Lifes Rich Pageant

My favorite R.E.M. album, Lifes Rich Pageant(1), was released 40 years ago this summer, though my favorite song remains Driver 8 from their prior album, Fables of the Reconstruction.  The band hailed from the same place as the B-52s, Athens, Georgia.  Over its long recording career, R.E.M. had two distinct styles; songs on which you could not understand Michael Stipe's lyrics and those on which you could (Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts are good examples of the latter).  THC much preferred the former earlier style.  R.E.M. were at their best when they featured jangling guitars,  strong melodies, and Stipe's mumbling vocals buried into the mix. I find a lot of later REM either dreary or just too much.

Burying the vocals in the mix dominated the early R.E.M. records in the 1980s.  It didn't mean that the listener couldn't make out any words in the murk.  Indeed, words and even phrases could be interpreted but there were always passages when you simply could not make out what they were saying.  And, back then, there was no internet to quickly search out the lyrics.  It also ensured that you often had no idea what the song was about, which in some cases may have been for the better.  Lifes Rich Pageant is a transitional record in which Stipe's vocals occasionally emerge above the mix.

Here's one of the best cuts from the album, These Days, and you should also listen to Fall On Me, Cuyahoga, Hyena, and Swan Swan H. 

 

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(1)  Yes, I know it should be Life's but that how it appears on the cover of the album.