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

Still a week-ish to go on this one, btw: POLL The Way To Reno: REM's "Reveal"

Besides Fables of the Reconstruction, the REM album I listen to least, although a better album. "Monty Got A Raw Deal" makes its points quickly and creepily, so I voted for that. "Find a River" is pretty beautiful though.

I've always liked "Drive" a lot. Great video, too.

"Nightswimming" (sorry)

Tie for me between "Try Not To Breathe" and "Ignoreland." Why do people hate the latter so much?

see this thread: rem's 'ignoreland'

"find the river," because i tend to forget about it and then i'm surprised by it.

i said this on one of the other threads, but this is an album i like a lot without completely loving. i think it's a justified pop classic, it's just a little too sure of itself or something. but lots of great songs.

This is the only REM record that has really worked for me. I'm going "Man on the Moon" for the whole package -- song, lyrics, video.

POLL me kitten

New Orleans Instrumental!

Tough decision, but I'm going with "Sweetness Follows," barely edging out "Sidewinder.." & "Try Not to Breathe"

wow tough, but sidewinder has always been very special to me so i vote that

Who's willing to bet that the biggest single placest lowest? Highly possible, I say.

*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 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.

I pulled this out after the New Adventures revive listen the other day, and agree as always: rich, moody, textured arrangements on a great set of songs, arguably the most consistent set of songs they ever wrote (save "Ignoreland" though I know opinions are divided).

Yeah, 'Ignoreland' has always divided opinion, I guess, although I've always enjoyed it. The thing that's sprung to mind on this go-round of the album is how much 'Star Me Kitten' has grown on me over the years. When I first heard the album back in the '90s it was always a track that I didn't find myself paying much attention to, but these days I look forward to it... there's something about the way the bass combines with those backing vocals that's total ear candy to me.

I wonder how many people who bought this album noticed the f-bombs in 'Ignoreland' and 'Star Me Kitten', too.

This is the one REM album I really like.

I never had a problem with Ignoreland, but then I could never work out the words and never had a lyric sheet. In its defence, I like Stipe's flow as the second part of the verse builds (before the 'yeah yeah yeah yeah' part)

it's horrible because it breaks the flow of the album. on its own it's still horrible. Stipe's flow on it is a descendent of the talky flow on "Little America" and "It's the End of the World", and I suppose the talky bit on "Orange Crush", like he was into rap and thought "I can do...something like that". so on "Ignoreland" he takes that talky flow but barks like on "Orange Crush", and then it's into the hideous chorus, boomed out perkily, like an ad. "Ironic", no? what's worse is that that flow becomes the model for New Adventures, like on "Departure", "How the West Was Won", "E-Bow" kinda. well I can see why "Ignoreland" would split opinions because people here actually like those songs on Hifi, but they're the nadir of REM to me; I'd rather listen to "Leaving New York".

Stipe's increasing talky delivery from mid 90s onward I find really grating.

Seems to coincide IMO with becoming a much less interesting, over-'obvious' frontman.

Ahhhhh, I dunno, I love "Departure" and the fast-talkin' parts on "Ignoreland" are the only really interesting part of that song. Different strokes.

I'll agree that they're the most interesting part of that song, but that's just because the chorus is so rank.

but really my abiding hatred for that song is b/c it's like walking into a moss-covered cemetery in the autumn as dusk sets, and ripping a giant stinky fart.

I love Stipe's talky delivery. It's one of the many things that contributes to New Adventures In Hi-Fi being the best R.E.M. album.

In its defence, I like Stipe's flow as the second part of the verse builds (before the 'yeah yeah yeah yeah' part)

― Shepard Toney Album (dog latin), Friday, October 24, 2014 10:05 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This part rules!

While there's quite a few tracks on this record that were overplayed to death at the time and many years after until R.E.M. split, I feel I've reached the point where there's been enough distance from all of that that I can now listen to this album front-to-back and have it feel like a fresher experience than it's felt for a number of years. At one point, I was so sick of hearing 'Everybody Hurts' and 'Man On The Moon' that I never thought I'd really be able to enjoy either to the extent that I once did, but now I'm beginning to hear the simplicity and directness that I once loved about that former, and the layered vocal lines and catchy chorus that I once loved about the latter. I know Out of Time bizarrely has a lot of fans on here, but it was undoubtedly a dry run for this. A magnificent album. The only time they ever made an album better than this afterwards was with New Adventures in Hi-Fi, otherwise known to me as the best album R.E.M. ever made.

why are you shivering?

September's coming soon.

Nightswimming the obvious choice for me, but I think Sweetness Follows is close runner-up for me.

Star Me Kitten is such a mood. Also, this: https://youtu.be/O6fSzX5aS5I

There was a brief spell in my teens when I declared this to be my favorite album. I wouldn't go quite that far anymore but it's still very solid.

Song + video for 'Nightswimming' take it over the top imo.

stipe’s performance on “sidewinder” is heart stopping

it reall is, so many odd choices too—the phrasing, those little jumps, the enjambed lines

I feel like he gets knocked for his later lyrics, but he remained a really inventive, dynamic singer

Good album imo

Sidewinder is another fave.

Of course the record's lyrics are a bit less opaque, but I think that if anything, AftP is a bit of an outlier in that regard-- Monster and Anew Adventures somewhat a return to Stipe's previous opacity rather than bare sentiment.

AftP's bare sentiment is what I love about it-- it's a deep comfort of a record IMHO

I don't listen to it often -- it's been at least a decade -- but the songs I love boast Stipe's new declarativeness and the band's bold mixing of songs as mysterious and vaguely sinister and terrifying as their earliest material. I'm thinking of "Monty Got a Raw Deal" and "Sweetness Follows."

the great thing about sidewinder is that it's written in stipe's absolute upper register, which gives it this weird unfamiliarity even within the runtime of the album. it is a very silly song that is also somehow majestic in the lushness of the arrangement and beautiful string parts.

i'm way overdue to spend some time with this album.

"Sweetness Follows" is bruised, ominous and gorgeous, but the peak experience of this album for me is to absolutely crank it on good speakers, it's so beautifully recorded you can just lose yourself in it. JPJ's strings on "Drive" are the heaviest thing ever, I nearly passed out when I listened to it loud one time.

I know it's been overexposed to death (maybe less so lately), but "Man on the Moon" is <i>incredible.</i> The confidence of everyone involved to handle this big, anthemic, but gentle and meditatively questioning song.... you can almost feel the experience of the last few records under their belt. On this listen what's blowing me away is the earnestness in Mills's backing vocals, and the very slight edge of grit to Buck's licks and solos (anticipating the sound he'd lean into on New Adventures) ... and, as everywhere on the record, the warmth and intimacy of the recording.

Another great thing: falling back to just the acoustic strums, Stipe's vocal and some light percussion for the start of the final verse, before bringing all the other elements back in gradually, isn't rocket science, but it works so well to re-ground things before we take off into the final sequence of choruses. It's basically a drawn-out version of the dramatic re-starts that lend so much oomph to "Fall On Me" ("don't fall on meee, DON'T FALLLLLL"), and it works just as well.

oops html

then the album ends with "Nightswimming" and "Find the River."

The key innovation -- what repulsed me for years after my initial embrace -- was the confidence with which R.E.M. use the clarity they experimented with as far back as LRP. The strings are assertive, the instrumental filigrees discrete and easily picked out, and Stipe gives his most full-throated performance; his lyrics don't lose their ambiguity for being forthrightly sung.

I'd posit this album did more damage than Nevermind and Ten, encouraging the Lives and Creeds to wail their profundities.

Surely Joshua Tree is more to blame for both of those acts!

(Live's debut had already come out before this, for one thing.)

oh but "Lightning Crashes" and the dolphin song have more Stipeisms than Bonorosities.

more damage than ten is a tough sell for me, rock radio was littered with lesser vedders for a decade and a half

Bonorosities

t/s: monoculture vs bonoculture

well, the stipewinder stipes tostipe

Creed def had more to do with PJ than REM. one of em even got fired for dissing the former

A question of degrees.

It’s interesting to think of a case for REM as having imitators because I’ve long thought of them as a band without such, except as “80s indie band gets enormously popular” exemplar. But their music has seemed sui generis to me, and Stipe’s singing in particular.

I tend to agree with you, Euler... While I can think of some jangling indie bands that clearly listened to REM in their day, no one sings like Stipe.

so many of you were spared the tragically hip

(I kid, they were....fine)

i feel like stipe's influence as a singer may have been in weird trickle-down ways. i feel like a lot of people eventually picked up on that voice-cracking thing he does, for example, but they might be emo bands or something.

yeah that sounds right

The video for Drive is beautiful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UE7tXDKIus

yes it is. a friend of mine had a collection of r.e.m. videos and would always start out the night of hanging out with it. so good

Was it the Parallel VHS with the videos from this album and Monster? That thing was a cornerstone of my youth

I remember the day the Drive video premiered on MTV; watching it for the first time (and taping it, of course).

Adam Scott can be briefly glimpsed in the crowd in the Drive video

that is believable, which is enough for me

25 yrs ago I was an extra in R.E.M.’s “Drive” video but had never been able to locate myself in it, despite Zapruder-level analysis. Thanks to
sharp-eyed RU TALKIN’ R.E.M. RE: ME? listeners, that long national nightmare is over... pic.twitter.com/WSQaG5PZ8L

— Adam Scott (@mradamscott) May 4, 2018

Man, what a heavy track 2 to drop on people.

It's such a great Track 2 (is there a thread for that? there should be).

This might be an uncultured swine thing of me to say but this song kind of reminds me of an Arcade Fire record. I hate to compare this younger bands because older people will be pissed but I feel like I’m pretty well-versed in Arcade Fire. This sounds like Neon Bible. I was crazy about that album in high school.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne489w/snail-mail-lindsey-jordan-automatic-for-the-people-rem-listens-first-time

ooooof

Lindsey Jordan: It’s up my alley so far. It’s crazy that this is their eighth album. Is this their breadwinner?

Noisey: One of them! It’s their top-seller and it’s sold well over 18 million copies, which is crazy.

Top seller? Pretty sure OOT has sold more

snail mail is only a few years younger than me so its funny that she had no idea rem did "it's the end of the world as we know it" etc

(No shade toward her - in the way that anyone might hear music from the past that reminds them of more recent music - but it's funny to read as someone older.)

Possibly my favorite R.E.M. album. Either that or Murmur, but Murmur was like unearthing an artifact. (A friend of mine actually bought Murmur, mistaking it for a "new" album, and for whatever reason he was massively disappointed when it wasn't. He didn't even open it yet, but he let me borrow it and after I heard it, I was like "holy shit this is great." To steal a phrase from Peter Bogdanovich, there are no “old” records - only records you've heard and records you haven't.) With Automatic, a relative got it through a music club and forgot about it. It was a long while before he actually cracked opened the cardboard mailing sleeve, by which point I had become a new fan just getting familiar with them through Out of Time. Again, borrowed the CD and I think it was the very first album I heard where I was immediately blown away - start to finish great, and after one complete play, it was like my favorite album ever. Granted I barely knew any, but I just knew I was going to listen to that album every single day for the rest of the school year.

Yeah its prob my favourite REM album too

i just listened to this for the first time in years because i finally felt ready, like it wouldn't send me down a rabbit hole of emotional distress, and it was ok. while not my fave REM album, definitely full of some quality songs (now that i can separate the memories they conjure from the songs)
also hi drugs a money!! :)

Wow, drugs!

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.
"Sweetness Follows" is really the one for me, just an incredible song.

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.