R.E.M.

The sound of an indie band that's been touring incessantly. While the songs are every bit as strange and beautiful as the ones on Murmur, they're also more driving -- tailor-made for a band that can't stop spinning around on stage. Even the slow, sad numbers feature insistent rhythms. "Harborcoat" and "7 Chinese Brothers" are early-period R.E.M. at their best.

Murky yet emotionally winning, brainy but boyishly enthusiastic, R.E.M.'s debut album,
Murmur, burst onto the pop scene last year with minimal fanfare. Though some critics
lumped the Athens, Georgia, quartet with the big-guitar bunch (the Alarm, Big Country),
R.E.M.'s approach was more delicate and pastoral. Their sound was a curious fusion of
vocalist Michael Stipe's bookish, still-wet-behind-the-ears pretension and guitari... More >

This charming band makes honestly reassuring music--those guitar chords ring out with a confidence in the underlying beauty of the world that's all but disappeared among rock-and-rollers who know what else is happening. As befits good Southerners, their sense of necessity resides in their drummer, which is why the Byrds analogies don't wash (who ever noticed Michael Clarke?) and why they shouldn't get carried away with the country moves (slow ones really are supposed to have words). (Grade - B+)