out song nonetheless. Which is certainly appropriate because the song is about a girl receiving oral sex (thus Michael Stipe’s falsetto vocals). On an album that turned the volume up on its guitars and drums, “Tongue” provides a nice break and shift by focusing on an organ and a piano, and Mike Mills does such a good job on the organ and piano that my younger (melodramatically) tormented self could look past Stipe’s taunt and just love this song, awkwardness be damned.

“Binky the Doormat” by R.E.M. (1996)

New Adventures in Hi-Fi is the album I consider to be R.E.M.’s swan song, and I imagine that I am not alone in this regard. This is the last album that drummer Bill Berry would appear on and, while I love Stipe, Buck, and Mills, it just never felt like R.E.M. after Berry left. Berry was not a modern-day John Bonham by any stretch of the imagination, but he was integral to the dynamics and foundation of the band. Bill Berry was the Johnny Sample of the band; the guy who never had the name recognition as Namath or Snell (Stipe or Buck) but whose presence was always vital. R.E.M. caught people by surprise by their rock star makeover release Monster, and New Adventures in many ways builds off of what Monster set up but throws in some dashes of experimentation.^[1] “Binky the Doormat,” to me, is the best straight-up rock song on this album and of R.E.M.’s post-Automatic for the People catalog. The combination of Peter Buck’s booming guitar and Mike Mills’ high backing vocals make for a fitting swan song (even if I didn’t know it at the time).

[1] I.e.–the 7+ minute sonic assault “Leave”; the somber and Patti Smith-featuring “E-Bow the Letter”; the zither-based “Zither.”

“Shaking Through” by R.E.M. (1983)

If I were in high school or college listening to Murmur for the first time when it was released in 1983, I imagine that I would be blown away by the first side. Then I would flip the album over to side two and be impressed with “Catapult” and “Sitting Still,” followed by an appreciation of the tonal change that “9-9″ provides. While “9-9″ was playing I imagine that I would have already fallen in love with the album. And then “Shaking Through” would play next and I would fall in something that transcends love with the album. The first ten seconds of “Shaking Through” is so damn gorgeous and sunny and light and… smile-inducing and… It’s just so fucking beautiful. The kind of musical beauty that just grabs you; a siren song that connects with you and has nothing to do with the Greek poets and maritime disasters. If the first ten seconds connects with you, you are done—powerless against the rest of the song. And if you don’t like the song, or if this song doesn’t speak to you? Sirens can be finicky sometimes. Maybe you’ll enjoy the hidden track that begins after the four minute mark. For my money, Peter Buck’s guitar and Mike Mills’ piano and bass are beautifully mesmerizing, and they conspire to create one of the greatest overlooked songs of the ’80s.

“King of Birds” by R.E.M. (1987)

The penultimate song on Document, “King of Birds” starts with a quasi-Middle Eastern feel, followed by a nice marching beat by Bill Berry. It grows into a mellow number that finds Michael Stipe’s vocals layered on top of one another during the chorus. When the song reaches its climax it revolves primarily around Stipe’s vocals rather than Peter Buck’s guitar (which was a bit of a departure from the rest of the songs on the album). Document represented a new chapter for R.E.M. as it was not only the band’s first platinum album but it was also the first album with producer Scott Litt.^[1] Litt’s footprint on Document was to inject more rock, and even some more catchiness, into R.E.M.’s sound—things that would become more manifold years later with Monster. But Litt was also keenly aware of the band’s elasticity, and “King of Birds” provides a good glimpse of what was to come with R.E.M. on their future Warner Bros. releases.

[1] Litt worked with R.E.M. from Document through New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a veritable murderer’s row of albums in terms of diversity.

“Voice of Harold” by R.E.M. (1987)

Dead Letter Office is a collection of B-sides that never saw the day of light on the radio, or on MTV. (The album’s title is named after the USPS office that holds undeliverable mail.) “Voice of Harold,” the B-side of “So. Central Rain,” is the most interesting track on the album—an album that has its fair share of oddities and curios. It’s the most interesting track because the music of this song is the exact same music found on “7 Chinese Bros” except that the lyrics consist of liner notes from a gospel album. “Voice of Harold” finds Michael Stipe alternating between singsonging and throwing in a little southern drawl. It’s a very loose song, one of the few glimpses of the band engaging in a who-cares kind of fun. “Voice of Harold” is by no means a better song than “7 Chinese Bros.” (or most of their other songs, really) but it’s a fun oddity to listen to nonetheless. It’s one of the few legitimate bright spots on the original incarnation of Dead Letter Office.^[1]

[1] The original vinyl and cassette release of Dead Letter Office had 15 B-sides and that was it. The CD release included the Chronic Town EP as bonus tracks. To this day the only way you can buy Chronic Town is to buy the original vinyl, or to buy the CD or digital version of Dead Letter Office.

“Half a World Away” by R.E.M. (1991)

Out of Time is the album that propelled R.E.M. into another stratosphere—mostly due to “Losing My Religion,” the seminal from-out-of-nowhere, ubiquitous hit single of the first half of the ’90s. The other reason that Out of Time hit such a mainstream nerve was that it was quite a departure, tonally, from the rest of R.E.M.’s catalog up to that point. It doesn’t sound like a seventh album; it sounds like the kind creative rebirth that countless bands and artists have failed to produce. “Half a World Away,” the eighth song on the album and third song of side two, is probably the prettiest song R.E.M. ever produced. Peter Buck’s beautifully galloping mandolin and Michael Stipe’s perfect vocals make this song not only one of the best songs on the album, but also one of the best ballads that R.E.M. ever did this side of “Perfect Circle.”

“Gardening at Night” by R.E.M. (1982)

With all due respect to “Wolves, Lower,” the opening track on R.E.M.’s first EP Chronic Town and by proxy the very first song in R.E.M.’s catalog, “Gardening at Night” should have been the first song on the EP, the first song in their catalog. I love “Wolves, Lower”; I really do. But “Gardening at Night” is the perfect introduction to all of R.E.M.’s strengths: Peter Buck’s Byrds-inspired brand of indie-country guitar playing; Michael Stipe’s vocals that act more like an instrument, complete with concise cryptic lyrics; Mike Mills’ and Bill Berry’s bass guitar and drums acting as a perfect buttress and complimenting the cohesive whole. Eight months after the release of Chronic Town R.E.M. would release Murmur, the full-length debut album that would send them on the trajectory of becoming one of the greatest and most influential bands of the ’80′s and ’90′s. Chronic Town, a five-track EP, is often forgotten or overlooked in R.E.M.’s catalog but it does an excellent job at displaying the seeds of genius that the band was sowing before their Zeitgeist run took root. And the best song from this EP is the second track—which should’ve been the first—a song about drunkenly relieving yourself at night.

Eponymous was my introduction to R.E.M., and Document, the album that housed their biggest hits “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” soon followed. From there I was exposed to Green and Lifes Rich Pageant before being introduced to their first three albums—the instant classics Murmur and Reckoning, and their jagged and maddening (but still important) Fables of the Reconstruction. Out of Time was released while I was in eighth grade but it wasn’t until later that year when I was a freshman that it really spoke to me. Automatic for the People (a haunting, beautiful piece of melancholy that Bono once called the greatest country music album never made) and Monster were released while I was in high school, and New Adventures came out after I graduated from high school—just in time for a part of my life that started to embrace experimentation, both of the drug and social variety. In short: R.E.M., musically speaking, was a constant for in my life from the time I was in middle school until cigarette-purchasing age. There were always other bands that I loved in between R.E.M. releases in high school (Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam) but R.E.M. was my first true musical girlfriend/wife. I once drove to Athens GA to go buy all the R.E.M. vinyl I could buy (two Dead Letter Office records with different covers, Reckoning, and Fables of the Reconstruction). I acted like a giddy schoolgirl when I found the Chronic Town vinyl EP (in great condition!) at Record Swap in Homewood IL buried in a pile for $3.99. I have never connected with a band like I did with R.E.M.

And so this Volume is both a love letter to my first favorite band and a means of displaying their best overlooked songs—songs that will make established fans nod in a way that reinforces a love and appreciation of the band, as well as a 14-song playlist that will be accessible to those who maybe only know R.E.M. through their radio hits. This Volume will begin and end with tracks from the Chronic Town EP (their first recording) and it will include tracks from all of their albums up to New Adventures in Hi-Fi, save for Fables of the Reconstruction and Green. (Nothing against those two albums, but I wanted to make room for Dead Letter Office—the band’s compilation album of B-sides.)

I hope you enjoy what I have selected.

[1] Why don’t I like concerts and live shows? They never seem to meet my expectations. Which is why I prefer live albums. I realize that I am probably in the minority about this, but I’m just being honest. No concert can ever connect with me the way that Europe ’72 or 10,000 Maniacs’ Unplugged performance can in terms of portability and, for lack of a better word, re-listenability.