at a glance...

Hometown: Athens, Georgia
Year Formed: 1980

Personnel:
Michael Stipe -vocals
Peter Buck -guitars
Mike Mills -bass
Bill Berry -drums

Related Bands:
Tuatara, Hindu Love Gods, Robyn Hitchcock, U2, Patti Smith, Radiohead, Vic Chesnutt, 10,000 Maniacs, KRS-One, Billy Bragg, Drivin' and Cryin', Fleshtones, Grant Lee Buffalo, Patti Smith, Warren Zevon, Neneh Cherry, B-52s, Golden Palominos, Kristin Hersh, Butter 08, Smashing Pumpkins, Oh OK, the Db's, the Troggs.

Notes:
In the wake of punk and new wave, the garage band sound of the Chronic Town EP, released in 1982, was R.E.M.'s first taste of critical worship, something that washed over into 1983 when the band's full length debut Murmur was universally considered the best album of the year. R.E.M. spent the early half of the '80s as a college radio station staple at universities across America, releasing at least one album a year on I.R.S. Records. On the heels of their top-five single "The One I Love," 1987's Document allowed the band to break through to a mainstream audience for the first time. The band's exodus to major label Warner Bros. allowed their unique sound to reach an even bigger audience, as 1989's Green continued garnering critical praise for the band while selling over a million records. The '90s saw R.E.M assume the role of global super-group, as Out Of Time, Automatic For The People, Monster, and New Adventures In Hi-Fi proved. Things briefly came to a halt in 1997, however, as founding member and drummer Bill Berry decided to quit the band after a severe illness. Amid speculation that this meant their demise, the remaining three members decided to keep playing and released their eleventh studio album, Up, in 1998. They finished the decade by writing the musical score for the Andy Kaufman biopic, "Man On The Moon," named after one of their songs.

Murmur wasn't an easy record to match qualitatively, and R.E.M.'s sophomore release, Reckoning, doesn't meet the mark as consistently, yet the beautiful balladry of "So. Central Rain" and the labyrinthine "Letter Never Sent" demonstrate the quartet's proficiency in undermining conventional pop song composition.

Is this pop music? Is this a moody and melancholy dirge? Is this a bunch of babble? R.E.M. manage to somehow fuse such widely different tendencies together into one sound. It's a blend which, after the almost two decades since their inception, sounds perfectly natural, and makes perfect sense, as if it had always been that way. But listening to it for the first time, or with a fresh ear, you´re caught off-guard by this unlikely combination of elements. The Motown flow, the Southern booze-drenched sadness of it, the bright (don't say the J-word) guitars, the Beach Boys-like vocal harmonies, the soulful phrasings. More radio-friendly than Murmur, Reckoning still maintained much of the introspection and somber quality of its predecessor. Crooners like "Camera" and "Little America" give the album the feel of an American epic, making our boys the Simon and Garfunkel of their generation.