This has been seen before in other places, but moving here so it's all under one umbrella. And maybe you've never seen it before. So here it is!
The spring of 1991 was swelling with possibilities. I was about to graduate college, and my friends and I had just decided on a post-graduate course that felt...revolutionary. That spring felt warmer and wetter to me than any I remember. As if all of this wasn't enough to get excited about, my favorite band in the world was about to release their 7th album. REM had made a successful jump to Warner Brothers with Green, and the following tour had put them on the cusp of world domination. I wasn't the only one about to graduate...
The album's release was proceeded by "Losing My Religion," which integrated Green's mandolin fixation into the kind of durable popular song whose impact would not be diminished by heavy rotation. In fact, even 17 years later, it still works. The plaintive melody, the hand claps, the familiar mandolin riff, and typically inscrutable Stipe-isms may not have been enough to overtake Natalie Cole's "Unforgettable" ghostly duet at the Grammys, but it's still the kind of song that always feels good to hear. I've never been sure about what it is about this song that made it so huge, and yet so personal. Like so many REM songs, the words sound like musical hooks, instead of the delivery device for some sort of message. This song makes me feel like Forrest Gump, so I'll just finish my paragraph by saying "that's all I have to say about that."
The album's other big single is the notorious "Shiny Happy People." This song has always been a pretty huge dividing line between fans. Actually, that's not quite the case. It's been a dividing line between me and every other REM fan, as I seem to be the only person in the world who likes this song. I get why people hate this song, but man every time it kicks in I don't care. What can I say? I've always been a sucker for the string intro, Kate Pierson is a babe, and no song that has Mike Mills singing on it can be all bad. What is wrong with you, world? Is it the words? Can you seriously not deal with shiny happy people who like to hold hands and laugh? I mean, generally I want to punch those people in the face too, but I don't hate them so much that even a song that talks about them makes me mad. I like plenty of songs about people that I probably couldn't stand if I met them in real life. Strip away the words, and you have a beautifully constructed song. Maybe you can't do it. Maybe you're incapable of ever truly being happy. Or shiny. But try and take it on those terms the next time in comes up in shuffle. Listen to how the strings weave in-and-out. Luxuriate in the Rickenbacker arpeggios. What's wrong with your life? For 3:46, not much at all.
Each of those singles are followed by songs played pretty extensively on the preceeding Green tour, "Low" and "Belong." "Low" is naked and dramatic and sounds nothing like anything else they had ever done to that point. Although the words are obscure, the song feels so personal and intense that it's placement (track 3) threatens to derail the album. But one of the pleasures of Out of Time is its variation. "Low" is one of the few songs on the album to not have any layered vocals, any layered anything really. It's just bongos, creepy organ, strings, and some seriously angry, but still controlled, guitar. And of course, Michael Stipe chasing himself down some strange wordholes, focusing on a right white bright light, that again doesn't really make any literal sense, but still feels ominous and kind of sexy. The weaving strings add texture, and some valuable almost-dissonance during the threatening-to-unhinge bridge. "Belong" is all texture, but still beautifully constructed.
Maybe a bad rap that Out of Time can take is just that: without question, it's a beautifully made record that chooses to not really put too much on the line emotionally. Well, REM have never been an especially revealing band, and they've never really lost their cool on record. It's not really a question of commitment per se, but rather an honest struggle between communication and privacy. That tension has always been in REM's music ("9-9": "conversation, fear"), but Out of Time is on a bigger scale. They're a bigger band, with a bigger recording budget and the support of a bigger label, but they're not necessarily bigger people and the problems they're trying to solve with music aren't bigger either. To some, this might result in some emotional distance and lend the album a certain coldness. Faced with professional-sized salaries and opportunity, they made a professional album, detractors might say.
One of the most interesting aspects of REM is how they rode the tension between traditional rock band and...something else. Despite the standard rock lineup, REM rarely sounded exactly like a standard band, and on Out of Time they blow that out even further. With the strings, keyboard, and guest vocalists, this album doesn't sound like anything else in their discography. Green featured a few mandolin songs, but they were cul-de-sacs (or is it culs-de-sac?). "Half A World Away" indulges their mandolin habit, and adds another layer of wimpiness with a harpsichord. It's certainly a heartfelt song, but I'm not sure it covers any ground that "You Are the Everything" and "Hairshirt" didn't. It's a beautiful song, but as on the rest of Out of Time, the mandolins are just another spice in the gumbo, which is a horrible analogy as this is a terrifically un-funky record. Except for the first song.
I've sat in cars and heard albums for the first time many times before (although that experience is consigned to the dustbin of my personal history, what with my ipods and car-less Manhattan swinging lifestyle), but there are few car-ride maiden voyages as memorable at the one I took in March, 1991. You may know (and love!) my co-rider (although I think he was driving?) as (Mister) Parenthetical, king of Twitter and Middle8. We'd kind of circled around each other the first couple of years of college, but by that spring, about to graduate and change the world together, our friendship was solidly settled, and we'd begun fueling each others' obsessions. (Maybe one day we'll talk about the Steely Dan wars of 1997/8.) If I recall, he was a bit of a late-comer to REM, but was suitably knocked out by "Losing My Religion," and always up for a car-ride on a Tuesday. I don't think we cut class, but it was definitely possible. I do remember that it was a fantastic day to roll the windows down and head to the Carytown Plan 9. We ripped open the longbox, and threw the cd in the player, and stayed still for the entire "Radio Song." It was such a different sound for them. Who knew that Mike Mills could slap bass like that? KRS-ONE? This was not limp, jokey funk, and it didn't sound anything like REM, but it worked. It's loose and fun, and certainly makes a point. Of course, back then REM were all over the radio, and it's a testament to the times that I wouldn't even know what station to tune in to hear a band like REM nowadays.
So: "Radio Song," "Losing My Religion," "Low." What the hell kind of record is this? Wait a sec...here comes another curveball: "Near Wild Heaven." Holy crap...it's the Beach Boys! The band with the lead singer so shy that he used to ask to keep turning the dial on his vocals down is now multi-tracking a "Sloop John B"-style breakdown. And, again, the strings. Here's the part where I bring up Pet Sounds. (Sorry. As a licensed and bonded Music Critic, I have to bring it up.) There's only a billion other places you can read about how awesome Pet Sounds is, and I don't think I can say much other than I love it too. I love how sad it is, how the ultimate summer band made one of the best winter albums, etc. etc. etc. Well, it's obvious that REMloves it too, as tracks like "Near Wild Heaven," and its instrumental follower "Endgame" show. All of the technical things that make Pet Sounds so awesome are relatively easy to recreate with modern technology, so while it's easy to recapture the sound, finding the songs and the feelings to evoke Pet Sounds remains an elusive challenge. I guess it's probably obvious to say that I think they do just that with these 2 songs. The oddball instrumental piece of the Pet Sounds legacy tends to get left out of most appreciations, so I'm super happy to see REM play homage to it here, as well as finally put one of their cool mood-piece instrumentals on an album instead of consigning it onto another b-side.
That leaves 3 songs left to talk about. The last 3, and the place where this album really takes off into the stratosphere. Mike Mills took the lead, vocally and via high-in-the-mix bass, on "Texarkana." Between the sweeping strings and slide guitar, there's a distinct Moody Blues feel to this one, but the band really sells it, and Stipe's "all alone"s build a stupendous bridge. We're partial to a well-built bridge around these parts. We then enter some seriously strange and ambiguous territory with "Country Feedback."
I used to write poetry in college. I often found the ones that I just kind of wrote without thinking about, without any plan to express anything in particular, were the most successful. The ones where even my role as the author lent me absolutely no ability to say what's going on were the ones I loved the most. Lucky for you, my poor memory and terrible filing system keeps me from quoting myself at length, but I have one poem describing that magic trick where the magician rolls up a newspaper and pours a pitcher of water into the roll. Of course, the water disappears. I have no idea what I was on about with that image, but there you go. Sometimes you have to follow instinct and worry about meaning later. REM is in that mystical improvisational zone with "Country Feedback." It's a classic REM, nobody-is-the-leader kind of song, but with the comforts of melody and structure mostly stripped away. It's one of those songs that it's probably useless to try and figure out, much less write about. So I'll stop trying.
"Me In Honey" takes the tension from "Country Feedback" and just plain releases it. It's one of the most cathartic album closers ever, despite it's obtuse vocabulary. Once again, I have no idea what the song is "about" and once again I don't care. All I need is that Lindsay Buckingham bass/guitar riff, the driving pace, and, once again, Kate Pierson. It's the kind of song that could go no other place than at the end of an album, even though it makes no attempt to summarize or condense or finish anything at all. The album begins with a political kind of alienation ("I can't find nothing on the radio"), ends with "what about me?" and there's no place left to go.
And here is where I think Out of Time is such a monumental piece of work: the tension of confidence and confusion. In many ways, this album is a standard high-profile, big-budget affair. But if you scratch the surface, and listen all the way through, it's just as fucked up as you are. Seriously, is there a more perfect way to describe what a graduation is? You've finished something big, but you have no idea what to do now. Your whole life is structured around one thing, but now it's finished and you've got to find something else to do. You're filled up and empty all at the same time. You've run out of time, and you're finished. You're too young to be responsible, and too experienced to not be responsible. I'm pretty sure that REM didn't know I was about to graduate college when they released this album, but they knew, and better yet, made a perfect album about, how it feels to move through life, space, and time.
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