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

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 don't mind "Drive" but major o_O

why was there no "I would like to beat 'Everybody Hurts' with bats" option

y'all know that some future generation of music crits is gonna reclaim everybody hurts though

this is why I am glad I won't be around in the 2100s

maybe at night in the cemetery they'll pipe in 'everybody hurts' to the graves though? like to soothe the dead?

I don't hate "Everybody Hurts" but I've skipped it when listening to this album since, well, 1992. Same for "Ignoreland".

God, though, you guys, "Man on the Moon" really is a fucking great song.

Something I don't understand about myself is why I have no time for "Man on the Moon," finding it kind of boringly chirpy, when I love and admire both "Stand" and "Shiny Happy People." Maybe it's because I think of Andy Kaufman as a really different kind of thing from R.E.M. and it feels somehow not true to what the band was doing to reach for this reference -- i.e. as you know I love Talking Heads beyond measure but if Talking Heads had done a song that was explicitly about Lily Tomlin would I have been into it? But no, I don't think there's a reason, I just think this song struck me at the wrong time and glanced off. If I remember right, MotM and "Try Not To Breathe" were the ones I liked when this first came out. Now I would rank "Sweetness Follows"

I sort of get what you mean about Kaufman, or more generally that first string of pop cultural references: the Game of Life, Mott the Hoople. Seems kind of outside their normal basket of mythology. It's basically a "Candle in the Wind" kind of deal, and for an "alternative" band, finding meaning in this semi-mainstream reference might seem odd, even if it probably went over the heads of most of the listeners. I know I had to look it up when I got into this album in '98/99.

would've voted 'man on the moon' most likely, though 'monty got a raw deal' got a raw deal here. in 92 would've voted 'ignoreland', so stupid. man what an album. casino did simpson make you aware how close weaver d's was (is) to going out of business?

and for an "alternative" band, finding meaning in this semi-mainstream reference might seem odd

ha, i meant something more like the exact opposite, that the kaufman ref reads to me r.e.m. reaching for "artiness" in a way that didn't suit them

More about atheism than artiness...

Okay, I get you now re: Kaufman! I guess artiness seems within their remit to me... Man Ray kind of sky, etc.

I thought Weaver D's HAD gone out of business!

if Talking Heads had done a song that was explicitly about Lily Tomlin

but they did write a song for "Bill."

Even though this album represents the point where R.E.M. went interstellar massive, I often forget just how great this album is. Particularly the second half of the album from 'Monty' onwards. Those string arrangements still sound gorgeous too, particularly on 'Sidewinder'. I think I'm even beginning to be able to listen to 'Everybody Hurts' again after years of being sick to death of it, too.

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.