REM's LIFES RICH PAGEANT @ 40

This is what happens when you lie down after work. You don't want to get up again but when you have to, you cut through the routine and find easier ways of doing things again. That includes a vow to never make the same mistake. Everything starts leaning towards formula but it works. It also means you dismiss all the tiny accidents that keep your life from being too predictable. When R.E.M. lay down after years of touring that had led them to the good but patchy Fables of the Reconstruction, they came back with this. Front loaded with the hardest rock they'd ever done and a wind down on the second side for a poignant acoustic moment before a big finish: The Formula.

After a sharp and twangy tango riff the band bashes into Begin the Begin with layered guitars, feedback, big gated drums and a huge bass clean enough to distinguish individual notes. Stipe at the centre sings right out front and in a perfectly cleared stereo pocket that you can hear every syllable. It's still word salad or deflected malaprops but it's right there in your ear. From here to the end of the decade, REM albums started with a barnstormer.

I'm not knocking the number. It's a big, rousing rock song that grinds and prods in all the right places. It's just set in an album side that does the same thing. Also, there's no more space. The difference between Radio Free Europe, Pilgrimage and Laughing on the debut Murmur is enough to feel like three different places described by the same band. Here, after the big push of the opener, we get what feels like the same song, even though the first is in a minor key and the second in a major. Play them on an acoustic and they're different. Hear them on the record and it's like getting crushed by a compactor.

Things change with Fall on Me. The opening guitar figure is gleaming and clean. The tune is very easy and it works a treat, a plea for environmental respect. The drums are huge and Stipe is right out the front delivering the syllables as though they've been cut by a Sheffield knife. It's beautiful but it's up to standard rather than standing out. 

Ok, enough of the whinge about mainstream slickness. I'm getting sick of it myself. One of the positive points about all this is that things like Stipe's environmentalism have been brought out more clearly with this more conventional approach. Fall on Me works a treat because of that. So, too, does the next track, Cuyahoga about a river that was so defiled by industrial contempt that the water itself caught fire. The band's take is a mix of former jangling glory and multi-layered guitars. Stipe is again front and centre with crisply defined vocals. His plaintive performance is strengthened through melancholy but there is another card up the sleeve. The verses are long enough for listeners to think that there won't be choruses but, after two of them the music mounts and releases into the river's name with the backing and lead vocals harmonising. It still sends shivers down my spine. 

In Hyena, a racing rock effort begun with the sounds of real hyenas, the chorus resurrects the band's patented coutrapuntal choruses in which the title is sung like a riff against backing vocals that carry more of the message. This feature, evident in the first independent single onwards, is R.E.M.'s foot-down insistence of the retention of something of what they were and were still good at.

The lowes-fi point of the record closes side one. Underneath the Bunker is a guitar tango with Stipe singing down the line on a hotel Bakelite phone. This just sounds like a goof off like the one on Reckoning when the band goes into a disco workout before Don't Go Back to Rockville. But then the Latin influence, title, and strangled vocal about sitting out disaster presage side two.

The Flowers of Guatemala is a beautiful showcase of a band who showed they could combine big with gentle in numbers like Camera and Perfect Circle. I played this once while getting through a wrenching hangover and it soothed to near banishment. The trippyness and mentions of colour and happiness suggest psychedelia but the lyric is worth pursuit. The flowers are covering bodies left on the street by US bullets and covered by local grief. Amanita, repeated in the words, is a deadly mushroom. This wouldn't be the last time the band turned its sight on US foreign aggression but it was the most poignantly presented one with music of glory that celebrated the fallen rather than the victors.

I believe starts with a burst of solo banjo before kicking into a full band performance. "When I was young and full of grace, I spirited a rattlesnake." Images of transition rush past as fast as information to the young. This is a song of discovery, of mistakes and triumphs, of all things worked out by trying and seeing. It's a joyous celebration of change which the exultant chorus reaches high to exclaim.

What if We Give it Away? is the closest thing to a song form the first two albums. A leisurely pace and space between the strings, drums and voice, like the skeleton of a machine. The lyric is a dialogue remembered by a single voice. Someone has lost the way they lived and people who wear designer labels like symbols of success are distant and triumphant. The chorus is the title. The song stops for it as it lifts then falls, the guitar riffing under the last syllable as the machine starts again. There is a real ache here. It's not the quiet grief of Camera, there's a whole landscape here, but more of a lament of a loss that happened without a fight. 

Just a touch might mean something but I've never found it. A punky guitar riff bends back on itself as Stipe yells and the band goes along. There's something like this on all the albums to this point and, depending on anything catchy I'll either live through them or skip them. This< i've since learned, is a very early song that someone at a practice resurrected and they used for filler. I'll still skip it.

In Swan Swan H a lvoley minor key 12 string acoustic plays along with a 6 string in the other channel which describes a strong countermelody. Stipe's vocal is grinding and frequently feels angry or frustrated. Images of the defeated South, slavery and the wasteland of longing for a past that never was or, if it had existed, was a far more morally arid and brutal place.

Superman is a cover version of a late '60s obscurity by The Clique. It's worth tracking down. The original is mostly acoustic but features a big group vocal which just spreads out in the chorus. R.E.M.'s version begins with a ring pull audio from a Godzilla toy and launches into a full electric arrangement that takes a lot of the charm from the original but brings it up for a larger venue airing. That said, it's a stunner, immediately catchy and joyful. And that said, the lyrics are as icky as John Lennon's for Run for Your Life or The Who's I Can See for Miles. All up, if you pretend it's in Latin, it's a corker of an album closer.

So, where does this leave us? A band that had hit the ceiling and driven itself into exhaustion, depression and frustration that the world didn't hear things its way, pulled itself out of that quicksand (lumpy with the remnants of other bands, most bands) and broke the ceiling. Or, did they get sick of everything and push to get into the bigger venues and on the syndicated radio stations and start letting their epistle to the Worldians ring out louder than the blander hitmakers? It's a mix as they never quite ditched the charm of their melodism and contrarian edge but, in diving into the unambiguous statement and the big, long show, they risked being dismissed as sellouts.

I saw them just after Green came out. It wasn't at The Corner, it was at Melbourne Festival Hall. After a breezy set by The Go-Betweens, R.E.M. came out blasting with Pop Song 89 and owned everyone in front of them. If Stipe had been notorious for anti-stardom ploys like turning his back on the crowd or saying nothing all that had gone. He communicated directly, comparing the effects of imperialism between the USA and Australia, joking about sub-atomic particles (after a show of hands, he laughed and said, "you're all liars"). Then, when the intimate number You Are The Everything came up he did turn around, facing the audience for the crucial final couplet. He knew the power of it and it worked. It was, in fact, a show, the type of which they had never deigned to perform only three years earlier. I left afterwards, making my way through the crowd with a numb smile on my face, and walked home the few kilometres it took.

A week later, I went to see Sonic Youth (who did play at the Corner) and slammed and swayed my way through a set that developed like a time lapse film, from creepy cinematics to deafening roars, the guitar textures alone would have impressed. The show was shorter and the venue tiny by comparison. There was no message more than the punk gigs I'd gone to in my teens. You like this? Go and do it yourself! I got out, sweaty and exhilarated. 

But I didn't think it was better. R.E.M. played a set that worked the world over and got to the furthest reaches of the stadium. Sonic Youth made you part of it. R.E.M. sold more, were sung along to while dishwashing and hoovering happened and everyone came to know the singer's name and his stance on anything he was asked about. He became Sting and Bono's rival on the world's stage and we understood every last word he said. That began here.

It began with Lifes Rich Pageant more than the three seminal indy albums before it because this felt like they had a plan. Part of that was sounding more radio friendly with singalong choruses and force. Do I miss the earlier records? I still have them and will easily put any of them on to hear. In the house I shared when this record was new, this was the first LP we all yelled along to, dancing in the living room and the hallway.

It was spring in Fitzroy, big, bright and warm. One day was a trip to the beach, another night was a gatecrashed party. After one of those, I was washing the dishes with flatmate Tracey and a song from this came on the radio, an album track.  I didn't have a copy at the time but mentioned that's who it sounded like. Trace asked how I was so sure. That, I said when the next verse started, the unmistakable voice of  Michael Stipe. She bought her own copy by the end of the week. I taped it.

I thought the big rocky sound was a sellout but I kept that to myself. I loved this album. As much as I'd enjoyed the obscure lyrics from the growling voice and the oddly sweet '60s guitar of earlier, I really did get hit by this. They would never be the "college band" again and I would miss that, but they would be big and shiny and happy, ridiculed by the cool but bought in millions of discs by new fans. Begin the begin. Well, they did warn us.

Listening notes: I put the recent hi-res remaster for this review. It's respectful and doesn't suffer from the brickwalling of the loudness wars. You can hear all of it online but I'd recommend you hunt down an early CD in an op shop. I think it would sound stronger that way.

STATION TO STATION @ 50

We open on a black and white movie. An old steam locomotive hisses thickly and rhythmically from one side of the field to the other. A distant wail of guitar feedback like an industrial era whistle. Piano notes plonk up and down and up and down like footsteps on a platform. The rest of the band join the progress, stopping to play a fancier figure before falling back into the grinding rhythm. Then a croon:

The return of the thin white duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes.

You can see him, tall, gangling, in a Panama hat and cape, maybe a cigarette at the end of a long holder, in silhouette, walking dangerously toward you. Is he a vampire? A criminal mastermind? He breaks into song, a distant operatic caterwaul of travel and dark adventure, driving like a demon from station to station. Feels like Europe, mittel Europe, lightless nights, cocktails and betrayal. 

And then it launches into a big jaunty rock groove with a vocal that David Byrne would have replayed on a loop for whole afternoons. 

It's not the side effects of the cocaine. I'm thinking that it must be love.

And everything's too late. It's too late to be late again.

Bowie's strangest and most indefinable persona, the Thin White Duke, starts the only album he lived on with the biggest epic since Width of a Circle from his metal showcase The Man Who Sold the World. Is the Duke the same guy but older and more lethally experienced?

The European canon is here.

Maybe it is. This ain't Young Americans, this is regicide. The world conflicts of Aladdin Sane, the apocalypse of Ziggy. The post apocalyptic delirium of Diamond Dogs. And now this. 

The cover art is a still from his sci-fi film The Man Who Fell to Earth in which, impeccably cast as an alien, Bowie finally came through on the big screen like one of his stage identities. Pencil thin, his designer suits haning from his shoulders and his big fringed hair bright orange over his bloddlessly white face. Even the typesetting came into it. Red on white, sans serif font running together above the photo on the front and the same on the back with the strangely brief track listing. Six songs? Was he trying to outdo Led Zeppelin? The first track spills over the ten minute mark. Nothing's under four minutes, most are over five. This is not the guitar slinging of the Ziggy albums nor the big bright blue-eyed soul of the previous disc. It sounds like a band but the band is only allowed to play the songs, not drift into solos. More than Young Americans, this is a studio bound record.

Having put us through an itinerary of the dark and mystic underworld, Bowie then gives us a funk workout that is sharper than anything on his funk record. Golden Years starts with a delicious Strat riff that breaks into a dreamy dance track with big, modal, harmonised vocals chanting the title. It sounds like a ritual. The solo vocal comes in with a reassuring tone and follows the scansion of the bassline. He's talking to someone he calls (in falsetto) Angel. He offers her a bright life and his protection as they move from limousine to limousine and a cable of five star hotels. The cheerful handclapping disco is blended with the solemnity of the chorus chant which makes it sound like he means it. There's a video of Bowie miming this on Soul Train in late '75. He's a barely contained mess in the brief interview with he host who senses potential disaster and rushes the singer into the number. Once the groove comes up he's fine, though, mouthing every syllable and improv perfectly. One of the very few white artists to appear on the show, he towers on the riser above a crowd of happily grooving black audience and it feels both warm and alien. It would have been the weirdest sounding song they ever danced to. They seem happy about it.

Word on a Wing is the second epic of the album. Slow single notes on a piano. Someone's thinking about a melody. Slowly beneath it, a synthesised high string sound. The band comes in with a sweet sounding backing. Bowie's voice is confident to charming as he intones: "In this world of grand illusion you walked into my life out of my dreams." Like many of the other lines, this will be repeated to different effect throughout this intriguing song. It sounds increasingly like an earnest plea for meaning, connection and fulfilment. the chorus goes further by invoking a lord and the wish "my prayer flies like a word on a wing." Another thematic motif is the notion of a scheme of things. 

This is interesting. It's interesting as Bowie was an avowed atheist at this time, though he was dabbling in a host of mystical avenues. We might be getting presumptuous by thinking the lord he's addressing is the one of the Bible. Could be Nietzsche. Could be Crowley. Bowie was going through such a foggy lifestyle involving any number of self-medications like magical arcana and plain old drugs (he's already mentioned the cocaine). His appearance in the Soul Train video borders on alarming. He looks anorexic, not just thin and he's barely coherent during the hosts interview. He famously claimed that he couldn't remember writing and recording this album at all. Is Word on a Wing a real plea to a power, any power, to redeem him?

Or, and I'm not being flippant, is it just a creative exercise in imagining prayer, a character in desperation as his voice grows in intensity, circling back to the scheme of things, the age of grand illusion, settling on the cooing falsetto of the chorus? Then, when he is done, we return to the serenity of theopening moments, a high soprano voice descends but seems to transform into a synthesiser. It reminds me of a scene from Peter Carey's Bliss where a character facing execution is briefly elevated by the sight of a butterfly but then sees that it's just a lolly wrapper lifting and falling in the breeze.

The old side two opens with TVC15. A boogie piano plays a honky tonk figure as distant backing vocals lift the glottal stammer of The Yardbirds Good Morning Little Schoolgirl. The band and double tracked vocals come in with a story of a man whose girlfriend was devoured by a television. The story was Iggy Pop's from a night of tripping and Bowie took it more into the territory of David Cronenberg's Videodrome which was seven years from production. The verses are run on and ragged in scansion but have the meaty tone of a '70s band invoking a '50s band. A brief moment of order happens with Bowie crooning "transition, transmission," over stylised '50s palm muted guitar before the big chordy chant takes over: "Oh my TVC 15, oh oh, TVC 15. Repeat. Just a funny story or a tale of technological consumption? If nothing else, it's superior filler.

Stay is a hard funk workout with near metal guitar filling it out. The bass pushes past the guitars  and dances in the centre while the drums go on a gymnastic workout. Bowie's vocal sounds anxious as he tries to get her to stay the night. The melody is modal like Golden Years but its furrowed concern makes it constantly uneasy. This is like a Young Americans track that's woken after a nightmare. I finally got around to leaving this playing when listening to the whole album. It gives so little but insists so much. I used to skip it, even on the vinyl I knew it on, first. Bowie himself loved it or felt it needed resolution as he kept putting it into his sets into the following decade. The song ends on a lengthy solo that plays into the fade. Desperate but do I care?

Finally we come to the song that turned me on the record. Wild is the Wind is a cover of a song by Dimitry Tiomkin and Ned Washington and had become a standard by the likes of Johnny Mathis. A gentle sway of clean electric guitars and acoustics, drums, bass and piano. Bowie's vocal carries nothing but sincerity and his voices climbs all around its dolorous melody, melancholy but deeply romantic. It seems to curl out from the darkness of the night like a single plume of cigarette smoke that forms into a billowing cloud of silver cloud before it dissipates and fades. Utterly beautiful.

This was the first Bowie record I bought when it was new. The school cassette freemarket gave us all complete Bowie collections between tapes and vinyl and everyone had their favourites. I came to Station to Station almost by accident. I was studying for late high school exams, smoking too many cigarettes and needing something in the background that I wouldn't get distracted by and sing along to. This mostly neglected album suggested itself with its stark red song titles against the white of the sleeve. I put it on. The big gushing start of the title track took to the air and I was right, it would support not subvert my efforts at swatting. And I kept on turning to it, enjoying the sound of its brittle arrangements and big spooky vocals, sitting on the floor of my room with the lights out. It got to me as none of the others had. I don't mean I liked it better, it was more that I felt it got to me more directly. Like The Sex Pistols at the end of 1977, or This Year's Model in 1978, it was a record that knew me.

It is still an effortless listen. The arrangements all sound like they could be easily played live. The basic rock band of Ziggy to Diamond Dogs but with the particular sheen of Aladdin Sane, the shining piano and often beligerent guitars. It thankfully lacked the overproduction of Young Americans. Most of all it revisited the spooky Bowie of After All, Aladdin Sane title track, We Are the Dead, or The Bewley Brothers. That "I don't know what I was thinking but I had to follow it" sound. It does frequently freezes down to mechanicality, even the funk tracks and would lose a lot of Bowie fans going through the '70s albums. If you do step on to its platform, take a seat on the bench and wait. Here be treasures and they feel how you do.