We didn't know it, then, but guitar bands were about to change because of this one and the strange thing about that was that, in who knows how long, the ones doing the changing were American. After decades of U.K. acts redefining what guitar bands were this mob who sounded like a slicked up version of the kids making a racket under the house down your street. Out of key system chord progressions, infectious riffs and clean electric 12 arpeggios and singing by the Cookie Monster who could only manage fragments in the verses before breaking out into slogans that weren't, int the choruses. After Murmur, all guitar bands that weren't trying to break into the cokesnorting major label realm sounded like REM, here grungy and rough, there sweet and jangling and most often both at once.
Pilgrimage fades in with piano notes under Michael Stipe singing in full voice before the arpeggio laden verse rolls into a an expanding chorus, elongated chants take over from the bitsy vocals of the verse before exploding into a massive beat beat beat beat chorus. Laughing adds a feel that might remind anyone into American 60s bands of The Byrds in their country years. Acoustic guitar broken chords with punched piano chords for accents.
Talk About the Passion comes on with a big bold major key guitar riff, then a smooth voiced Stipe croons as well as he is able and cruises on to the title line chorus and the effect is a smooth power pop drive with a joyous Rickenbacker 12 prechorus. Moral Kiosk continues the pattern of percussive verses, stretched progressions to the chorus that turns everything giant by suggesting distance.
Perfect Circle slows things down with a complex piano figure as Stipe strikes a mournful tone. There is a heavily affecting chorus which suggests someone noticing a passage of human life rolling past and realising there is no changing it. If the previous rocking tracks had prepared you for more sharp candy this one stops everything. It's the same band but in a mood they haven't shown you yet, something outside of the garage, something that seems to have been filmed in 35 mm at magic hour. They would repeat this contact with the sublime in the next album with Camera which took it even further but here we're hearing it for the first time. This is the band that showed it could sound only like itself when the forces aligned. It ends on a fade and takes the old side one with it.
Catapult continues the thump and jingle of the first side, sounding a little more like their mini LP debut. See also Sitting Still brings back the Byrdsy arpeggio on the 6 string Rickenbacker but brings the fuller guitar muscle for the chorus. 9-9 adds some arty harmonics to the verses (like Gang of Four playing Mr Tambourine Man) before a grinding slow/fast chorus. Shaking Through brings the country back and upping the melodic touchpoints. We Walk plays with an archaic chord progression but subverts it by cutting it short of completion. Sounds of thunder (tape-warped billard balls, in fact) punctuate proceedings. West of the Fields closes the album with what buy that stage sounds a touch tired and end of project. It makes the same indy rock sense but there's nothing compelling to it that would drive you to listen to it in isolation.
If I've pond skipped the songs on this album where on another I would have examined each one it's because this early phase of REM was all about style. While there is a constant pallet of variation going on from song to song it's not pushed to late '60s levels where a confectionary She's a Rainbow gives way to the proto metal of Citadel. It sounds like the band elevated from their practice room tapes into full production by a producer who knew well to empahsise their best without putting it into costume.
I say that because so many of the '60s-ologists of the early '80s, the ones I mentioned in the paisley fancy dress, pursued the sound. REM didn't. They liked the song structures and guitar styles but there's no bubblegum organ blasts or borrowed nostalgia here. In this, more closely resemble The Church (who did wear paisley, btw) who added the weight of their own abstractions to music that went down like dessert but revealed more the more it was played. To a modern listener Murmur might strike them as the kind of thing AI would serve up if prompted to create a '60s album from all the Pebbles and Nuggets albums and every bubblegum single released between 1967 and 1969; there's an eerie tribute without reverence feel to it.
REM would go on to change with successive albums up to their jumping ship from indy IRS to WEA for 1988's Green. By that stage the albums began pursuing a formula with a big rock opening, some ponderous mid tempo rock, an affecting ballad and some unabashed bubblegum rock with the kind of wah wah solos completely absent from their LP debut. The big breakthrough which took them from alternative radio to stadiums also dropped them into the showbiz box they began way outside of. They were, in fact, more like all those early '80s moptop bands who began with the aggressive copying. By then, the singer who had refused to appear to sing the lyrics in the videos, insisting on performing a live vocal, had become Michael Stipe, spokesmodel of a generation.
Back in 1983, REM were still unknown to most of the world, working with producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon who guided them to radio friendly sheen while keeping their intentions in hard definition. The big piano figure of Perfect Circle was played on a whiny hand held Casio by drummer Bill Berry on stage and the band expected that to be the way of it in the studio. The producers prevailed. We got a cavernous and beautiful track but we never heard something that might have persisted through a ridiculous pathos to a triumphantly small and humble conviction. As melting as I find the song as it is, I can't help but feel that it was the first step in the stroll toward conventionality for a band whose fragile relationship with that value would break with irrevocable certainty. So it goes ...
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