Animal

“Animal” is a rare and precious thing: A hard rocking R.E.M. song written and recorded after the departure of Bill Berry in 1997, and before the Accelerate sessions in 2007.  Of course, it’s not exactly a conventional rocker — though it gets nice and crunchy on the chorus, most of the song is a cosmic haze carried by a lead guitar hook that somewhat resembles the piano part from “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream.” Lyrically and musically, it’s the closest the band have come to straight-up sci-fi — as  Michael Stipe ponders the future, messages from alien visitors, and the 4th dimension,  the band evoke the feeling of hurtling through time and space, and vibrating at the speed of light. It’s a strange, delirious tune that seems to delight in its own awe and confusion. It’s pretty funny, too — when faced with the promise of truth and salvation via divine/alien intervention, Stipe simply utters a deadpan, Keanu-esque “…whoa!”

Everybody Hurts

One of Michael Stipe’s greatest strengths as a singer and lyricist — and presumably, also as a human being in general — is his seemingly effortless ability to convey genuine empathy. This is why so many of his “advice” songs work as well as they do, and why his corniest sentiments are often the most affecting. There’s just something there in his voice that indicates a sincere desire to see people do well, and a root of optimism that anchors even his most dark and cynical moments. As he moves on through his career, he brings up the future with greater frequency in his lyrics, and it makes perfect sense — much of the R.E.M. catalog is concerned with moving onward into the future, and finding ways to improve upon the flaws of the present in that future.

“Everybody Hurts” is an essential R.E.M. song, primarily because on a very basic level, it is about convincing another person that should want to be a part of this future. Out of everything they have ever recorded, it may be the most direct in its mission. Really, it kinda has to be — there is absolutely no use for ambiguity if the object of your song is to console the depressed and talk them out of suicide.

“Everybody Hurts” is a public service, and its arrangement is precisely calibrated to appeal to a person in a state of melancholy, and subtly, gently lift them up into a feeling of hope. There are no empty promises, and no expectations of easy salvation in the song, but there is kindness, generosity, friendship, and the encouragement that pain and suffering are not everlasting things, and that we often have the power to flip those negative experiences into something beautiful and constructive.

If you don’t need to hear any of this, you might find Stipe’s sentiment to be obvious, saccharine, and maybe even a little embarrassing. Good for you, but the reality is, the best, most important advice we ever get is the most simple and straight-forward. When we’re lost, lonely, and hopeless, we need the honest, obvious truth: Everybody hurts sometimes, so hold on. You are not alone.

A Birthday Note: This post marks the first anniversary of this blog’s first entry, and also the 20th birthday of my little brother Andrew. This song is for him.

Bandwagon

“Bandwagon” is a good old fashioned b-side. It doesn’t require any context to be enjoyable, and it thrives without having to live up to any sort of expectation. It’s doesn’t have the oomph of a proper a-side, and wouldn’t have made much sense if it had been included on Fables of the Reconstruction, but it’s a happy little gem that serves as a fine complement to the levity of “Can’t Get There From Here.”  The song is carried by Peter Buck’s breezy, cheery chord progressions, which is contrasted with a rather cynical and sarcastic lyric by Michael Stipe that gently mocks herd mentality, and comes about as close as he has ever come to telling other musicians not to bite his band’s style.

7 Chinese Bros. / Voice of Harold

“There are songs I wrote in the past that were gender-specific. “7 Chinese Bros.” was about me breaking up a couple — and then dating both of them, a man and a woman, which is a terrible thing to do, but I was young and stupid.”

Michael Stipe in the April 2008 issue of Spin.

Okay, whoa.

That’s pretty scandalous and all, but c’mon, it’s also not that surprising so there’s no need to focus on that aspect of this revelation. The thing that really throws me about this is how aside from an oblique reference to what I presume to be both halves of this couple in the first line of the verses (“this mellow, sweet short haired boy, woman offers pull up a seat”), there really is no way to pull that narrative from the lyrics of the song. It just isn’t there! The first line introduces the man and the woman, the second introduces a setting and suggests a conflict, and the rest of the verse is entirely abstract. The chorus botches an allusion to Claire Hutchet Bishop‘s 1938 children’s book The Five Chinese Brothers, and nods in the general direction of both guilt and renewal.

The revelation of Stipe’s motivation in writing the song does shed some light on the allusion to The Five Chinese Brothers. In Bishop’s story — which is based upon a Chinese folk tale — one of the brothers is able to hold the entire ocean in his mouth, and does so for a boy who wants to gather fish. The boy turns out to be greedy, and does not return to shore when he is beckoned. The brother is unable to breathe and is forced to let the ocean out, which in turn drowns the boy. The brother is later sentenced to death by the townsfolk. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see why Stipe would relate his sordid scenario to this tale — it’s pretty clear now that he’s the selfish little boy in this story.

It’s still somewhat surprising to me that there’s this dark, painful story is buried in the subtext of this perky, innocuous song. It makes me wonder just how much is hidden in Stipe’s early lyrics, and how of what we don’t understand in his songs actually comes down to carefully coded messages to himself. Truthfully, aside from admiring the gentle sentimentality of the opening line, I’d never given all that much thought to the words of “7 Chinese Bros.” until just now — I’ve been fixated on the sunny, chiming sound of Peter Buck’s guitar part for as long as I’ve known the song. I suspect this is the case for many people, and perhaps the band themselves. After all, they did record “Voice of Harold,” which puts Michael and the instrumental to the “I’d listen to them recite the phone book!” test, though in this case, it’s the liner notes of a gospel album. It’s very funny and cute, though I don’t know if I’d label it “a must.”

Binky The Doormat

The lyrics of “Binky The Doormat” read like a string of non sequiturs and inside jokes, but it nonetheless comes together as a fractured, impressionistic portrait of a man thrown into the deep end of sexual confusion and frustration.  If I am to believe what I read on the internet, the title is lifted a cult film that I’ve never seen, and it comes from a sequence in which a depressed clown launches into a self-pitying, coke-fueled rant about his poor luck in relationships. That’s just the starting point, really — this isn’t necessarily a song about a clown, but rather a desperate person with low self-esteem who is willing to humiliate himself to gain approval and acceptance.

Basically, the character in the song is a passive, self-deprecating type who is doing everything he can to stand up for himself despite the nagging feeling that he deserves to be treated badly.  The first verse finds the character playing it cool — there’s a hint of kink, but he’s owning up to feelings of distance and insecurity. In the second verse, he’s feeling a bit more confident and throws in a great little “I’m a grower, not a shower” gag, but he seems addled and confused. Then comes the third verse…yikes. It’s the most confrontational part of the song, but also the moment when we get a sense of his emasculation, and complicity with his own degradation. He manages to defend himself, but in a moment he’s backsliding, and telling his abuser how beautiful they are despite their cruelty. Depending how you read the context, this is either totally hot, or totally pathetic.

An organ note: This song has a brilliant organ part, but it’s buried beneath the guitar in the album mix. It is more audible and prominent in the version featured in Road Movie, but I think I prefer it to be hidden in the mix because it has a nice subliminal effect, and sort of sounds like this tiny bit of self-respect being drowned out by Peter Buck’s overwhelming wall of guitar fuzz. Similarly, I enjoy the way Mike Mills’ whiny shouts — “go away, go away!” — are made to sound tiny and weak.

Monty Got A Raw Deal

A brief list of reasons why Michael Stipe would want to write a song in tribute to Montgomery Clift:

1) Identification with his sexuality. Clift had affairs with both men and women, and though he was closeted, his homosexuality was not entirely unknown to the world.

2) Identification with his celebrity; specifically the way Clift’s desire for both privacy and commercial success forced him to live something akin to a double-life.

3) Fascination with Clift’s tragedy. After an accident scarred his beautiful face and left him impotent, Clift fell into the depths of depression and addiction. His story is a reminder that great success and beauty can be ruined very easily.

4) Montgomery Clift was very handsome. I suspect that much of Stipe’s interest in Clift is based on finding him attractive and intriguing. The song is like a love letter to a ghost.

The lyrics look to the past, but I believe that Stipe is mainly interested in divining his own future. The song conveys a powerful dread and paranoia, to the point that the singer sounds as though he cannot imagine life moving on without a taste of tragedy and defeat. This is in part due to the the bleak, solemn tone of the music, but it’s also in the passivity of Stipe’s language — he comes across like a man resigned to his fate, and can only hope to find his dignity in stoicism.

Oddfellows Local 151

Lifes Rich Pageant, Document, and Green were composed and recorded in the span of four years, which is interesting mainly because in retrospect, it gives us the opportunity to hear the band work out how to integrate politics into their music in a fairly brief period of time. Lifes Rich Pageant masks its earnest hopefulness in obscure language; a strategy that strikes me as somewhat defensive, and a holdover of the shyness that characterized the group’s earliest work. The pendulum swings a year later on Document — the tone darkens considerably, and attitude is far more cynical, as if Michael Stipe had somehow suddenly lost the optimism apparent on “Cuyahoga,” “Begin The Begin,” and “I Believe.” And then, bam, the pendulum swings hard in the other direction, and much of Green revises the themes of Lifes Rich Pageant, with an eye towards clarity and accessibility. I certainly believe that the bookends of this little trilogy are the closest to the general spirit of the band, but you’ve got to wonder: What pushed them towards the bleakness and the cynicism on Document?

I don’t think it was any one thing so much as it was an expression of a stage most anyone goes through when developing their political awareness. You jump into things believing “Hey, we can do this! We can change the world if we want to! Let’s put our heads together and start a new government!,” and then comes some inevitable moment of disillusionment, and suddenly all the world looks grim.  This phase can last a very long time, you can go for years thinking the worst of everyone, but then the reality sets in — yes, corruption and despair are constants in this world, and even the best institutions are a rigged game, but there’s ample opportunity to give put something positive in the world if you manage your expectations, get up, and put in the work. And there you have it — Green. It’s a pretty tidy, sensible arc, and I’m sure a lot of people went through it with the band in real time.

Document is labeled “File Under Fire,” and for good reason. The element comes up again and again throughout the record, an overt symbol of destruction and purification. Even the album’s sunniest tunes have an undercurrent of apocalyptic dread, this feeling that all of modern society could crumble and burn at any moment. “Oddfellows Local 151,” the record’s  grim conclusion, starts off with a hum of feedback that evokes a haze of thick black smoke before progressing to a tense, solemn dirge that climaxes in Michael Stipe howling “fiiiiiiiiiiiire house,” as if he’s half-heartedly calling for  rescue as the world is engulfed in flames.  It’s a bitter and ironic, and the perfect way to end the song cycle.

Disappear

Unfortunately for the character in “Disappear,” all of his epiphanies have come too far after the point when they would have been useful, and he’s stuck looking backwards, trying to figure out just where he went wrong. That said, the character is not awash in a sea of self-pity — if anything, he is too busy admiring his reflection upon the surface to dive into his sadness.  The song comes close to falling into the Michael Stipe pep talk category, but ultimately, its advice rings hollow. “The only thing worth looking for is what you find inside” rings out, but if it has any truth, it has been co-opted and corrupted by the singer’s apparent narcissism and nihilism.  It’s hard to feel bad for the guy — he’s  made himself into an emotional apparition, and if we take him at his word, it’s exactly what he wishes to be.

Wolves, Lower

Despite all of Michael Stipe’s shyness and mumbling,  if the individual tracks on both Chronic Town and Murmur had to be filed into genres like movies at a video store, many of the songs would fit comfortably in the action/adventure section.  “Wolves, Lower” is a fine example: It immediately establishes a tone of mystery and suspense that eventually shifts into a rush of adrenaline, as if the protagonist has suddenly been thrown into a fight-or-flight scenario.  Peter Buck’s crisp arpeggios do much of the work, but the thrills come courtesy of Bill Berry’s percussion, which keeps a jumpy, nervous pace without pushing the tone of the piece too close to that of outright panic. There’s a fine balance of paranoia and courage in “Wolves, Lower,” and a sense that the tune’s strange, vague nocturnal adventure is much more thrilling than it is terrifying.

(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville

When I was in high school, I had a job as a stock boy at the local supermarket. They played old-school Muzak over the P.A., i.e., mellow instrumental versions of well-known pop songs, never the actual recordings. In the time I was there, I noticed that there were a handful of R.E.M. songs in rotation: “Man On The Moon,” “Shiny Happy People,” “Everybody Hurts,” and, uh, “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville.” I probably heard the Muzak version of “Rockville” a few times before I realized what I was hearing — not that the song wasn’t recognizable in this form, but because I didn’t realize the song was well-known enough to enter the context of mid-90s supermarket Muzak. But really, why not? “Rockville” is a straight-up traditional country-rock tune, and one of the most unabashedly mainstream songs the band has ever recorded.

Much of the song’s charm — and near-total lack of weirdness — comes down to the fact that “Rockville” is more or less a Mike Mills solo composition. Michael Stipe may have filled the tune with obscure turns of phrase, but Mills’ words are simple and sincere: He’s way into a girl, but she’s leaving town, and headed off to a dull suburb in Maryland. He imagines that his life will be boring and lonely without her, and his vision of her life in Rockville is almost hilariously grim. It’s a very sweet song, but the best thing about it is that the singer’s earnest pleas are colored with a bit of selfishness. This is not to say that he is in any way a creep, but it’s pretty fair to say that this song is more about him and his desire for stability than it is about her.

A Jicksy Note: Very sloppy, but it fills my heart with joy!

Romance

If “Losing My Religion” can be understood as a portrait of a person who has been driven into paranoia by an infatuation they believe to be rather hopeless, “Romance” is like the sensation of a perky, confident crush that leaves the brain a bit scrambled, albeit in a totally pleasant sort of way. All the feeling is in the sound of the music and the voices; the lyrics are cryptic to the point of seeming nonsensical. Nevertheless, there are some great images that don’t quite connect on a literal level — I particularly enjoy the line about putting heads down on desks, it takes me back to elementary school– but they all flow together like jump-cut, re-arranged scenes from some lost ’80s romantic comedy.

It’s rather fitting that this one was indeed recorded for a soundtrack back in the ’80s, but the film is so obscure that I doubt anyone but the most obsessive R.E.M. enthusiasts have viewed it in the past twenty-odd years. (I sure as hell haven’t seen it.) I’m not up on the movie’s plot, but I like to think that it’s about a pair of mis-matched adjunct professors who fall in love in some sleepy college town, and get caught up in some far-flung screwball adventure.

Permanent Vacation

“Permanent Vacation” dates back to R.E.M.’s earliest days as a local party band. There’s a lot of other songs from that period that will not be covered on this site, but “Permanent Vacation” makes the cut mainly because for some reason, the band chose to rescue it from obscurity, and made it a setlist staple on their last two tours. Well, I can guess at the reason — it’s a carefree rave-up and it’s probably fun to play, it’s a way of reconnecting with their roots, and it’s a treat for the geeks who’ve got all the old bootleg tapes.  It’s cute. But if we’re being very honest about this, it’s not much of a song. At best, it’s a fun bit of juvenelia, and at worst, it’s just a party rocker by numbers. There’s nothing in particular to dislike about it, and it zooms by awfully quickly, but I’d be lying to you if I told you that I didn’t resent that I’ve seen the band play this song, but I’ve never seen them perform a single track from Murmur.

Shaking Through

If Murmur is about anything at all, it’s about communication. More accurately, its songs attempt to articulate the state of being entirely inarticulate, or unable to process the way other people express themselves. There’s a sense of confusion in just about every track, but more than that, a genuine effort to overcome this mess of miscommunication. “Shaking Through” begins with a statement of resigned frustration — “could it be that one small voice doesn’t count in the room?” — but as the song carries along, it finds its grace in the sound of the music, if not its words. “Shaking through / opportune” may look terrible and obtuse  in print, but that chorus sounds absolutely glorious on record, as the piano, rhythm, and harmony come together like a gentle wave of compassion and humility. Even more is conveyed in the song’s bridge, in which Michael Stipe sings the line “in my life…” over a few bars, but never completes the thought, as though he cannot find the words to express what he’s feeling, and jumped the gun a bit because he was so eager to be understood.  It’s an awkward moment that we all recognize from life, but the band have turned it into something rather gorgeous and sublime.

Suspicion

In “Suspicion,” the sound is the setting: The gentle chimes and subdued beats evoke the image of an immaculate, artfully decorated high-end hotel lounge. The textures of the piece are understated but incredibly suggestive — you can hear the light shifting in the room, the sparkle on the edge of the glasses, the colors and the curves of the furniture’s retro-modern design. We’re right there with Michael Stipe’s protagonist, but he’s distant and aloof, doing everything he can to keep himself from thinking about his slowly disintegrating love affair. He can numb himself a bit, but he can’t shake his doubts, or his infatuation. The strings carry much of the song’s quiet melancholy, but Stipe’s understated performance is what kills. His expression of love is sincere, but he can’t overcome his paranoia, or repair the growing rift between himself and his lover. In the end, all he can do is listen to the music, and retreat into the world of dreams.

Wanderlust

In the context of Around The Sun, an album overflowing with somewhat plodding mid-tempo numbers, the cute, jaunty “Wanderlust” may as well be a full-on rocker. It’s a perky, light-hearted tune, and its presence smack dab in the middle of the running order is crucial to providing the record with a sense of emotional and musical dynamic. That said, “Wanderlust” may be amiable, but it’s not especially memorable in terms of its structure and arrangement — though one can make the argument that it’s like a distant cousin of “We Walk” from Murmur, it mostly just sounds like something John Brion might toss off in an afternoon. Almost all of the song’s charm comes from Michael Stipe’s vocal performance, which hits upon a peculiar, manic cheeriness when the song hits its emotional peak: “I want to kiss the astronauts when they salute to me! Me! Me! Me!” It’s an inspired moment, and it elevates the song from being merely likable to something quite adorable.

Be Mine

Michael Stipe’s love songs tend to be either self-absorbed or self-effacing, but “Be Mine” manages to be both simultaneously, which may speak to exactly why it’s so effective in hinting at the neuroses that come along with most any expression of unconditional love and devotion. The song is full of sweet, slightly odd hyperbole, but every moment is vulnerable and sincere, the words of a man who will do anything to hold on to this person that he loves. He feels humbled by their beauty, but even though he promises to admire them and give them space, he seems mostly focused on the insight and adventure he stands to gain from his lover’s company. This is not unreasonable — if anything, this is a totally honest way of depicting this sort of romantic love, because when you’re caught up in it, all you can think about is the magic, and hope that what you’re feeling is only the beginning of something that will last forever. Though “Be Mine” works well as a simple, straightforward love song, it is perhaps better understood as a character study of a man who is totally over his head in love, to the point that it pains him to imagine himself separate from the object of his affection. It’s not really about the person so much as it’s about the thrill of hope, and the fear that it could all fall away at any moment.

Old Man Kensey

Much of Fables of the Reconstruction is concerned with the mystique of outsiders, specifically misunderstood or overlooked older men living in small towns.  It’s an interesting area of fascination for a young band. Whereas your average rock band full of young dudes is primarily focused on the narrow confines of their own psyches or speaking of the outside  world in broad, unintentionally condescending terms, Stipe’s mix of empathy and curiosity when investigating the lives of characters on the margins of society seems both humane, and ever so slightly sexual. (It’s not so hard to think of some of the songs on Fables as being like mash notes to their respective characters.) All of the characters are more or less eccentric, but the most important and consistent connection is that they are aloof, impenetrable and unknowable.  Stipe’s interest is exacerbated by their refusal to connect, and the romance comes from their willful separation from what the observer may believe to be the corrupting influence of modern life. In other words, it’s a young man’s search for purity and authenticity. “Old Man Kensey” can remain untainted and perfect because he’s not a man, per se — he’s an idea of a man, a concept that cannot be ruined by the harshness of reality.

Special Announcement: Accelerate “Premature Evaluation”

My “premature evaluation” of the new album Accelerate is up on Stereogum. Please go check it out, but I suppose I should give you fair warning: There are some spoilers, so if you want to go into the record without knowing its twists and turns, you may want to skip the second half.

It’s a terrific album, and I’m really glad that the guys at Stereogum were kind enough to not only hook me up with the record, but to provide me with such a great forum for my early impressions. That said, it’s very unlikely that I’ll be writing about the new songs here in the foreseeable future — I feel that one of the strengths of this project comes from the fact that I’ve lived with all of these songs for a long time, and though I’m very enthusiastic about the new material right now, I don’t think it’s fair to rush into writing about them here. Give it a year, maybe. In the meantime, I’ll be entering the home stretch with the original plan in mind.

9-9

“9-9″ is essentially an abstraction, but its dominant emotions ring loud and clear — paranoia, frustration, agitation, and confusion. It is by far the most aggressive song on Murmur, but since it lacks a focus for its negativity, it comes off as an expression of impotence. The singer feels trapped by his neuroses, entirely unable to overcome his crippling “conversation fear.” The band draws on the tension and restrained aggression of post-punk in general and Gang Of Four in particular, but contrast the harsh metallic clang of the chords and the nervous, pacing quality of the bass line with a pensive guitar arpeggio and a subtly, barely audible organ drone that even out the mood and keep us aware that this is all happening in the mind of a passive, painfully shy individual.

Begin The Begin

The first time I saw R.E.M. perform “Begin The Begin” was the last time I saw them in concert, which was kind of a long time ago: It was the night after George W Bush won a second term as the President of the United States back in 2004. The band opened the show with “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” which was very unexpected and droll way of dealing with the crushing disappointment, but as soon as they ended, the launched into “Begin The Begin,” and the context underscored everything great about the tune.

Most obviously, “Begin The Begin” rocks with great force and urgency. Within a couple seconds of the intro, the entire band sounds focused and driven, as if on a life or death mission. It’s not the heaviest or fastest song they’ve ever written, but it’s certainly one of the most aggressive. On one hand, it seems designed to shake the listener out of their apathy, and on the other, it’s meant to inspire and motivate. “Begin The Begin” isn’t a passive sort of protest song, it’s not just some bitter commentary on the poor state of the world; it’s a call to arms. By the second minute of the song, the thesis of Lifes Rich Pageant as a whole is laid bare: You don’t like the way things are? You hate the way our institutions have become corrupted? Well, let’s begin again.

Much to his credit, Michael Stipe doesn’t ever pretend that a new beginning  is something that could come easy. He’s not spouting revolutionary language for the sake of it, but instead acknowledging that real, lasting change is something that takes time, work, and often a great deal of failure.  “Begin The Begin” isn’t about the short term; it’s not an exhortation to riot. It’s asking the listener to become an active participant in their society — if there’s any hope of standing up to the powers that be, you have to engage, create, and build. You need to have a voice, and more than that, a voice that can and will be heard. After all, “silence means security, silences means approval.”