R.E.M.

Possibly the most modest-sounding album ever to start a revolution, Murmur's chiming guitar riffs and mumbled lyrics inspired a generation of bands. Featuring re-recorded versions of the songs from their debut single, plus ten equally impressive (and just as unintelligible) tracks, it sounded at once like nothing anybody else was doing and something anyone could do.

R.E.M.'s Chronic Town EP was one of last year's more invigorating, tuneful surprises: a
record from an Athens, Georgia, band that cared not a whit for the fashionable quirks of
that town's dance-rock outfits like the B-52's or Pylon. R.E.M. fashioned its own smart,
propulsive sound out of bright pop melodies, a murky, neopsychedelic atmosphere and a
host of late-Sixties pop-rock touches. The execution wasn't always up to the id... More >

They aren't a pop band or even an art-pop band--they're an art band, nothing less or more, and a damn smart one. If they weren't so smart they wouldn't be so emotional; in fact, if they weren't so smart no one would mistake them for a pop band. By obscuring their lyrics so artfully they insist that their ("pop") music is good for meaning as well as pleasure, but I guarantee that when they start enunciating--an almost inevitable move if they stick around--the lyrics will still be obscure. That's because their meaning and their emotion almost certainly describe the waking dream that captivates so many art and pop bands. Which leaves me wondering just how much their pleasure means. Quite a lot, I think. (Grade - A-)