Tag Archives: r.e.m.

#1216: R.E.M. – Sitting Still

Leave a reply

Time for another song from R.E.M.’s Murmur. It feels like I only ever write about tracks from that album on here. I swear, I do like a lot of other material by the band. Most of these numbers will be covered in posts that have yet to be written, and a lot of them I couldn’t write about because I only properly got into the band just over six years ago. And this blog is twice as old. But that “getting into” all began with a listen of Murmur, after which I found myself having a new favourite album on my hands.

‘Sitting Still’ is the eighth song on there. The song was released as the B-side on the ‘Radio Free Europe’ single, two years before Murmur was released. The version on Murmur is the same recording as that B-side, bar a few changes such as slowing the tape down, re-recording some backing vocals and Mike Mills laying down a new bass line for the track. The overall mix sounds a lot fuller too. I’ll go ahead and embed that original version below. In its place on the album, ‘Sitting Still’ carries on a theme already established by the time you get to it on the album: Michael Stipe sings but no one knows what he’s saying or what it truly means. But it sounds good nevertheless.

As the lyrics don’t really mean anything, and Michael Stipe can attest to that, there’s not much more I could say on that front. He utilises a great melody though. Simple but very effective. On the structural side of things, I appreciate how the song kind of rolls and unfurls again and again. The verse goes into the pre-chorus, which goes into the second verse before going into the pre-chorus and then into the “I can hear you” chorus before going into the third verse and so on and so forth. Mike Mills’s bass is quite addictive to hum along to, Peter Buck’s arpeggios scratch an itch, Bill Berry lays a tight beat underneath it all. Sometimes I think it must feel repetitive to some, I guess that’d be understandable. But to me it always feels good to hear this one when it comes on.

#1181: R.E.M. – Shaking Through

Leave a reply

The “How I Came to Know and Love Murmur” story is one I’ve told many a time in the past. It’s probably written in every post for the songs I’ve talked about from there so far. Written one way or another, the point remains the same. It’s the trouble when an album and nearly all the tracks click with you immediately. If you’re gonna write a blog about them like me, the origin stories between songs aren’t going to vary by any wide margin. So “I heard the album in one go and it was immediately a favourite” is the best you can get out of me. It’ll be the same for ‘Sitting Still’ when that comes around, which will be sooner than you think.

I’m very sure the album’s tenth song, ‘Shaking Through’, was another one that I understood – in terms of feeling, gauging the lyrics not so much – on the first try. The track is tremendously upbeat and carries on a musical theme on the album that consists of holding back on providing the chorus, just for a little while to get another verse in, so that when it eventually hits it comes as this cathartic release. And that release is matched by the belted-out melody of the chorus lyric. “Shaking through/Opportune”. Not sure what it means. This whole period of R.E.M. was Michael Stipe coming up with anything on the spot, whether it made sense or not. But kinda just looking over them, I’ve come to see the track as a celebration of good things to come. One of hope, optimism and opportunity. I just get that sense about it.

Well, I guess that’s all I’ve got to say about the track, really. I guess I’ll just list a few things about the track that perk my ears. Bill Berry switches from striking the hi-hat to striking the ride cymbal during the choruses. That’s something. Usually drummers would just decide to stick to one or the other. Not him, though. The “in my life” bridge where Stipe’s then joined in by a bunch of overlapping vocals is goosebump-inducing. Everyone likes a key change, especially when it’s done right, and it is done so for the song’s final-final chorus. And just when you think it’s over, there’s an unrelated looping instrumental that brings the song to a proper close. The band always liked instrumentals on their albums, didn’t they? ‘Shaking Through’ was recorded for the Chronic Town EP that preceded Murmur in 1982, but left off. The ‘lyrics’ aren’t as fleshed out. I don’t think it’s as good as how it eventually turned out. But the feeling is still all there.

#1083: R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe

2 Replies

Well, well, well. You didn’t think this was ever going to come back, did you? I was honestly thinking that way for a while too. Hey, remember back when I started on the P’s and said that I could aim to get whole series done by the time I turned 30? Yeah, very unlikely that will happen. I’ll definitely be in my 30s at the least, though. With the breaks I take, it was definitely going to be a effort to try and force that. And I’ve seen the number of songs I have up beginning with ‘S’ and ‘T’. Just those two letters would fill up two separate years themselves, I tell you.

But I’m back. I’m here. It’s time to get started again. And it’s with R.E.M.’s ‘Radio Free Europe’, the opening track on the band’s debut Murmur album from 1983. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about a song from that record. It’s been some time, but I think I’ve written the summary of how I came to know Murmur and the immediate effect it had on me. Probably not worth repeating. We’re here for the track. It’s a fine one. A great way to kick things into gear. It introduces the musical structure that happens a lot through the album, where the song starts with the verse and goes into the pre-chorus, and when usually you think the chorus will come immediately after, the second verse begins. The band holds out on you, so when that chorus eventually does arrive, the weight from all the building tension’s released. The choruses are the best parts on every Murmur track, that’s just a fact.

The song also introduced the lyricism of Michael Stipe, who before he found he could use his voice to speak about things that were important and actually mean something (I’m sure I read that he said this about himself somewhere), wrote words and melodies that were to mainly compliment the musicianship of Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry and not meant to say much of anything at all, leaving it to the listener to come up with their own interpretations. What I would guess the song is about is… the importance of the the radio in modern society and its global reach to whoever’s listening out there? I don’t think about the meaning that much, but that’s fine. I don’t think Stipe wants you to either, which is great. There’s no pressure. If you’re not too into the version in the video above, the band previously recorded the track on another label a couple years earlier in 1981 and released it as a single. It’s a bit faster, some people prefer that sort of thing.

#1038: R.E.M. – Pilgrimage

1 Reply

Another R.E.M. song, and another one from Murmur too. On the few posts I’ve covered for the tracks from this album, I’ve gushed about how it’s one of my favourites, what it is that made me like it so much and how it happened. It’s a story that you may want me to get over. But I’ll just put a different spin on how I usually tell it. December 2017 I was going through the album for the second time after hearing it years prior and forgetting about it. Opener ‘Radio Free Europe’ set things at a high bar – now I recognise it as being one of the best first songs on an album that I know. ‘Pilgrimage’ is the track that follows and, with my expectations lifted to great heights, I didn’t want to be disappointed not to have that 1-2 punch effect that the opening two tracks of an album can have.

I remember really listening to the verses, analysing which direction the track was going to take, because they’re very unassuming. They’re carried by an infectious melodic riff simultaneously played on the bass, piano and vibraphone. Michael Stipe sings these short, sharp lyrical phrases with tons of space in between. The verses were just fine. But then there’s the sudden rise in mood with the arrival of the pre-chorus in which Stipe announces the pilgrimage has gained momentum, which in turns opens up into the first of many soaring choruses that occur throughout the album. Just as soon as it gets going, it returns back to the more closed-in feeling for the second verse. It’s not long after that the chorus arrives again, but this time Mike Mills and Bill Berry join in on vocal harmonies to add a whole other dimension to the proceedings. By this point, I think I was sold on the track. Might have even been singing along to it too. I was so into it that I was totally caught off-guard by that unexpected double-take of the riff at the end that sounds like a production error. Fair to say, the track did complete that 1-2 combo that I was hoping for.

Get the goosebumps to this day when I listen to this track. Truly, those three-way harmonies between Stipe, Mills and Berry alongside the strident chord progression within the choruses just make for such a glorious piece of music. Again, the lyrics here are meant to conjure up interpretation rather than telling it to you straight. In my opinion, on the one hand I have a feeling that the words were written to mirror the movement of the music. I mean, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the words “the pilgrimage has gained momentum” are sung just as the the backing instruments do the same. On the other hand, I want to say there’s probably something religious in there that could be taken into account. Pilgrimages, speaking in tongues… usually things you may associates with church and the like. I’m leaning more towards that first hand though.

#1027: R.E.M. – Perfect Circle

Leave a reply

Ah, R.E.M.’s Murmur. I’ve commented on this album before. How I came about it initially, and how I came to ultimately love it. For those not in the know, it’s not a long story. Heard it once in 2013. Went on to completely forget about it. Heard it again in 2017 and thought it was one of the greatest albums I’d heard up to that point. It’s a tie between it and Automatic for the People as my favourite record of theirs. The preference can change day-by-day. What I observed right away with Murmur was that the choruses on every song were downright incredible, even on the sole slower number ‘Perfect Circle’.

The record prides itself on a whole singer-not-making-sense-but-it-still-sounds-great theme, which I think endears a lot of people to it. The lyrics are more for the listener’s interpretation rather than setting a straight-up narrative or trying to signify a message. Placed right in the middle of it all, or as the closer to the first half if you’re a vinyl person, ‘Perfect Circle’ is something of the emotional centerpiece – even though it might be difficult to find something to latch onto with all the vague lyricism. For me, there’s a hint of something clear in the second verse, in which the song’s title is said for the one and only time in the song, where there’s a scene of friends getting together, drinking and enjoying each other’s company. But that’s all I can say at this time. Otherwise, I’m mostly getting lost in the comforting instrumental backdrop of pianos and lightly strummed guitars.

Whether this was well-known before 1998, I’m not sure, but it was that year when R.E.M. were on tour that they began to bring this track back to their live sets, announcing before they’d proceed to play it that the song was actually written by drummer Bill Berry. He had amicably left the band the year prior, and so every performance of the song was in dedication to him. By “written”, I think it would mean musically. Am sure Stipe was always behind the lyrics. But that the drummer was behind the music should be no surprise. It’s just another example of an R.E.M. song where Berry’s musicianship resulted in one of the band’s (in my opinion) best songs.