The Sidewinder is still sleeping– R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People 15 years later
Posted by Scott Cederlund in musicSmack, crack, bushwhacked
Tie another one to the racks, baby
Whitney at Pop Candy reminded us that this week is the 15th anniversary of R.E.M.’s AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE. While I think OUT OF TIME is a better aged album, AUTOMATIC still remains one of my all time favorite albums.
It’s one of the few albums from my college years that I actually remember the buying experience. It was my second year as a senior and I was sharing a house with a couple of other guys in Grand Rapids, MI. Tim, my best friend, was down in West Lafayette, IN at Purdue. One of the coolest music stores ever in GR that I can’t remember the name of had a line. It was a completely different experience. Drive is a song for the lost revolutionaries, “Hey, kid, where are you?” Stipe sings trying to find out what happened to our maddening youth. Maybe we did a lot of things but we’re not doing it now. “Maybe you’re crazy in the head.” I now wonder if that line is some kind of indictment more than simply a funny line. “Nobody tells you what to do,” Stipe later sings. If no one told us what to do or where to go, what did we do? What were we doing in the early 90’s that was so important then? This is a lost song about a generation that probably didn’t know it was lost. We were Gen X. Didn’t that count for something then? Doesn’t it now?
Try Not To Breathe: “These are the eyes that I want you to remember.” The album continues to haunt as REM goes from questioning youth to mourning a past and maybe lost. I’ve always loved the line “I have seen things you will never see.” We all have different experiences that are lost when we’re gone. This song reminds us how alone we are even as we try to reach out and make connections. We want people to know that we know things they don’t. We want them to know we’re important somehow. “I want you to remember,” is the singer reaching out, for his experiences to live behind him.
The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight: The sidewinder is almost a Seuss nonsensical creature that is mythical, legendary and doesn’t relate to much of the rest of the song as Stipe sings about communication, phone calls, and stupid, stupid signs. But the Sidewinder is someone that the singer doesn’t want to disturb, to wake up and bother. There are parts during this sone where it sounds like Stipe is going to begin laughing even as he invokes Seuss and The Cat in the Hat and tell us how it doesn’t relate to us. “Don’t even try to wake her up. I can always sleep standing up.”
Everybody Hurts: I don’t understand the popularity of this song. It’s good, evocative but is too sentimental for R.E.M., too maudlin. “Don’t let yourself go ’cause everybody cries.” It wears its heart on its sleeve and is just too simple, too obvious for me. It lacks the subtext of a lot of R.E.M.’s other work. I wonder if I would have liked it better if it wasn’t a hit single, if it was just another album track that I could listen to without the baggage of popular opinion. Even now listening to it, I want to fast forward through the song to get to the next album track. I think the strings are too powerful at the end, obliterating the actual band. I couldn’t even tell you what the bass or guitar is doing for most of this song.
New Orleans Instrumental No. 1: I love this short and kind of freaky instrumental. I have no idea what it evokes but it continues the sense of melancholy that’s been strung together through the album. The wailing guitar almost sounds like a whales song played through some distortion.
Sweetness Follows: Cameron Crowe used this song in his movie Vanilla Sky. This song comes out and talks even more about loss, loss of parents and loss of each other; the loss of family. “Live your life filled with joy and wonder.” Stipe sings of the pains that we all go through at one time or another but tries to remind us that sweetness does follow somehow. Even as we’re going through the loss and pain, we have to try to get through it to the other side. But even the guitar of Peter Buck sounds in pain throughout this song. There’s little joy in the music or Stipe’s voice, like he’s repeating a mantra hoping that he’ll soon believe it himself. “Sweetness follows” he repeats over and over, half believing it, half hoping to believe it as the guitar cuts through your heart.
Monty Got a Raw Deal: “Movies have that movie thing. Nonsense has a welcome ring.” I think that line refers back to The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. We’ve already heard nonsense in this album. But this song seems to refute that song, saying that song isn’t the singer, or at least isn’t the singer right now. Who is Monty and what kind of raw deal did he get? And why does the singer even care? What part does he have in Monty’s raw deal? This song has more of a sense of lost innocence as the singer has something to do with Monty’s situation.
Ignoreland: This is easily a horribly dated but fun song as Stipe rails against the Republican Presidential victories in the 80’s. “Bastards stole the power from the victims of the us v. them years.” I wonder if this song means anything to anyone younger than 30 right now? The bad guys are Reagan and the first Bush as the band’s Democratic leanings come to the front. Again, like all the other songs on this album, there’s a sense of lost, of sadness and yearning but it’s political here rather than emotional. It feels like this is supposed to be this album’s “It’s The End of the World As We Know It,” or at least a thematic sequel to it. At least Stipe knows that he’s not completely innocent or doing much with this song. It’s spleen venting and he knows it.
Star Me Kitten: On the two disc IN TIME best of collection, there’s a version of this song with William Burroughs singing it, or more appropriately narrating it. This is the closest to a lovesong on this album as the singer has to move beyond a breakup and has to change the locks on a house or apartment he shared with his lover. He’s trying to reach out to his lover even as he knows it will never work and the keys are the sign that everyone is moving on. There’s a disconnectedness between the elements of this song that mirrors a bit of the daze that follows after a break up. Everything lingers and nothing is definite. But the singer knows that he’s still in love even if they can’t be together. That’s the hardest kind of breakup.
Man on the Moon: Again, another song that I don’t necessarily understand the popularity of. I like the shuffling and rolling tempo of this song but it’s a return to the nonsense we tried to owe up to in Monty. This ode to dead celebrities and a historical events that may be as much fiction as fact, it seems only fitting that it should all be tied to Andy Kaufman. What’s real and what isn’t? As long as you believe, who cares what really happened. Everything’s cool. This is one of the only songs on this album that Mike Mills provides any significant backing vocals. I always love when Mills sings something that’s hidden under Stipes vocals.
Nightswimming: The loss of youth and innocence. On any other album, this would have been the last song, quietly and gently ushering you out of the album. This is a surprisingly gentle and private song, as the singer is as emotionally naked and available as the summer skinny dippers he mourns are. The summer is over, the pond is getting too cold and night swimming is over. Time brings all things to an end; youth, life, this album. This song is a momento mori, a reminder to live and enjoy the quieter and more delicate things of this life. The strings on this song work much better than they did on Everybody Hurts.
Follow The River: This song is almost a second ending to this album as Stipe and the band basically say goodbye to the listener. But it is almost the most optimistic song on the album. Even as nothing is going the singer’s way, he looks to the future and believes it can be better. “I’m closer now and light years to go.” We’re always moving forward but the end is so far away. All we can do is continue moving forward.
This is an album I’ve lived with for 15 years now. It’s probably the last truly important collection of R.E.M. songs. After this, the produced two good albums with Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi but nothing has ever equaled the first 10-12 years of the band’s existence that’s capped with Automatic For the People. I don’t know if I’ve ever listened to this album as mournfully as I do tonight or if I ever recognized all of the pain and suffering that is really in this album.
[tags]R.E.M., Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Bill Berry[/tags]
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[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptMonty Got a Raw Deal: “Movies have that movie thing. Nonsense has a welcome ring.” I think that line refers back to The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. We’ve already heard nonsense in this album. But this song seems to refute that song, … [...]