R.E.M.

Automatic For The People (25th Anniversary Edition)

   ^{R.E.M. — Automatic For The People (25th Anniversary Edition)}
”“★λ★”“     Fronted by the charismatic Michael Stipe, one of the first alt~rock bands to make it big, maintaining their integrity and a sense of adventure over three decades.
”“★λ★”“     It’s so rare that four white dudes selling 18 million units knew the limits of their powers.
Styles: Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, American Underground, College Rock, Jangle Pop
Recording Location: Bearsville Sound Studios, New York, NY; Bearsville Studio, Beatsville, NY; Bosstown Recording Studios, Atlanta, GA; Criteria Recording Studios, Miami, FL; John Keane’s Studio, Athens, GA; Kingsway Studio, New Orleans, LA
Location: Athens, GA
Album release: October 6, 1992 / NOVEMBER 10, 2017
Record Label: CRAFT RECORDINGS
Duration:
Tracks:
CD1
01. Drive
02. Try Not To Breathe
03. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
04. Everybody Hurts
05. New Orleans Instrumental No. 1
06. Sweetness Follows
07. Monty Got A Raw Deal
08. Ignoreland
09. Star Me Kitten
10. Man On The Moon
11. Nightswimming
12. Find The River
CD2
01. Drive (Live)
02. Monty Got A Raw Deal (Live)
03. Everybody Hurts (Live)
04. Man On The Moon (Live)
05. Losing My Religion (Live)
06. Country Feedback (Live)
07. Begin The Begin (Live)
08. Fall On Me (Live)
09. Me In Honey (Live)
10. Finest Worksong (Live)
11. Love Is All Around (Live)
12. Funtime (Live)
13. Radio Free Europe (Live)
CD3
01. Drive (Demo)
02. Wake Her Up (Demo)
03. Mike’s Pop Song (Demo)
04. C To D Slide 13 (Demo)
05. Cello Scud (Demo)
06. 10K Minimal (Demo)
07. Peter’s New Song (Demo)
08. Eastern 983111 (Demo)
09. Bill’s Acoustic (Demo)
10. Arabic Feedback (Demo)
11. Howler Monkey (Demo)
12. Pakiderm (Demo)
13. Afterthought (Demo)
14. Bazouki Song (Demo)
15. Photograph (Demo)
16. Michael’s Organ (Demo)
17. Pete’s Acoustic Idea (Demo)
18. 6~8 Passion & Voc (Demo)
19. Hey Love (Mike Voc / Demo)
20. Devil Rides Backwards (Demo)Credits:
★λ★    Denise Berginson~Smith Violin
★λ★    Bill Berry Composer, Drums
★λ★    Ed Brooks Engineer, Mixing
★λ★    Peter Buck Composer, Group Member, Guitar
★λ★    Knox Chandler Cello
★λ★    Anton Corbijn Photography
★λ★    George Cowan Engineer
★λ★    Lonnie Ditzen Violin
★λ★    Bertis Downs Performer
★λ★    Patti Gouvas Violin
★λ★    George Hanson Conductor
★λ★    Reid Harris Viola
★λ★    Jefferson Holt Performer
★λ★    Mark Howard Engineer
★λ★    John Paul Jones Guest Artist, Orchestra
★λ★    Cecil Juanarena Computer Imaging
★λ★    John Keane Engineer
★λ★    Kathleen Kee Cello
★λ★    Daniel Laufer Cello
★λ★    Tod Lemkuhl Assistant Engineer, Mixing Assistant
★λ★    Scott Litt Clarinet (Contrabass), Clavinet, Harmonica, Mixing, Producer
★λ★    Ted Malia Engineer
★λ★    Stephen Marcussen Mastering
★λ★    Mike Mills Bass, Composer
★λ★    Elizabeth Proctor Murphy Cello
★λ★    Paul Murphy Leader, Viola
★λ★    Mark Mytrowitz Technical Assistance
★λ★    Fredrick Nilsen Photography
★λ★    Heidi Nitchie Viola
★λ★    Clif Norrell Engineer, Mixing
★λ★    Lonnie Ottzen Violin
★λ★    R.E.M. Producer
★λ★    Tom Recchion Art Direction, Design
★λ★    Andrew Roshberg Engineer
★λ★    Sandy Salzinger Violin
★λ★    Michael Stipe Art Direction, Composer, Design, Group Member, Vocals
★λ★    Sou~Chun Su Violin
★λ★    Jody Taylor Violin
★λ★    Deborah Workman Oboe
ΛΔΛ      All tracks written by: Bill Berry / Peter Buck / Mike Mills / Michael StipeAllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine; Score: *****
”“★λ★”“     Turning away from the sweet pop of Out of Time, R.E.M. created a haunting, melancholy masterpiece with Automatic for the People. At its core, the album is a collection of folk songs about aging, death, and loss, but the music has a grand, epic sweep provided by layers of lush strings, interweaving acoustic instruments, and shimmering keyboards. Automatic for the People captures the group at a crossroads, as they moved from cult heroes to elder statesmen, and the album is a graceful transition into their new status. It is a reflective album, with frank discussions on mortality, but it is not a despairing record — “Nightswimming,” “Everybody Hurts,” and “Sweetness Follows” have a comforting melancholy, while “Find the River” provides a positive sense of closure. R.E.M. have never been as emotionally direct as they are on Automatic for the People, nor have they ever created music quite as rich and timeless, and while the record is not an easy listen, it is the most rewarding record in their oeuvre. ”“★λ★”“     https://www.allmusic.com/
Editorial Reviews
”“★λ★”“     Widely considered to be one of the best albums of the 90s, 1992’s Automatic For The People features R.E.M.’s iconic hit singles “Nightswimming,” “Man on the Moon” and “Everybody Hurts.”
”“★λ★”“     Commemorating the album’s 25th Anniversary, this remastered Deluxe edition boxset features previously unreleased material, including 20 never~before~heard demos, and the previously unreleased tracks “Mike’s Pop Song” and “Devil Rides Backwards.” A Blu~ray disc offers the full album (with bonus track “Photograph” featuring Natalie Merchant) mixed in Dolby Atmos, plus a high~resolution master of the album, music videos, and the original 1992 EPK. Also included is Live At The 40 Watt Club 11/19/92 ~ a live set performed in R.E.M.’s hometown of Athens, GA.
”“★λ★”“     Housed in a 12” x 12” box, the Deluxe edition features a 60~page book, offering photos by Anton Corbijn and Melodie McDaniel, plus expanded liner notes by Tom Doyle who conducted new interviews with all 4 band members.
Review
BY DAN WEISS ON NOVEMBER 08, 2017, 6:00AM / SCORE: A+
”“★λ★”“     Automatic for the People was intended to be a fast rock album. So if you’ve ever needed proof of R.E.M. as a band guided by their unforced collective muse, their eighth full~length was a start. Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry all began recording demos and trading instruments in hopes to break away from the largely acoustic and folksy Out of Time, their previous and highest-selling album ever thanks to the inescapable worldwide hit “Losing My Religion”. But as the tunes took shape, somehow they turned out even slower and more funereal than the last record. Michael Stipe took notice, and the lyrics he penned centered largely around death and loss.
”“★λ★”“     Yet the project that was simply called Star at the time wasn’t like any morose album before it. For one thing, rumors circulating that Stipe was stricken with AIDS added a veneer of how being a celebrity means losing control of your truth, even in death. Songs like “Monty Got a Raw Deal” and “Man on the Moon” concerned fallen stars Montgomery Clift and Andy Kaufman, respectively, who both lived unsettled Hollywood lives and declined in health under bizarre circumstances.
”“★λ★”“     And “Nightswimming”, the solely piano~led beaut of a Stipe~Mills duet, reminisced about the band and friends’ pastime of skinny dipping in the early ‘80s, no more, no less. It also became swept up in the AIDS rumors around the same time Stipe was beginning to identify as queer publicly. For the first time in their careers, R.E.M. were beginning to face the damages of fame and the responsibilities of commandeering a cult of personality, not to mention the futility of it. Stipe spent significant time campaigning for Michael Dukakis in 1988, but that was nothing like this. He ended up hiring a private investigator to try and find the source of the AIDS rumors, but didn’t vociferously deny them as to not dehumanize actual people living with AIDS. So it’s safe to say that Automatic for the People concerned the death of innocence, too, which is just as well when only Meg Ryan saved it from containing a song entitled “Fuck Me Kitten”. Dukakis lost, by the way.    
”“★λ★”“     But while the hilarious, winsome “Man on the Moon” was rightfully selected by the world as this album’s pick hit, and “Sweetness Follows” adapts a hymn~like sway submerged in plenty of organ courtesy of Mills, along with a startling and soothing series of chord changes for the refrain, it’s “Try Not to Breathe” that finds the optic nerve to stare down Stipe’s maker. Literally: “These are the eyes that I want you to remember.”
”“★λ★”“     So the much~touted maturity of R.E.M.’s apotheosis comes not from the somnambulant tempos nor John Paul Jones’ baton~passing string arrangements (dig that “Kashmir” when the electric guitar kicks in midway through “Drive”) nor the theme of mortality itself. It’s how they engaged with it, invoking love to defeat premature suicide in the monster hit “Everybody Hurts” or as a witness in “Try Not to Breathe”. Or when they orbited mortality with sex (“Star Me Kitten”) and political unrest (“Ignoreland”) and literal laughter (“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight”). A pretty lifelike balancing act, huh? It all comes to a head on the beautiful (kind of a redundant term with this record, no?) closer “Find the River”, a meaning~of~existence song that is the closest thing R.E.M. ever made to a “Once in a Lifetime”, as Stipe sings: “The ocean is the river’s goal/ A need to leave the water knows.” God, he was such a great writer in 1992. He puts Dr. Seuss and Nescafé on the same astral plane in one cut and rails against Reaganism in another, concluding that he was merely venting his spleen, “but I feel better having screamed.” It’s so rare that four white dudes selling 18 million units knew the limits of their powers; lord knows Bono didn’t.
”“★λ★”“     Naming the album after the slogan of their favorite soul~food enterprise showed they wanted to balance all this death with as much life and light as they could, and musically that manifested itself in sea~shanty basslines (“Try Not to Breathe”), backlit doo~wop (“Everybody Hurts”, “Star Me Kitten”), and half~speed ragtime (“Nightswimming”), in addition to Buck’s terse jangle that gave them this foundation in the first place. In lieu of actual rock, they liberally quoted from David Essex’s “Rock On” in the opener and first single “Drive”, addressing “kids” before the very next track warp-speeds all the way to old age. Out of Time was curiously titled in retrospect; this was the real examination of our time on earth and what we fill it with.    
”“★λ★”“     Speaking of time, now that Automatic for the People is a quarter~century old, the band opened the vaults for this reissue to give us a sparkling remaster, a sturdy live set from the 40 Watt Club (though it hardly begs for canonization like 2009’s revelatory, rarity~packed Live at the Olympia), and a juicy third disc of demos. Some of these are pretty fun, indeed, as you can hear “C to D Slide 13” become “Man on the Moon” before Stipe gave it its iconic lyrics on the very last day of recording. Others are merely an exercise in matching the working title to the finished version: “Passion & Voc (demo)” became “Try Not to Breathe”, “Ignoreland” used to be called “Howler Monkey”, and “Sweetness Follows” once bore the unceremonious title “Cello Scud”. Do you really need to hear “Pakiderm”, a dry run at “New Orleans Instrumental No. 1” that nearly doubles the length of the completed version, twice?
”“★λ★”“     The real hidden gems are the completely previously unreleased “Mike’s Pop Song” and the Natalie Merchant duet “Photograph”, reclaimed from the excellent 1993 pro~choice benefit comp Born to Choose. But none of the generous inclusions will convince you that Automatic for the People could’ve been stronger or more carefully curated. That’s the irony of these reissues; it takes a theoretically sui generis album to warrant a full expansion, yet it’s rare that the bonus material could actually enhance it further.
”“★λ★”“     If you needed this set to remind you of Automatic for the People’s enduring excellence and shimmering timelessness, there are worse ways to spend a few hours in 2017. But as the kids that nobody tells what to do in “Drive” harden into the power~stealing bastards of “Ignoreland”, R.E.M.’s take on the passage of time is more chilling than ever. Even Andy Kaufman may have lived to regret the development of fake news. Hopefully sweetness follows.
”“★λ★”“     Essential Tracks: “Man on the Moon”, “Try Not to Breathe”, “Mike’s Pop Song”, and “Photograph”
”“★λ★”“      https://consequenceofsound.net/”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“★λ★”“”“

R.E.M.

Automatic For The People (25th Anniversary Edition)

---