One of the year's most off-beat and intriguing releases.  The cover showed a grainy close-up of a church gargoyle, the song titles and lyrics defies the easy categorization of so much American rock, and somewhere in the tracks were Stipe's blurred and haunting vocals.  "As we went along we realised that we didn't want to be a straight narrative band that has stories in our songs," explained Buck.

Murmur:
Radio Free Europe / Pilgrimage / Laughing / Talk About the Passion / Moral Kiosk / Perfect Circle / Catapult / Sitting Still / 9-9 / Shaking Through / We Walk / West of the Fields

Completed in just 25 days, Murmur was the lighter side of the band, fully showing their song writing capabilities.  Out takes from the album included Pretty Persuasion, All the Right Friends, and That Beat. "The champions of soft-focus energetic pop," wrote Richard Grabel in NME.

Reckoning:
Harborcoat / 7 Chinese Brothers / Southern Central Rain / Pretty Persuasion / Time After Time / Second Guessing / Letter Never Sent / Camera / (Don't Go Back To) Rockville / Little America

Reckoning included the customary mix of sounds and styles, and plenty of Stipe's off-beat lyricising.  The two singles from the album - Southern Central Rain and Rockville only just scraped the US top 100.  The media reaction was encouraging, though:  "They manage to celebrate everything great about white American pop in the last 20 years" read the MelodyMaker review.

Fables of the Reconstruction:
Feeling Gravity's Pull / Maps and Legends / Driver 8 / Life and How to Live It / Old Man Kelsey / Can't Get There From Here / Green Grow the Rushes / Kohoutek / Auctioneer / Good Advices / Wendall Gee

Despite sporadic bursts of genius, especially on Driver 8, Life and How to Live It, and Can't Get There From Here, there was an overwhelming dour atmosphere on most of the tracks (apparently) - and the music press was less sympathetic: "R.E.M. don't aim for much more that enigma" grumbled the Village Voice, and within months, the band themselves were agreeing.  Peter buck said "Every song was an expression of how depressed we were feeling.

Life's Rich Pageant:
Begin the Begin / These Days / Fall On Me / Cuyahoga / Hyena / Underneath the Bunker / The Flowers of Guatemala / I Believe / What If We Give It Away / Just a Touch / Swan Swan H / Superman

Fall On Me was one of the first songs to be recorded from this album and was a tuneful exercise in pure-pop, and today it is still considered to be amongst the best songs by many R.E.M. fans. Stipe's lyrics started to touch on politics for the first time.  The album managed to sell 500,000 copies without a single hit single to promote it.  Peter Buck was justifiably pleased: "I think we made the perfect record that we could in that style.  Life's Rich Pageant seemed to capture the band from a different angle.

Document
Finest Worksong / Welcome to the Occupation / Exhuming McCarthy / Disturbance at the Heron House / Strange / It's the End of the World as We Know It / The One I Love / Fireplace / Lightnin' Hopkins / King of Birds / Oddfellows Local

R.E.M. first album with producer Scott Litt. The most noticeable aspect of their new material was Stipe's rather more audible vocals. Some suggested that the band were bowing to commercial pressure and that the overt pop melodies and crystal clear vocals were indicative of this change; something the band denied.  A taster for the album came with the first single - The One I Love which became the bands first hit single, reaching number 9 in the US charts.
"The whole album is about chaos," revealed Michael Stipe, "I have become very interested in chaos and the hypothesis that there is order within chaos, so I guess that kind of carried over into the recording."  The album sold 1,000,000 million copies worldwide.

Green
Pop Song 89 / Get Up / You Are The Everything / Stand / World Leader Pretend / The Wrong Child / Orange Crush / Turn You Inside Out / Hairshirt / I Remember California / #11

Green was R.E.M.'s first album under the Warner Brothers label.  It did not sell quite as well as WB might have expected, and the band were quick to point out that I.R.S. Eponymous compilation had probably stolen some of their sales.  In contrast to the darker feel of Document, Green seemed almost obsessively happy.  R.E.M. admitted that they had originally wanted to do the whole of the second part of the album acoustically.  Some of the American press suggested that the move to a bigger record label had resulted in a weaker record.

Out of Time
Radio Song / Losing My Religion / Low / Near Wild Heaven /  Endgame / Shiny Happy People / Belong / Half a World Away / Texarkana / Country Feedback / Me In Honey

With this album the band seemed keen to move as far away from the sounds of Document and Green as possible.  Back avoided his usual electric guitar and chose and acoustic mandolin, while Mills handed his bass over to Berry and switched to piano.  Peter Holsapple was brought in to take care of some extra guitar.  Losing My Religion was the perfect taster for the new album. It had melancholy lyrics, a jangling refrain and the kind of chorus that was guaranteed to snag its way into someone's subconscious after one hearing.  Bill Berry confessed that he was worries that the album would flop, but these fears proved unfounded when the album reached the US top 5 within three weeks, and by May 1991 R.E.M. had their first number 1.

Automatic For the People
Drive / Try Not to Breathe / The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite / Everybody Hurts / Sweetness Follows / Monty Got a Raw Deal / Ignoreland / Fuck Me Kitten / Man On the Moon / Nightswimming / Find the River

If Out of Time had been a departure from the R.E.M. of old, then Automatic was even more of a surprise.  It seemed to combine the melancholy of old R.E.M. with the superior song writing of Out of Time. "We were planning to make a rock'n'roll record," said Peter Buck, "but they weren't rock'n' roll songs and I just didn't see the point. The upbeat, engagingly quirky The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, the charming Man on the Moon and the hard-rock anti-government Ignoreland offered the only restbite from a steam of gentler, achingly tuneful songs.

Monster
What's the Frequency, Kenneth? / Crush With Eyeliner / King of Comedy / I Don't Sleep, I Dream / Star 69 / Strange Currencies / Tongue / Bang and Blame / I Took Your Name / Let Me In / Circus Envy / You

"It's all electric guitar and loud," commented Peter Buck, and he wasn't kidding.  The subtle differences between the other albums were trivialised, with Monster showing a completely new direction for the band.  The sales in Britain during the first week exceeded 200,000, more than any other album for 5 years.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi
For information on this, the latest album, you should go to my New Adventures in Hi-Fi section.