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Time - Man of the Year
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1993-04-08
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REVIEWS, Page 74MUSICThat Sinking Feeling
By GUY GARCIA
PERFORMER: R.E.M.
ALBUM: Automatic For the People
LABEL: Warner Bros.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The once alternative rock band retreats
from stardom with a downbeat, ruminative album.
It's lonely at the top, and really depressing too. At
least that's the inescapable impression conveyed by Automatic
for the People, R.E.M.'s follow-up to its 1991 critical and
commercial smash, Out of Time. The record gets off to a somber
start with Drive, a dirgelike number featuring lyricist and lead
singer Michael Stipe, and continues its downward spiral with a
string of songs that meander into a morass of hopelessness,
anger and loss.
The disc reaches its emotional nadir with Sweetness
Follows, in which Stipe ponders the death of loved ones, and
Everybody Hurts, an anti-suicide lullaby. Clearly ambivalent
about his and the band's new status as pop icon, Stipe seems to
be mourning nothing less than a loss of innocence. "I'm sure all
those people understand/ It's not like years before," he sings
in Night swimming. "The fear of getting caught/ The recklessness
of water/ They cannot see me naked."
Yet R.E.M. is too resourceful a band to bog down totally
in such melancholy musings. Proving that a so-called
alternative band can keep its edge after conquering the musical
mainstream, Automatic for the People manages to dodge
predictability without ever sounding aimless or unfocused.
Buoyed by a lush weave of chiming guitars, muted strings and
oboe, Stipe's moody vocals float over the music like leaves
drifting across a dark pond. The songs, which tend to start
slowly and build momentum, shimmer and swirl with bittersweet
melodies and riffs that gather rather than hook. Nightswimming,
which circles around a cascading piano part, and Find the River,
which resonates with a yearning for primordial purity, have the
wistful gravity of old snapshots, fleeting moments frozen in the
amber glaze of memory.
The band's continued ability to put a sharp point on its
sentiments is evident on two other tracks: the relatively upbeat
rocker Ignoreland, which backs up its political conviction with
grinding, discordant guitars, and the sardonic Man on the Moon,
in which Stipe for once breaks free of his bonds and takes
flight on a larky lyric: "Let's play Twister/ Let's play Risk/
See you in heaven if you make the list." By then, though, it's
impossible not to hope that next time out Stipe will lighten up
a bit and leave the weight of the world on someone else's
shoulders.