The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
R.E.M. · produced by Scott Litt and R.E.M. · Warner Bros. · eleven tracks
Mode
Guitar rock turned acoustic and chamber-lit: mandolin, organ, pedal steel and strings where the ringing guitar was
Mythos
The confessor in the corner and the believer who loses faith in a beloved; the lover’s exile, held as mood
Phase
Eleven tracks; a complaint about radio at the start, the hit second, a scatter of voices in the middle, a desolate dirge and a forgiving answer at the close
Presentation
Album; eleven tracks, the band’s seventh studio record and second for Warner Bros., with no tour behind it
Register
Murmured and close for the most part; a rapped verse, a bubblegum chorus, a wordless instrumental and a raw dirge beside the ballads
Scale
One voice and its loves: a confession, a distance, a couple ending, and the radio and a border town at the edges
Governing Proposition
A guitar band newly on a major label sets its guitars back, brings mandolin, organ, pedal steel and strings forward and hands its voice to others, and makes a set of songs about love spoken too loudly or not at all: the lover who has confessed in public, the distance that hums, the couple ending as debris. The record opens on a complaint about radio and ends on a forgiving answer.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a complaint. Radio Song is about what radio plays, and it carries a rapped verse by KRS-One, a guest from another music entirely, grafted onto a band song rather than worked into it. It is an odd door to the record. The complaint is not taken up again, the rap obeys neither the sound nor the subject of what follows, and both belong to 1991 more than anything else on the album. But it announces at once the record’s first habit: the voice of the band will not stay with its singer.
R.E.M. were Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe, a band out of college radio known for ringing guitar and a murmured voice. Green (1988), their first record for Warner Bros., had already brightened that manner. Out of Time, their seventh studio album and their second for the label, was produced by Scott Litt and R.E.M. and released in March 1991: eleven tracks, the unit judged here, in their first order. An anniversary edition of 2016, with demos and a live set, is context and not the work.
The turn the record takes is in its sound. The guitar recedes. Mandolin, organ, pedal steel and strings come forward, and the lead voice is shared: Mills sings two songs, Kate Pierson of the B-52’s joins two more, a rapper takes a verse, and one track has no words at all. Six of the eleven have a lead other than Stipe alone, an unusual dispersal for a band known for one singer. And the band, newly on a major label with a large contract to answer to, chose this quiet, acoustic, chamber palette and did not tour the record.
Movement II
The hit comes second, and it is the record’s centre. Losing My Religion is built on a mandolin figure that circles without release, Buck’s figure over Mills’s bass line and Berry’s restrained drums, with strings entering late. There is no conventional chorus. The song tightens and does not resolve, and its anxiety is in that shape: change the form, give it a chorus that breaks open, and it would keep its words and lose what it knows.
What it knows can be stated. A lover has confessed too much, in public, “I’ve said too much”, and finds himself caught under his own spotlight, “me in the corner”: desire as exposure. The title is a Southern idiom for being at the end of one’s tether, and it turns faith into the measure of what is lost, so that a love song borrows the old shape of a lapse of faith and puts the beloved where the belief was. The figure of the confessor in the corner is the strongest the record makes, and it is made in a phrase rather than built across a song.
The song climbs from the mandolin figure to the strings over the last verses, a climb of anxiety rather than joy. It became one of the most heard records of its decade and has stayed so; it has been returned to without exhaustion, its hook, its confession and its idiom reorganising on hearing, and it has drawn decades of commentary and cover versions. Much of the record’s life since 1991 is this song’s life, and the rest of the album has been heard, often, in its light.
Movement III
Low follows the hit with a dark, hushed hover, organ and percussion under a voice that barely rises: the low hum of loneliness, and one of the four songs the record could not lose. Then Mills sings Near Wild Heaven, a fine song, well made and ordinary, that gives the record breadth more than necessity. Endgame is an instrumental with wordless voices, lovely and level, an interlude rather than a part of the argument.
Shiny Happy People is the record’s crux. It is a bright bubblegum chorus sung with Kate Pierson, polished, cheerful and pastiche, and it can be heard as irony, a parody of forced cheer. If it is irony, the record does not secure the hearing: nothing around the song frames it, and it sits beside the record’s desolations with nothing to say how it should be taken. It is the farthest point from Country Feedback, and the two obey one law only if its brightness is heard against itself. Held that way it is a seam; held at face value it is a break.
The record’s law is set by its best songs: an acoustic, string-dressed palette, and a theme of love as distance and exposure. Losing My Religion, Low, Half a World Away and Country Feedback obey it fully. The range around them is wide, rap, bubblegum, instrumental, chamber ballad and country, and much of it is held by a shared sound more than by one governing idea. Texarkana, Mills’s second song, is a border town that stays a place name. Radio Song keeps the palette and not the theme. The record is a strong collection with a shape, and its edges show.
Movement IV
Belong is a parable told in the speaking voice. Stipe speaks its verses, and the song lifts at its refrain into a wordless choral rise, one of the record’s real heights. The parable stays a fragment: it is sketched in the spoken verses and not built out. The pattern is summoned and left, as patterns are throughout the record, and the song’s force is in the lift from speech to voices more than in the story the speech begins.
Half a World Away reaches a wistful height on strings, a song of distance that gives the lover’s exile its shape and holds it as mood. With Low it carries what the record discloses about distance: not an argument about love apart but the sound of it, the hum and the reach. The sound discloses as much as the words. The mandolin’s nervous circling in the hit, the strings over Half a World Away, the organ under Low are where the record’s knowledge lives, and the words, plainer than the band’s earlier ones, give most of what they have at first hearing.
The making is strongest where the record is. Scott Litt’s production is clear and warm, the acoustic instruments given room, each part distinct; Stipe’s singing is the most commanding it had been. Where the making is weakest it is not careless but ordinary: the Mills songs well made and unremarkable, Shiny Happy People polished to a surface. The record is skilled throughout and load-bearing in perhaps half its songs, and the difference between the two is the difference between its best and the rest.
Movement V
Country Feedback is the summit. It is a slow dirge over organ and pedal steel, left raw, the record’s best single take, and the voice at the close is raw too. It gives the end of a couple as debris, a voice clinging to what it no longer believes, and its form, a slow, unresolved drag, is the end it describes. Of all the songs it has risen most in standing since 1991, and it yields more on return as the brighter songs yield less.
Me in Honey closes the record with Pierson again beside Stipe, a warm, shambling rise, the forgiving answer to the desolation before it. The close is placed with care: the record that began on a complaint about radio ends not on the wreck of Country Feedback but on an answer to it. The sequence elsewhere serves more than it enacts, but here it makes a turn, and the turn is the record’s last word on love: spoken too loudly, then not at all, then forgiven.
The record went to number one in the United States and Britain six months before Nevermind, with a mandolin single and no tour, and showed that the alternative audience could top the charts; the mandolin and strings of its hit fed the string-dressed alternative records of the decade, and the band’s next album, Automatic for the People, took the palette further and made a whole of it. That is the record’s place: the turn taken first, on proven ground, in a set of songs of which four cannot be spared and two could be. It remains in print and streamed, its hit everywhere, and its best songs still yield.
Act III · The Twelve
Eleven tracks, and four are required: Losing My Religion, Low, Half a World Away and Country Feedback are the record’s argument about love spoken too loudly or not at all, and none could go without loss. Belong and Me in Honey stand close beside them, a parable in the speaking voice and the closing answer. Within the songs little is idle; Losing My Religion is all hook and confession, nothing padded. The subtractive test bites at the edges. Shiny Happy People is a pastiche whose irony the record never spends, Near Wild Heaven and Texarkana give breadth more than necessity, Radio Song opens on a complaint the rest forgets, and Endgame is an interlude. Two of these could go with little loss.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it is real. Losing My Religion gives the lover who has confessed too much in public, “I’ve said too much”, the self caught under its own spotlight: desire as exposure. The title’s Southern idiom for being at the end of one’s tether turns faith into the measure of what is lost. Country Feedback gives the end of a couple as debris, a voice clinging to what it no longer believes. Half a World Away and Low give distance and the low hum of loneliness. The sound discloses as much as the words: the mandolin’s nervous circling, the pedal steel’s sag. Held back because much is mood more than articulated condition, and the brighter songs disclose little.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The record rises on five or six of eleven tracks, and twice high. Losing My Religion builds from the mandolin figure to the strings over the last verses, a climb of anxiety rather than joy. Country Feedback is the summit: a slow dirge over organ and pedal steel, the voice raw at the close, a desolation that lands. Half a World Away reaches a wistful height on strings; Low sustains a dark, hushed hover; Belong lifts from spoken verses into a wordless choral refrain; Me in Honey closes in a warm, shambling rise. Endgame is lovely without height. Radio Song, Shiny Happy People, Near Wild Heaven and Texarkana have energy, sweetness or charm, not elevation, and the kind is mostly melancholy and close.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Myth is evoked in phrase and figure and built nowhere at length. The strongest figure is in Losing My Religion: the confessor in the corner, “me in the corner”, and the believer who loses faith in a beloved, so that a love song borrows the old shape of a lapse of faith and makes the lover its object. Half a World Away and Low carry the shape of the lover’s exile, held as mood. Belong sketches a parable in its spoken verses and lets it stay a fragment. Texarkana is a border town that stays a place name, and Shiny Happy People raises an irony it does not build. Nothing on the record organises itself around one pattern; it summons and leaves.
Score: 7.1 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: American guitar rock, and the band’s own manner, ringing guitar and murmured voice, which Green (1988) had already brightened. The turn is real, and it was taken here first. The guitar recedes; mandolin, organ, pedal steel and strings come forward; the lead voice is shared with Mike Mills, Kate Pierson and a rapper; and the lead single is a mandolin song with no conventional chorus. The stake was real: a band newly on a major label, with a large contract to answer to, chose a quiet, acoustic, chamber palette and declined to tour. What holds the figure is that folk rock, chamber pop and country balladry had cleared the path, and Radio Song’s rap is a gesture more than a turn.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Change the form, and in its best places the record knows less. Losing My Religion is an ostinato with no release and a voice circling it, and the circling is its anxiety; Country Feedback’s slow, unresolved drag is the end it describes. The sequence is counted here once. It is placed with care at the close: Country Feedback, desolate, and then Me in Honey, forgiving, so that the record ends on an answer rather than on the wreck. Elsewhere the order serves more than it enacts. Radio Song’s complaint opens a record that is not about radio; the two Mills songs and Shiny Happy People are placed for contrast; most songs could stand in another order or alone. A strong collection with a shape.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Thirty-five years supply evidence, most of it on two or three songs. Losing My Religion has been returned to without exhaustion: its hook, its confession and its idiom keep reorganising on hearing, and it has drawn decades of commentary and cover versions. Country Feedback has risen in standing since 1991 and repays return, its rawness yielding more as the brighter songs yield less. Low and Half a World Away give texture over years. Held from the top: the album whole is returned to chiefly as the bridge to Automatic for the People, heard for what it anticipates; Shiny Happy People, Radio Song and Near Wild Heaven are exhausted early; and the words, plainer than the band’s earlier ones, give most of what they have at first.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is the rock album of the early 1990s. The intrinsic force is modest: the record refines a folk-rock and chamber-pop palette inside a band’s evolving manner rather than reorganising what an album could do, and no practice can be shown to have turned on its form rather than on its sales and its one great song. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: a band out of college radio, with a mandolin single and no tour, reached number one in the United States and Britain six months before Nevermind, and showed the industry that the alternative audience could top the charts, a door through which much passed. The mandolin and strings of Losing My Religion fed the acoustic, string-dressed alternative records of the decade.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Survival is weighed over thirty-five years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, eleven tracks in order, and has been reissued, with demos and a live set added in 2016 that are context, not the work. Presence is wide for one song, Losing My Religion, among the most heard records of its decade and still so. The album whole is present more narrowly, in print and streamed but living in the shadow of Automatic for the People, which stands at 8.6 here; it sits level with Murmur at 8.5. The fabric is lightly fixed: the acoustic and string palette has aged well, but Radio Song’s rap and its complaint about radio belong to 1991.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, is skilled and in places load-bearing. Losing My Religion is exactly built: Peter Buck’s mandolin figure, Mike Mills’s bass line, Bill Berry’s restrained drums and the strings entering late, each part distinct and placed so the song tightens without release. Country Feedback is the record’s best single take, spare organ and pedal steel left raw under the voice. Low’s hushed organ and percussion, Half a World Away’s strings and Endgame’s arrangement are fine work, and Scott Litt’s production is clear and warm, the acoustic instruments given room. Michael Stipe’s singing is the most commanding it had been. The faults: Radio Song’s rap is grafted on, Shiny Happy People is polished pastiche.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Shiny Happy People, a bright bubblegum chorus sung with Kate Pierson, and Country Feedback, a desolate country dirge. They obey one law in part. The record’s law is an acoustic, string-dressed palette and a theme of love as distance and exposure; Losing My Religion, Low, Half a World Away and Country Feedback obey it fully, and Me in Honey’s forgiving close answers them. Shiny Happy People obeys it if its brightness is heard as irony, a seam rather than a break, though the record gives little to secure that hearing. The range is wide, rap, bubblegum, instrumental, chamber ballad and country, and is held by a shared sound more than one physics. Radio Song’s rap obeys neither palette nor theme.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no further discount for being an album. Consciousness is held: the self that has said too much, in Losing My Religion, and the self at the end of a love, in Country Feedback. The couple is held across distance in Half a World Away and Low, and answered in Me in Honey. Faith enters as metaphor in the title of the hit and as a quiet reach in Belong; the medium and the market in Radio Song’s complaint about what radio plays; place as Texarkana and the South of the voices. What holds the figure: labour, the state, history and the family beyond the couple are absent, nature appears only as image, and most of what there is lies close together, love and its loss in one voice.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Made at 8.1, and The Swerve and The Sublime at 8.0. A recording whole after thirty-five years with one song among the most heard of its decade; a making that is load-bearing in Losing My Religion and Country Feedback; a turn from ringing guitar to mandolin, organ, pedal steel and strings, with the voice shared, taken here first by a band with a contract to answer to; and height on five or six of eleven tracks, twice high.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: consciousness, the couple, faith as metaphor, the radio and a place, lying close together in one voice, with labour, the state, history and the family absent. Then The Archetypal Deep at 7.1: the confessor in the corner made in a phrase, the lover’s exile held as mood, a parable left a fragment, and no pattern built across the record. Then The Inevitable at 7.4, where two or three tracks are permitted rather than compelled.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.4 falls a tenth short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.5, The Made at 8.1, The Inner Law at 7.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but The Swerve at 8.0, Pressure on Tradition at 7.8, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.1 fall short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.1, and The Inevitable, 7.4, both below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Two of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Warner Bros. in March 1991, eleven tracks in their original order, produced by Scott Litt and R.E.M.; the band’s seventh studio album and second for the label; judged from knowledge of the recording, its lyrics and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The band is Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe; Mills sings lead on Near Wild Heaven and Texarkana, KRS-One raps a verse on Radio Song, and Kate Pierson of the B-52’s sings on Shiny Happy People and Me in Honey. The 2016 anniversary edition, with demos and a live set, is evidence, not the object. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words. Facts that could not be verified here, among them the exact release date, the running times, the names given to the two sides, the studios, the players and arrangers beyond the band and its credited guests, the instruments on particular tracks beyond those named, the awards, and accounts of the band’s own view of particular songs, are not given.