96. R.E.M., "Automatic for the People"

 

What's the most cliched, hacky sentiment ascribed to "hipsters," whatever that means, when talking about music?  It isn't "oh, you like ________, name five of their songs," which is just assholes, not hipsters.  It's "This is okay, but I like their old stuff better."  Well, guess what I'm about to say?

R.E.M. was, without a doubt, the most important band to me in roughly my late high school/early college years.  I think I was a sophomore in high school when I first saw them, in a small-ish place, and wow I'm really dating myself here.  I was just thinking about this yesterday and I think their second album, Reckoning, might be one of my most-played albums, since I listened to every day for well over a year.  But my attention wandered and I became enamored of new bands.  I bought Green, which came out in 1988, and was not a fan.  (Green was the one with "Stand," on it, if that gives you any idea).  I didn't buy Out of Time, the next one, or this one.

This is obviously the record of a band at a crossroads.  They were in the process of leaving the "R.E.M. sound" - chimey Rickenbacker guitar; big, swooping choruses; Byrds-meets-country-meets-Big Star - behind and casting around for something new.  The result is this often lovely, sparse, emotion-wracked album.  

Speaking of emotion-wracked, how about track four, "Everybody Hurts," a naked plea to emotion that has probably been the soundtrack for more breakups than "Tracks of My Tears."  It's actually a pep talk, though, a keep-your-chin-up ballad:

If you're on your own in this life
The days and nights are long
When you think you've had too much
Of this life to hang on
Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
Everybody hurts, sometimes

In a similar (open) vein, there's "Nightswimming," a truly gorgeous piano-driven song, one of a few with strings beautifully arranged by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.  It's a melancholy reflection on lost youth and the quiet power of nostalgia.  "Try Not to Breathe," another brooding, weighty song, is about choosing to end it before you become a burden to others.  It fits in with the overall tenor of the album, about death and mortality and facing the end.

There are only a few songs that could be called "rockers," one of which, "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight," you get the feeling the band was slightly embarrassed by and would rather just leave behind.  (They never played it live, and Peter Buck said about the album, "I'm not so crazy about 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,' but overall I think it sounds great.")  It borrows so much from "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" that the band had to pay for the rights.  Another one, "The Man in the Moon," to me sounds the most like the early R.E.M. I knew and loved, and was really the only song from the album I gravitated towards early on.  It's got that guitar sound and the big chorus and just sounds like R.E.M., or the R.E.M. I wanted.  

It's hard to describe the feeling when you're on the cusp of adulthood and a band speaks to you so directly that you get emotional just listening to them.  That was my feeling with the first few R.E.M. albums.  I lost that as I crossed some line and then new sounds and new bands began to capture my interest, but never again would I feel the same depth and intensity.  This album, I'm sure, served the same function for some other kids out there, searching for something and finding it in music.  

Is this album in my personal Top 500? 500 is a lot, and I would probably put every R.E.M. album through this one on there.