Album Review: REM - Out of Time (25th anniversary edition)
Growing up in what is commonly referred to as the “MTV
Generation,” I don’t remember an age when I wasn’t
aware of REM. As a kid, I distinctly recall the videos for “The One I Love” and
“It’s The End of The World as We Know It.”
I also remember the video for “Losing My Religion.”
Directed by Tarsem Singh, the angelic and pseudo-religious
imagery weirded me out at such a young age—in 1991, I was eight years old. But
now 25 years have passed; I am 33, and REM’s commercial breakthrough, Out of Time, is celebrating a milestone
anniversary. To commemorate, the group has reissued the album in a number of
formats—including its first vinyl pressing since 1991, a two CD set complete
with demo recordings1, and a three CD set that tacks on a live
session.
I don’t not like REM, but I would consider myself a fair-weather
fan at best. We have a small selection of their records that I listen to
occasionally, and outside of the rather strong affinity I have for their song
“Strange Currencies,” I’d say that’s about it. When I was a kid, my parents got
a copy of Out of Time from the BMG
record club, then later, in a post-“Everybody Hurts” world, a copy of Automatic for The People—so revisiting Out of Time now is a slight trip back in
time for me. I don’t have memories of the album’s “deep cuts,” but I remember
the song’s jaunty opening, “Radio Song,” very well because as a kid, KRS-One
yelling “The DJ sucks!” really sticks
with you.
I, also, unfortunately remember the ubiquitous “Shiny Happy
People,” which, according to Wikipedia, the band themselves hate. I would say
that this is probably one of the worst REM songs—way worse than “Stand,” which
is also pretty bad. I mean, they’re kind of similar in their lyrical insipidness
and musical stupidity, but come on. “Shiny Happy People” is garbage.
Out of Time was
the band’s second album for Warner Brothers. I stop short of saying it was a
dramatic departure from the “college rock” sound REM was known for up until
this point, but it’s an album that finds them maturing, and incorporating a
number of new elements they had previously only toyed with on Green—their major label debut, including
additional instrumentation and string arrangements, as well as a commendable
level of risk and experimentation, best exemplified on the spoken word track on
the album’s second half, “Belong.”
But through that maturation, listening to Out of Time now (both as an adult and 25
years removed), it seems to lack not so much focus, but cohesion. Sonically,
and stylistically, it’s an album that’s all over the place, and that makes it
hard to concentrate on while listening. For the time, it was probably big,
bold, and ambitious, and keeping it within that context, it’s impressive. But
there’s also nothing that holds it together. It opens with something borderline
funky and somewhat whimsical prior to turning it all inward with something
incredibly pensive and nervy, before turning it all in even further with
something that brings the pacing of the album to a screeching halt.
It’s the arrival of “Near Wild Heaven” that brings the band
back to the sound listeners were familiar with at the time; a sound they really
only dip back into within the final selections of the album—the rollicking
“Texarkana,” and the album’s surprisingly triumphant closing track, “Me in
Honey.”
It can be looked at as a transitional record. By 1990, the
band was growing out of the “jangle pop” sound they had built their name since
the early 1980s. Out of Time lacks
the downcast, contemplative acoustic leanings of its follow up, Automatic for The People, as well as the
conceit of a “big dumb rock record,” that the band would play with in 1994 on Monster.
While it is a complete reflection of the time, and it hasn’t
aged terribly, there are also themes
and ideas present that are still very relevant 25 years later. “The world is collapsing around our ears,”
Michael Stipe sings as the album’s opening line on “Radio Song,” a lyric that
is rather unsettling given the result of the recent Presidential election.
Then, of course, there’s the dramatic “Losing My Religion,”
a song that, as an adult, I have come to have more appreciation and respect
for—as I have with many songs I slept on from the 1990s. Apparently a Southern
phrase for losing your civility or composure, the song itself, aside from its
dated production values, still holds up incredibly well—Peter Buck’s mandolin
riff absolutely slays, and Stipe’s pleading, confessional, mysterious lyrics
still haunt. It’s also an incredibly smart song—tackling rather serious and
dark fragmented lyrics without alienating the listener by dressing the entire
thing up in the guise of a pop song. Sure, it’s a bit of a downer as far as pop
songs go, but REM knew what they were doing by making this song so catchy.
I don’t want to say that Out
of Time is a bad album. It sold 18 million copies worldwide, and spawned
the band’s biggest (and unlikeliest) hit song, so if I were to say it was
“bad,” I’d be in the minority. I think it goes without saying that it is maybe
the most important entry in their mid-period canon—shifting away from one thing
while trying to grasp for another. Through this anniversary reissue, it is an
album that is worth revisiting, but because of its jumbled structure, and even
if it has a certain rough around the edges charm to it, it lacks the total clarity
of Green and Automatic for The People.
1- It seems worth noting that I got all the way through
writing this review and found no great way to include any information about
these demo recordings. For a fair weather fan like myself, they do nothing to either
add or subtract from the listening experience. Some of them are instrumentals,
so if you are into REM karaoke, they are probably right up your alley. Other
than that, it is just an opportunity to hear these songs in very early,
skeletal stages—something designed for a true, hardcore REM fan.
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