Night Garden: Berry, Buck, Mills, Stipe [R.E.M.]1981-1996 Song-by-song*

Lotta drama for half past four in the morning. And a huge amount of destructive energy. More than I've ever seen on this board.

I don’t even feel sad about it. In this world of woe and tragedy, grinding poverty and sadness, pain and suffering, perspective helps.

Ignore function is there for a reason. It's an adult solution.

What else can I say?

 

Our votes for "Find The River"

1-0
2-0
3-1
4-2
5-35
Average: 4.8684

 

Today, Automatic For The People.

 

Over the next several days:

• Winged Mammal Theme {b-side, Drive}
• New Orleans No. 2 (B-side, Man On the Moon, 1993}
• Arms Of Love (Robyn Hitchcock) {B-side, Man on the Moon, 1993
• Fruity Organ {B-side, Man on the Moon}
• The Lion Sleeps Tonight (B-side, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight}
• Organ Song (B-side, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight}
• Mandolin Strum {B-side, Everybody Hurts}
• Chance [Dub] {B-side, Everybody Hurts}
• Mike's Pop Song (from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Peter's New Song {from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Eastern 983111 {from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Bill's Acoustic {from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Arabic Feedback {from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Pete's Acoustic Idea {from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Devil Rides Backwards {from Automatic For the People Deluxe, 2017}
• Where's Captain Kirk (Spizz, Mark Coalfield) {A-side, Mystic And Merry 1992 fan club only single}
• Photograph (Berry, Buck, Natalie Merchant, Mills, Stipe, {from Born To Choose, VA compilation album, 1993)
• LIve At the 40 Watt Club 1992

Monster to start on the 13th of November.

 

I came in late to the discussion, but that looks like a huge score for "Find The River". Have any songs beat this score?

Every time something good happens some destruction is close behind. This is life.

I can't believe there are so many tunes before we get to Monster! I thought it was perfect that we would be discussing Monster during Halloween!

 

Yes, we've reached peak extra-album track here. The UK single era means lots of B-sides, plus demos from the deluxe set.

Sorry to disappoint, but hold on to that Halloween spirit -- all year round, is my advice.

 

Automatic For The People

Overall, I think this is an average album. There are two songs I love (The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight and Find the River), two I dislike (Ignoreland and Star Me Kitten), and the rest fall somewhere in the middle. I realize this album means a great deal to many people, but I just never really got it. Maybe it was my age at the time it was released (31) and I wasn’t really the target audience, or maybe it was because this was arguably the happiest time of my life and the themes of mortality and nostalgia just didn’t fit with where I was at the time. Although the lyrics mostly don’t resonate with me three decades on, either, although probably for different reasons I’ve touched upon in the individual song discussion - i.e. not wanting to contemplate the end of my life, and not wanting to dwell on the past too much. I am always about moving forward, which is probably a self-preservation technique I’ve developed due to a lot of hard knocks over the past couple of decades. The album was a definite disappointment to me after a “return to form” (for me) with the outstanding Out Of Time. In addition to lyrics that mostly don’t resonate, the band’s music had changed yet again here, mostly to a style that I don’t love.

3/5

 

Like I’d said at the start of the Automatic discussions, I have so many memories and emotions wrapped up in this record that I can’t even think about it objectively. It’s a top 3 record for me. Probably always will be, as it’s the first album to really affect me emotionally. In a way that felt deeply personal. That sort of thing sticks with a person. It’s always been there for me when I need something to pick me up or remind me of the wonder of being 12 and finding this record that, yes, focuses a lot on death but also finds so much to celebrate about the days before the end. It also fits the autumn weather perfectly, which just finally settled in in NJ this week. This is what I own from the Automatic era:

AFTP CD from 92
AFTP special edition CD in wooden box
AFTP LP from the late 90s or early 2000s with a pressing error that totally ruins half of MOTM and Nightswimming
AFTP 25th anniversary reissue LP
Drive jukebox 7”
Man on the Moon (radio edit) 7”
Everybody Hurts jukebox 7”
Everybody Hurts 12” (orange vinyl)
Everybody Hurts 12” (blue vinyl)
Everybody Hurts cassette single
Nightswimming picture disc 12”
The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite jukebox 7”

 

Very nice!

 

That's not quite correct. Anxiety/depression, no. However, I do feel somewhat attacked, which puts me in a sour mood. Not that I think it's intentional - I'm well aware that hardly anybody thinks about me or anybody else here when writing their comments - but the effect is similar. It only happens when it's a song that means a tremendous amount to me, not just any old song I happen to like. I can't imagine that anybody here wouldn't feel hurt in some way if a song that meant the world to them, for whatever reason, was raked over the coals by someone else. Not feeling that way is beyond my ability to comprehend.

I don't know what 'dunking' is - not familiar with that term, at least outside of the context of donuts/cookies or basketball. I assume it's something like criticizing? As I've said, it's only when people are excessively nasty (as I interpret it; again, it may not be intentional) that I take note. Otherwise, I just figure that their lived experience is different and the song therefore doesn't resonate with them like it does with me. Other songs probably will - or maybe they just don't take music into their interior lives the same way I do; it's more of a casual relationship than a thing that helps to define their personalities. Could be a million reasons.

I mean, I probably can be. It's not as if I poll every person in my life about their favorite albums and then decide if they're worthy based on that. God no. It was an off-hand comment that I can't believe so many seem to have had a problem with. I figured I'd get heads nodding in agreement! All I meant is that I find the album so beautiful and moving that I probably wouldn't find that I have much in common with anybody who hated it. As I said above, I'm sure there are things that you and everybody else here use to similarly find people to bond with (or to avoid) in your lives. This is one of those things for me - it's not a character flaw on my part; it's just accepting a fundamental reality of the way we all select the people we spend time with.

As for it being healthy to have these reactions, it probably isn't. It's why I left these threads a few months back - I was running into similar issues on another thread I had been in from the beginning and I started thinking that this whole idea of rating songs and albums is an exercise in diminishing the music and the art. Initially, I thought that it was a good way of forcing focus, and I'm sure that it is for many. For me, however, it started to feel like I was missing the point of the music and it was becoming an obligation. That other thread had reached a place where I had relatively little positive to say about the music and I hated feeling like I was spreading negativity, so I silently dropped out. Here, I figured it would be different because I only had mostly positive things to say about the music. I just hadn't counted on the diversity of thought about these particular albums, which I had thought pretty much everybody held in high regard. I'm well aware that, starting with the next album, opinions will be quite divergent going onward.

Anyway, I'm sick of talking about me. If anybody wants to continue with this sidebar, please PM me instead of responding here. I don't think this main thread should devote more time to it, at least as it involves me. I'm sorry for the diversion away from REMmusic.

 

I absolutely love Automatic For The People, it was huge for me in my last year of college and I practically listened to it every day in the last semester of 1993. It was also huge on The Hill, the place I lived in on Cherokee N.C. and the whole album was woven into the fabric of the social life there. I mean, everybody loved it and we were a diverse crowd. So it occupies a special place in my heart as I think back to that magical summer.

But it's just a triumph of songwriting and production on the few instances where the songwriting slightly falters, the strings and production fill in that gap, or the sequencing makes it all work. It is an album of beginnings: of mortality and moving on, but unlike a lot of people I don't see any of the songs as real dirges, other than maybe "Sweetness Follows", and that is close to a literal dirge. And for once when I say "literal" I actually mean "literal."

I absolutely consider it one of the best albums of all time and it's probably in my Top Ten list of albums that mean the most to me. I just adore it, and, while I was a fan before it came out, and had a few albums (Chronic Town, Murmur, Lifes Rich Pageant, Out Of Time, Green) this is the album, listened to in real time that absolutely cemented my relationship with the band and made me just think they were the best band ever, or one of the best.

Time has not dimmed this album in my eyes. Over the decades I have gone through phases where I listen to more or less REM; sometimes I've had enough of them and put them away for several years but I always come back to them and, after having talked about so many stunning albums by the band, it's amazing that they were still this good (IMO, of course). In some ways I think this was the end of a long era for REM. I mean, after this they were absolutely stuck in the Pantheon, and perhaps their music became more self-conscious as they realised that they could do anything they wanted to. This was the end of a long developmental period where they never once dropped the ball, where they took incremental steps. It's interesting that it seems to have been made at a less cohesive juncture of the band, with Bill missing on three songs, Peter missing on two, Mike and Michael on one apiece. Because it seems so cohesive and with such incredible gestalt.

Anyway, enough of this: 5/5.

 

Automatic for the People is a late-mid period classic from a band I thought had used up all their 5/5 albums after Lifes Rich Pageant. Looking at it compared to the unfocused surrounding albums, it's a miracle how cohesive this record is. Their experiments on Out of Time were hugely hit or miss, Green is a bit piece meal as well, and Monster I like but it loses the plot at points too. This record is a masterpiece, definitely up there with their best work. It's not as distinctive or mysteriously beautiful as their earky IRS material, but I think it carves its own niche as a classic record.

5/5

 

Thanks for making me post this again. This was the first time I noticed that Harvey bangs against the rail as he's walking away from the camera. Nice touch! What a stellar performance.

 

Automatic is probably the album REM will be remembered for. Everybody Hurts is the song that will last the longest in the public consciousness. I’m glad many of you love it and find meaning in these songs.

With REM, however, I’ve found there are almost always two truths about its fans. First, they are a passionate bunch. Second, they usually have a clear breaking off with the band. For some it was Reckoning. For others, the end of IRS or Bill’s departure.

For me Automatic wound up being the end. I hung on a little bit for Monster. But once the dust settled, I realized this was the one I just don’t like. And my REM fandom kind of ends here.

Sometimes bands I love release an album I hate, but that’s not the case here. It’s listenable for me, and I spin it every few years for fun.

Other bands have a dud, but then rebound, and my fandom continues. Not so with REM. It really became diminishing returns for me after this one.

I think I’m just more of an Out of Time guy. I like all the weird detours that album takes from dirges to rap to shiny, shiny, sunshine. In contrast, the grown up contemplation of Automatic feels dull in comparison.

At the same time, I recognize why many of you feel the opposite. There’s some fine craft here. It’s simply not for me.

I will admit, however, I’m still a bit stupefied at the incredibly high rating for Find the River. If it winds up being the best REM song as many of you contend, and as our collective ratings might suggest, what does that mean given there’s no Peter on it?

 

"Fall On Me" is actually rated higher than "Find The River", for what it's worth.

 

Some notable side projects from 1992:

Bill, Peter and Mike are all over The Troggs' Athens Andover, released in 1992. They co-wrote this one, with Peter Holsapple:

 

Peter also co-wrote this one with Steve Wynn from his album Dazzling Display.

 

Michael co-wrote and co-sang "Trout" by Neneh Cherry:

 

A three legged dog is still a dog?

 

Woah, they gave him credit?!

 

You're from NJ? You ever seen @brownie61's band? Mama Brownie & the Time Warping Pterodactyls? Being based in the Midwest, I never got a chance to see them live!

I know what you mean about autumn weather setting in though. Finally the heat is gone. Of course that means we were under a tornado watch all day, but that's the price we pay for not being subjected to the coastal whims.

 

The opening there had me wishing I could hear R.E.M. cover My Best Friend's Girl.

 

Automatic for the People

As I said before, this was the first album I bought from my own money after I got my first CD player. That alone makes it special for me, obviously, but I'm pretty sure it's the music that made it grow into my favourite album of all time (together with Radiohead's OK Computer).

Enough has been said about the music itself: the fact that they were able to give each song something uniquely R.E.M.-ish, the amazing strings, the stellar production..

I'll be forever grateful to this thread for the fact that, because of it, I took some time to dive a bit deeper into the lyrics. I never realized how good the lyrics actually are on this (weird, given that this is my favourite album eh?).

The album covers basically all the main topics related to growing up and getting older: death, loss, relationships, nostalgia, reflection.. What's so great about it is that it does so in a non-cynical manner, which would be the "easy" way to go I guess. Instead, it just "describes" what these topics do for a person that is trying to find his/her way in the world.

I think it's clear I can't give this anything less than 5/5

 

Automatic for the People
This was an immense album in my life. I rarely listen to it anymore, afraid that overplaying it will spoil it for me, and also, to be truly honest, out of fear that it won't be as good as I remembered it. Having done the deep dive for this thread, I am happy to discover I haven't spoiled it, and it is as good as I remember it. It will never be their masterpiece for me - that will always be Murmur - but I do consider it their later-period masterpiece. No bad tracks, great cohesiveness, great lyrics, beautiful songs, beautiful strings. 5/5

 

I do remember clearly when Automatic came out that I loved the album and played it a fair amount, especially in the car. There was a lot of joy listening to it, especially with friends, which is no mean feat when you consider the subject matter of the many of the songs. However, it is clearly, for me, one of those albums that burnt bright and faded away. I don't remember listening to it this century at all and now I find it to be an extremely patchy album of highs and lows, and very changeable in styles that moves around from meandering, to out and out pop, to ballads to dark and uncomfortable.

There are clearly some great songs on this album, that still rattle around my head from time to time and I was very excited when it was announced there was a new album in 1994, so this wasn't my jumping off point from REM. Finding that an album I loved at release no longer holds any interest is not at all unusual, my collection is littered with albums that at one point I got enjoyment from, yet haven't pulled out in years and years.

Having said all that, it doesn't escape my notice what an important album this is for people like @Bug80, his affection for it reminds me of how I felt when I first got into REM and I completely understand why he and others would adore this album.