R.E.M.'s Albums Ranked [#5 - #1]

Ranking the top five albums of America's greatest rock band.

Author, producer, and frequent WAIM pod guest, Matt Berenson recently published his ranked list of the R.E.M. discography. Much like me, Matt is an R.E.M. fanatic, so I was fascinated by his list.

Of course, it made me consider how my list would stack up. So what the hell? Let’s do it. Here we go.

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This is it. The final countdown, as it were. We’ve rolled through the bottom five and dispensed with any unnecessary fluff. Then, we whittled down the midfield of the R.E.M. catalog with an additional quintet of long players. Now we find ourselves atop the mountain of southern sonic greatness that is R.E.M.

“The greatest southern rock band that I know is R.E.M.”
- Kevin Kinney, Drivin’ & Cryin’

#5 Fables Of The Reconstruction

The most southern and perhaps moodiest record in the band’s canon, R.E.M. had a dreadful time making Fables Of The Reconstruction. Having made their first two albums with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter in North Carolina, the band from Athens sought a change of place, and a change of producer.

Guitarist Peter Buck was keen to work with producer Joe Boyd who had made his name producing psych-pop, and folk revival acts prevalent in England in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Most famously, Boyd had produced the first two records by Nick Drake, and done work with neo-folk revivalists, Fairport Convention.

Flying to London to work with Boyd, the band arrived at Livingston Studios in February of 1985. The dreary English winter, a strained working relationship with Boyd, and the weariness of two solid years on the road for the band, all led to a difficult and tense recording session. Buck described the experience by stating, “It rained every day it wasn't snowing”.

In working with Dixon and Easter on the first two albums, things had gone quickly in the studio. Ideas popped in and were executed with efficiency and speed. Boyd was a much more deliberate producer and slowed the band, which they found frustrating. In many respects they felt their new producer was stifling them rather than helping them achieve their sonic visions.

Somehow, despite the difficult working conditions, the foreign terrain, and a producer with whom they did not mesh, R.E.M. crafted their most American, most southern, and most gothic work in Fables of The Reconstruction.

The brilliant and timeless ‘Driver 8’ is a sort of Rosetta Stone to the album. That gorgeous slice of rustic pop shows off the truly southern nature of R.E.M. as a band and as songwriters. Furthermore, it provides a sonic baseline that serves as conduit between the grey, angular screech of opener ‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull’ and the gentle laconic banjo on ‘Wendell Gee’.

‘Driver 8’ and other notable tracks like ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ and ‘Maps And Legends’ hint at their first two records, but this is a band stretching itself sonically, and lyrically. There is a newfound maturity on songs like ‘Green Grow The Rushes’ and ‘Life And How To Live it’ that foreshadows some of the greatness that would come later on Document and Life’s Rich Pageant while still maintaining a direct connection to the early works.

Fables Of The Reconstruction is the first moment at which R.E.M. seemed to realize just how powerful they were becoming as a musical unit. In embracing their true southern roots, they became somehow more universal and more unique at the same time.

#4 Automatic For The People

If Fables Of The Reconstruction is R.E.M.’s most southern album, then Automatic For The People is its most mature LP.

The album was culled from a series of roughly 30 songs that the band had demoed in the year following the recording of their smash LP Out Of Time. Peter Buck noted that the record was based on themes of loss and death and the reality of turning 30. It also reflected a shift in the nature of the larger music scene of the moment.

In talking about the band’s changing sound for the record, Buck stated, “The world that we'd been involved in had disappeared, the world of Hüsker Dü and The Replacements, all that had gone [...] We were just in a different place and that worked its way out musically and lyrically.”

Stipe explained the songs on Automatic to Rolling Stone this way in the lead up to the album’s release, “mid-tempo, pretty fucking weird [...] More acoustic, more organ-based, less drums”.

Once the album was released, Rolling Stone writer and critic David Fricke seemed impatient with the album, “Automatic for the People seems to move at an even more agonized crawl than the band's previous release.”

Automatic for the People might have been more sparse and restrained than the band’s previous work, but it was also lush, gorgeous, and more intimate than anything the band had done prior.

With stunning arrangements, and superb lead vocal performances from Stipe, haunting tracks like ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Nightswimming’ became bona fide hits. This album feels more personal, more direct, and more vulnerable than any other work in the R.E.M. discography. While there are moments of quiet beauty on Out Of Time as well as on New Adventures In Hi Fi that could sit comfortably on this album, Automatic For The People is its own wholly unique universe.

‘Ignoreland’, an anti-Bush screed with panache is the only song on the album not from a deeply personal perspective. Stipe’s lyrics, often vague and difficult to discern, take sharper focus here. If Monster showed us the hard exterior of the band, Automatic For The People exposes the soft underbelly of R.E.M.

#3 Murmur

I wrote about this one extensively for its 40th anniversary, but we can cover it again here for the countdown.

With the five song Chronic Town EP under their belt as a virgin release, R.E.M. set to making their debut long player for their new label, IRS Records. Working with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter at a small studio in North Carolina, the band quickly recorded the set of original songs they had been playing for more than a year at live gigs.

Originally, IRS had set up the band with noted producer Stephen Hague who did not see eye to with the band. Hague had visions for making R.E.M. sound very much like other bands of the day. After suggesting ideas like synthesizer solos and drum machine loops, the band opted to work in a more informal and organic environment.

Because of their negative experience with Hague, the band was direct with Easter and Dixon that it wanted to avoid rock cliches like overproduction and guitar solos. R.E.M. felt the songs should speak for themselves and should be presented in spare and clear fashion.

This is just one example of how truly visionary R.E.M. were as a band. They envisioned a sound for themselves and even as young players making their first record had the courage and clarity to make the record they wanted to make. And oh, what a record they made.

Murmur is truly one of the greatest debut albums in rock history. The lead single ‘Radio Free Europe’ was a regional hit and signified the greatness to come from this new band from Athens, GA. Beyond the opening track though, the album is laden with rock classics like ‘Catapult’ and ‘Sitting Still’, as well as gentler pop gems like ‘A Perfect Circle’ and the lilting, ‘We Walk’.

The cohesion of the album as a whole is a testament to the sonic sincerity of Berry/Buck/Mills Stipe. While the songs are great, and the straightforward production an ideal choice, the band also added any number of strange and weird sonic textures to the recordings to keep things ever so slightly off balance. Phased drums, clattering noises, and a detuned piano are just a few of the subtle shapes that are prevalent on Murmur, and help elevate it to greatness.

#2 Reckoning

R.E.M. considered a handful of producers for their second LP, but ended up heading back to North Carolina to work with Mitch Easter and Don Dixon once again. Getting a chance to produce R.E.M.’s sophomore album, Dixon sought to capture more of the band’s live, raw sound. While Murmur had captured a live version of the band, it lacked the power and verve of the bands live performances.

Dixon, Easter, and the band worked very quickly. There are varying reports on the exact schedule but work for the record was done in something like three weeks, a shockingly short amount of time for a fully produced rock album.

Despite pressure from the band’s label to make the recordings as commercially appealing as possible, the crew stuck to the plan of capturing the band in their live glory. In fact, one of the reasons the band worked so quickly was to get the record finished before executives from the label could come in to demand changes in production. It was a stroke of genius.

R.E.M. had been touring non-stop throughout 1982 and 1983. With the success of Murmur, the touring intensified, and by the time work began on Reckoning in December of 1983, Stipe’s voice was weary. You would never know that from the recordings, though. His performance on ‘So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)’ is one of the finest moments of his career.

Like its follow up, Fables Of The Reconstruction, Reckoning harkens to what music writer Greil Marcus called “The old weird America”. Stipe’s vague lyricism dances around concepts like broken relationships, the supernatural, and elements of gothic southern folk tales, and religious revivalism.

Reckoning jangles, and chimes perhaps more than any R.E.M. record. Its crystalline guitars, and Stipe’s warbling but somehow shining voice meld simply and effortlessly with the melodic groove machine that is the Berry/Mills rhythm section. From the propulsive ‘Harborcoat’ to the pensive ‘So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)’ and the elegiac ‘Camera’, it’s a varied and emotional record.

Far from being a staid LP, playful gems like ‘7 Chinese Brothers’ and ‘Don’t Go Back To Rockville’ are among the greatest sing-alongs known to the college rock canon. Patented R.E.M. jangle, southern weirdness, and a direct production approach, make this set of songs the penultimate R.E.M. album.

#1 Life’s Rich Pageant

As R.E.M. began work on their fourth album, and the follow up to Fables Of The Reconstruction, the band wanted a change of pace. Traveling to London and working with a new producer in the dreary English winter had been a tough stretch for the members of the band,

“We wanted to get away from the sort of murky feelings and sounds that we got out of Joe [Boyd].” said Peter Buck on choosing a new way of working as they started work on the album that would become Life’s Rich Pageant.

After an extensive demo session at John Keane’s studio in Athens, R.E.M. decamped for Bloomington Indiana and the studios of producer, Don Gehman. Whereas London had been dreary, tense and difficult, Bloomington was welcoming, offered regular shows for the band to attend, and offered a style of college town life to which they were accustomed from living in Athens.

For his part, Gehman sought to lend more clarity and sharpness to the R.E. M. sound, particularly that of its vocalist, Michael Stipe. Garnering a well deserved reputation for obtuse lyrics and a veiled delivery style and mixing technique, Stipe’s lyrics were difficult to pick out, and often impossible to decode on the first three albums, although they had taken on a slightly larger presence on Fables.

Now, Gehman sought to make them the center of the songs, as they would normally be on any other band’s records. With a growing sense of confidence and surroundings that made the band feel very comfortable, they began to experiment with the concept of featuring their vocalist more prominently, making Stipe’s words, and not just the sound of his voice, a new focus of attention for listeners of the band.

"Don (Gehman, the album's producer) is good at layering things so there can be a lot of things going on but you can still hear everything. And as far as Michael's vocals go, it's a combination of things: Michael is getting better at what he's doing, and he's getting more confident at it. And I think that shows up in the projection of his voice. The overall sound of everything was so good, we didn't mind having the vocals mixed as loud as they were." - Mike Mills

Stipe was also able to take the new focus on his lyricism to write about causes for which he held strong beliefs. ‘Fall On Me’ and ‘Cuyhagoa’ mark two of the first and finest moments of Stipe writing about the ongoing environmental crisis. It also signified the moment at which Michael Stipe began his transformation from frontman to musician/activist.

The conditions were comfortable, the working partnership was strong, and the band was riding a wave of creative momentum. These factors all led to Life’s Rich Pageant being a true masterpiece. But it is the songs that elevate it to the greatest R.E.M. record and one of the finest records in recorded music.

Album opener ‘Begin The Begin’ announces a new, raucous version of R.E.M.; a panting Stipe, urgent guitars and a propulsive beat signal a record that is far from as precious as Reckoning, or as moody as Fables. ‘These Days’ carries that momentum further as it comes clattering from the block to a dead sprint with Berry driving the band mercilessly. ‘I Believe’ drives home the point at the mid-album mark to make sure you don’t forget to rock.

Tenderness finds a place in tunes like ‘What If We Give It Away’ and the haunting ‘Swan Swan H’, which is the lone song that connects this album with the Southern Gothic of Fables Of The Reconstruction. Stipe also inflects a strange, American legacy to these songs. He proclaims to be ‘Miles Standish proud’ and remarks of Johnny Reb. You can take the boys out of the American south . . .

Life’s Rich Pageant is also a perfect case study in R.E.M.’s secret weapon; Mike Mills. Not only is Mills a tremendous bass player and writer, he also features one of the greatest backing voices in rock music. His angelic tones are littered across the R.E.M. discography and elevate so much of their work.

Because of Mills’ beautiful backing vocals, good songs become great, great songs become legendary. There is no greater proof of that than his work Life’s Rich Pageant. One need only listen to his singing in ‘Fall On Me’, or his anthemic voice on the choruses of ‘Cuyahoga’ or ‘I Believe’ to be convinced.

The seemingly goofy, ‘Underneath The Bunker’ is the only odd moment in an otherwise perfect album. Considering that the song was a nod to the ongoing nuclear fears that were rampant in the 1980s, it has aged better than expected.

If Fables is their most southern record, Life’s Rich Pageant is their most American album. It is also their very finest.

Cheers,
Matty C