The Maturing of Pop

A writer for Melody Maker once called Murmur, REM's 1983 debut album, "the blueprint for alternative rock in the '80s." A debatable statement, to be sure (and one that excludes The Replacements, arguably the most important group of the last decade), but also one with a kernel of truth. For more than 10 years, REM's songs have provided a sizable chunk of the soundtrack for a generation of people now creeping up on 30; and their influence over our lives looms large.

Just as the late music critic Lester Bangs once wrote that his generation (the Boomers) would never agree about anything as much as they did about Elvis, my generation (the twentysome-things) never agreed--and disagreed--about anything as much as we did and do about REM. Love 'em or hate 'em, for the last 10 years the Athens, Georgia quartet has been an Important Band.

Thus, the release of Automatic for the People, REM's 10th album, is something of an event. The LP was released right on the heels of their last effort, Out of Time, but the two discs couldn't be more disparate. Whereas Out of Time was something of a undertuned mess, Automatic for the People is virtually flawless, shimmering with the melody and passion that have been largely lacking in REM's recent work.

It's also a painfully somber record, awash in memory and loss. "Hey kids, rock and roll/Nobody tells you where to go," singer Mike Stipe croons on "Drive," the first single. He sounds like a middle-aged rebel without a cause landed in a rehab, lamenting old battles with bitter sarcasm. The pensive, stop-and-go chimes of Peter Buck's acoustic guitar ironically underscore the putative rebellion of the lyrics.

In the softly lilting "Try Not to Breathe," Stipe is an old man about to commit Kervorkian-style suicide ("I will try not to breathe/This decision is mine, I have lived a full life/These eyes are the eyes of the old"). This tune conveys terrible insights with subtle beauty, setting the tone for much of the rest of the disc.

The most striking tune is "Sweetness Follows," a lament about burying one's parents that's right out of As I Lay Dying. Buck's strumming evokes the quiet misery and profound faith of such a moment, his guitar backed with dissonant feedback and cello. (Former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones conducts orchestral flourishes on many of the tracks; that sound you hear is the jaws of anti-'60s punks and alternative-music nazis hitting the floor.) "Sweetness Follows" is breathtaking, the most enrapturing tune REM has done in years; you'd need a heart of stone not to be swept up in its rainy atmosphere.

AUTOMATIC isn't all despair, decadence, and misery, however. Stipe, Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry are famous for their unique melodic ability: The influences that made them sound so refreshing in the early '80s--the Byrds, the South, New Wave, and straight pop--are abundant here, if tempered with a remarkable maturity. "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" is all pop fun and games ("call me when you try to wake her" is the chorus, for those of you who would go insane trying to decipher Stipe's wordy jumble), "Ignoreland" is a raucous broadside against 12 years of Republicanism, and "Man on the Moon" cleverly eulogizes the late comic Andy Kaufmann.

But for REM, sound, atmosphere, and the small details of our lives have always been as resonant as the purely political--because, in fact, such experiences are political. "Nightswimming" and "Find the River," the two tracks that close Automatic for the People, are the bookends of life's end; one a nostalgic sojourn through youthful memories, the other a spiritual acceptance of death's passage.

REM, like those of us that came of age listening to their music, seem to be learning that the bliss of adolescent life is soon overshadowed by grim and painful realities; that one must suffer before sweetness follows. It's a lesson they pass on with eloquence: These songs aren't downers; they're the dark shadows of our souls, and they provide the kind of epiphanies that come when we confront our sorrow.

A few years ago Peter Buck told Rolling Stone that he wanted REM to be "the best rock 'n' roll band in the world." At the time I read it and laughed. Our REM...the next Fab Four? Sure, they had their moments, but the best band in the world?

Now there's not much room for doubt. They might not be at the river yet, but they're within spitting distance.

Mark Gauvreau Judge was an editorial assistant for Common Boundary magazine in Bethesda, Maryland when this review appeared.

Automatic for the People. By REM. Warner Brothers Records, 1992.