The Sidewinder Sleeps, Sleeps, Sleeps In A POLL: REM's "Automatic For The People"

*places

lol that reminded me of this:

"Find the River" shall be played at my funeral.

I ordinarily wouldn't vote for the short instrumental in an album poll and there are other songs I like a lot, but "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1" is a gorgeous little piece.

Yep -- my favorite R.E.M. instrumental.

Speaking of which, possible poll...?

This is seriously tough. Love "Drive". Love "Try Not To Breathe". Love "Find The River". Love "Monty Got a Raw Deal". But in the end it has to be "Man On The Moon".

The best R.E.M. album ever!

Hey, Kids, Rock And POLL
Sweetness POLLows
A Little Agit For The Never POLLiever
POLL Me When You Try To Wake Her
So POLLd On, POLLd Onnnnnn
Coriander, Stamen, POLLs of Hay

Automatic For The Pee-Poll ;)

Who's willing to bet that the biggest single placest lowest?

A few lurker votes will probably help it beat some of the most ignored tracks. Never liked "Everybody Hurts" much though, although the video was kind of cool.

I'm one of the people who boringly dumps on this album whenever it comes up so this is a nice chance to say what I like about it. When it came out, I would have said "Try Not To Breathe" or "Sidewinder" but I don't think these have aged well, and now it's "Sweetness Follows." Or at least that's how I remember it -- I have this on cassette and haven't heard it in ~5 years.

Anyone heard the 5:1 mix of this album? Actually one of the most beautiful 5:1 mixes I've heard.

most ignored tracks - I dunno. Based on posts thusfar, it seems possible that the objectively least track (NOI#1) will trump the objectively largest. Fine by me.

This is actually the hardest one of these so far for me - there is a LOT of really great material on this, very well-performed - basically all of these are, I think honestly among the best songs this band ever recorded:

"Try Not to Breathe" – 3:50
"The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" – 4:06
"Everybody Hurts" – 5:17
"Sweetness Follows" – 4:19
"Monty Got a Raw Deal" – 3:17
"Man on the Moon" – 5:13
"Nightswimming" – 4:16
"Find the River" – 3:50

A few are a bit marred by production; there's a kind of booming emptiness to "Monty" that feels awkward, like a weird attempt to get back to their Document/Green sound. But the song is rock solid. I can't even pick in random match-ups of these songs - "Sidewinder" vs. "Find The River"? I love them for really different reasons but I think they're both perfectly executed. That perfect execution may be some of what turns people off of this album - this is NOT a tentative record by people trying to figure out the tools available to them, or in any sense an experiment - they walked in ready to make a "classic" for better or for worse.

Gun to my head - "Find the River," "Sidewinder," or "Nightswimming." But you'd have to start counting to three before I'd be able to pick between 'em.

"Sweetness." It's got cellos.

(Most Valuable Player award goes to John Paul Jones)

cellos & tremolo guitars. at the same time (swoon).

i want to vote for 'ignoreland' cuz it's so different from everything else on there.

but scrolling over the tracks, it quickly becomes apparent that 'find the river' is my preferred song these days.

Find The River for being the best example of REM at their most beautiful (you see what I did there?)

i like the shrillness of 'ignoreland'... the whole album's great, and great as a whole, and i can't help but wonder if i'm choosing 'find a river' because its just so perfect a close for so perfect a record.

it has the darkness, the elegiac tone, but also the germ of optimism and sweetness.

Idle speculation: is "Sidewinder" a kind of dry run for "Hope"? The hospital setting seems easily possible: bad food, scratched-up payphone, heartbeats trying to wake up, etc. But while on "Hope" the gravity of the situation is acknowledged (even as the patient tries to escape it through various understandable hopes), on "Sidewinder" both the visiting friend and the band themselves are trying to play it off, cheer up the sick friend with inside jokes. The bridge comes closer to the truth, longing for the simplicity of childhood - or maybe it's that the patient is a kid and Stipe is reading to her, coming to a halt to report that she has successfully fallen asleep.

I dunno - but there's a really interesting tension in this song between its obvious jokiness and a kind of sadness around the edges that I can't quite verbalize.

I always thought that the person being sung about in "Sidewinder" is dead already, or has been written off by the narrator as dead already.

This album is too personal for me to say much about on here. It came out at one of my most emo times of life, just off to college thousands of miles from home, like a complete unknown. I'd gone so far because nobody tells me where to go, baby. REM had been my favorite band for years, and growing up in Georgia their work spoke to me physically: I knew those places they sung about. My mother sent me Automatic in a care package (I hadn't asked) and it ripped me apart. I spent a dark-ish night of the soul about a month ago with it and it still hits home. I voted for "Drive" Doing my best to articulate why in public language: because nobody tells me what to do, baby. But freedom has costs, not just for those left behind, but for the one leaving. "Drive" pairs what reads on paper as a celebration of freedom with a serious lament of a tune, funeral organ standing out. It continues to remind me that I buy my rootlessness at the expense of important goods, and as I drive away again wondering why I can't help but leave but why I feel so sad, "Drive" comforts me. And so does the album.

Euler, bravo. I'm always struck by how much this band has the capacity to mean something to people, perhaps particularly we Georgians but in general they never shied away from tackling big feelings, in their complexity, and we give that attention back, I think, in our attachment to these songs.

Out of Time is the Georgia-nostalgia record for me - but for no particular reason, and of course these things happen in large part through personal narratives - where and when we were when the albums hit us.

euler, that was some awesome writing

thank you!

My favourite R.E.M. album after Murmur and nearly all of these stand up as great individual songs. Such a graceful record and it genuinely cheers me to know how popular it is. It's between 'Try Not To Breathe' and 'Man On The Moon' for me.

Their best record.

Drive

Find the River, even if it does sound like a pot pourri recipe

this is a really good record. upon opening this, i thought that the first three songs were the best. and then i remembered the last three songs. and then i remembered how much i liked star me kitten. and sweetness follows.

scott miller makes a great argument for "try not to breathe" here (scroll down; it's second from the bottom) so i might vote for that. but looks like find the river might win this, and that is a breathtaking song, so i might vote that. but i really have no idea how i'm going to vote

I really like Nightswimming. Everybody Hurts killed into craven and abject submission by The Fall's Everything Hurtz.

But the only REM album I liked, not necessarily I suspect because it's better than any other - I wouldn't know - but right place, right time.

Drive strikes me as a terrible, awkward, and lyrically poor song. I find it utterly confounding that it was on the album, much less the lead single. But I dig "Nightswimming."

Oh man, I love "Drive". The structure of it is very...mature. It sounds like the work of a band that was completely in control and knew exactly what it wanted. It's also a good example of what people mean when they talk about the influence of Bill Berry. The tone of restraint and space that he creates during the verses makes the song.

The first time I consciously heard "Find the river" I wondered where had I heard it before. I could never recall where, so I suppose truth is I had always been waiting for it, without knowing.

Oboe = RAWK

Sidenote re Wally's post: "Find the River" and Lisa Loeb's "Stay" both open with that same picked-through-then-strummed D chord, right?

voted star me kitten--cant take't back now...

The first time I consciously heard "Find the river" I wondered where had I heard it before. I could never recall where, so I suppose truth is I had always been waiting for it, without knowing.

As mentioned above, it sounds nearly identical to that Lisa Loeb song. Well, the first 5 seconds anyway.

You say I only hear what I want to.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

oh man this album is as emo as it gets for me

find the river

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Great turnout, and stunningly close results!

Still another poll, shortly to come...

"Monty" got a raw deal, but o/w this looks great.

Admit it Euler, you were hoping that Monty would do poorly just so you could say that! ;)

Toyed with "Monty", this seems strange to me.

Truly, the results prove that virtue isn't everything.

Just let go.

Hold...your...tongue.

that shit is plain fucked up

c'mon, this is just vitriol, no solution spleen venting. do you feel better for having screamed?

Don't you?

"Everybody Hurts" – 5:17 2

This makes me so unbelievably happy.

I was obsessed with REM in high school, total fanboy, and have also avoided this album to some degree because of emotional distress related to it.
middle school through high school for me, hardest years of my life. i can FINALLY listen to this album again after lots of therapy :-/

these lyrics right here

The river to the ocean goes
A fortune for the undertow
None of this is going my way

There is nothing left to throw
Of ginger, lemon, indigo
Coriander stem and rose of hay

Strength and courage overrides
The privileged and weary eyes
Of river poet search naiveté

Pick up here and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
All of this is coming your way

great. also gotta be one of my favorite Stipe vocal performances.

I thought it was - "There is nothing left to grow / But ginger, mint, and indigo"

Of river poet search naiveté

This has never made sense (obv), but I guess you're just supposed to "feel" it (and it works!)

the chorus is very 70s singer songrwiter-y reminds me of a john denver song but cant recall which atm. its gorgeous

Love, love the vibe of Drive. There’s nothing else like it in their catalog. It reminds me of Floyd’s Animals, of the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack — emotionally transparent but musically enigmatic. And in the middle, Buck’s best solo

I thought it was - "There is nothing left to grow / But ginger, mint, and indigo"

― Reese's Pisces Iscariot (morrisp), Wednesday, November 9, 2022 2:00 PM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sounds right to me

I believe Peter Buck brought “Drive” to the rest of the band essentially musically complete.

I’m not sure how many cases there are of first track lead singles - on what is probably their biggest selling album - failing to make it on subsequent best of compilations; “Chocolate Cake” and Recurring Dream is one

(Deliberately not including the live ‘funk’ version on the 2003 comp)

That's an interesting observation about the comps... looks like "E-Bow the Letter" (which I also love) didn't make it onto Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, though it was on In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003.

I agree that "Drive" is a very cool and singular (for them) track, and probably underrated in the context of their catalogue.

It sounds like a dark twin to James Taylor’s “Riding on a Railroad” to me. Perhaps just my upbringing. I mean it as a compliment, I adore “Drive”.

It’s singular within and without the REM catalog if that’s not too big a claim - and discounting the fact that it samples David Essex (!)

I like that Automatic, Monster and New Adventures all have very left-field debut singles - Ebow, has a similar sui generis quality - their last great single imo

Drive, perfect though it is, I'd say was never going to make it onto In Time or Part Lies. The next four singles from Automatic all eclipsed it in the public memory (at least in UK but I'd imagine US as well?) Like numerous 90s alt-rock lead singles - including a few others of R.E.M. - it was mostly there to appease the fanbase before the second single was to really set things up crossover-wise.

in the ballot poll we did a long time ago, i put Drive at #3. still one of my all-time favorites, and love the video as well

not a great choice for a first single, though, but they ended up doing pretttttty well commercially on that album so i suppose they knew what they were doing, heh

even "everybody hurts" sounds pretty good these days

because it's true.

feel pretty alone as an r.e.m. fan in loving "ignoreland"

i see discussion of "ignoreland" takes up most of this thread.... you cannot IGNORE the pull of "ignoreland"

anyway "monty" deserves 500 votes

got a raw deal, imo

i would probably pick "try not to breathe"

I might agree these days. I remember the first time I heard this album (bought on the street in NYC). I knew "Drive," since it was the first single. But "Try Not to Breathe" as the second track was the real indication that I was in for something special.

I like "Ignoreland"! Takes me back to voting against Poppy Bush.

While I've since more or less come around to the song, I think that gets at its relative ... failure is too strong a word. Setting aside any suspicion that the song was inserted to interrupt an otherwise pretty sleepy, even dreamy record, I also think it interrupts the thematic flow a little, too. "Automatic" is so steeped in a certain out of time (to coin a phrase) Gen X nostalgia. David Essex, Zeppelin strings, Dr. Seuss, Andy Kaufman, Montgomery Clift (just like the Clash!), "Nightswimming." But "Ignoreland" and particularly its anger feels very out of place and contemporary. Though I suppose a case could be made that it works as a sort of negative nostalgia, connecting then current grievance to a timeline of Republican malfeasance.

I’ve always thought of Nightswimming as the older companion to Gardening At Night. The Big Chill to the latter’s Animal House or something stupid like that. (Ouff. I’m gonna regret that.)

It’s almost too pretty, but a key song in my life regardless.

A lot of good tracks here, not sure what I’d have voted for

I love "Ignoreland" though it wouldn't be my #1 pick from this album. The fast parts are cool, but it's the pre-chorus ("They hypnotized the summer..." etc) that really puts it over the top for me. (The clavinet doesn't hurt either.)

I would rank #1 Drive, #2 Try Not to Breathe, #3 Find the River. Nightswimming gets an honorable mention.

Listening to this front-to-back for the first time in years amazed at how much of it is deeply embedded - melodically, lyrically. It'd be Nightswimming for me; if music runs through our lives like a mountain range, this'd be a gentle peak, veiled in a soft haze.

Minor things I don't think I noticed at the time: this quite clearly leads to Jar of Flies/Sap by Alice in Chains.

the only thing i really like about "ignoreland" is the clavinet in the chorus

the best tracks here are the first three and last two, and then "sweetness follows". my favourite is "the sidewinder sleeps tonite". those six are a rather good half-album but the rest, bleh.

would have voted "ignoreland"

I love this album back-to-back

^ this

"Star Me Kitten". The rest isn't bad but I think they did better versions of all these styles on New Adventures in Hi-Fi.

...and some of Monster, for that matter.