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R.E.M.: Automatic for the People

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 1992.10.05
Time:
 48:52
Category: Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Scott Litt & R.E.M.
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.remhq.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Drive (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:31
[2] Try Not to Breathe (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:50
[3] The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:06
[4] Everybody Hurts (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:17
[5] New Orleans Instrumental No. 1 (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:13
[6] Sweetness Follows (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:19
[7] Monty Got a Raw Deal (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:17
[8] Ignoreland (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:24
[9] Star Me Kitten (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:15
[10] Man on the Moon (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 5:13
[11] Nightswimming (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:16
[12] Find the River (B.Perry/P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:50

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Bill Berry - Drums, Percussion, Keyboards, Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals, Melodica, Producer
Peter Buck - Electric And Acoustic Guitars, Mandolin, Bass Guitar, Producer
Mike Mills - Bass Guitar, Piano, Keyboards, Backing Vocals, Producer
Michael Stipe - Vocals, Art Direction, Design, Producer

Scott Litt - Contrabass Clarinet, Clavinet, Harmonica, Mixing, Producer

Strings & Oboe on [1,3,4,11]:
John Paul Jones - Orchestral Arrangements
George Hanson - Conductor
Paul Murphy - Leader, Viola
Denise Berginson-Smith - Violin
Lommie Ditzen - Violin
Patti Gouvas - Violin
Sandy Salzinger - Violin
Sou-Chun Su - Violin
Jody Taylor - Violin
Knox Chandler - Cello
Kathleen Kee - Cello
Daniel Laufee - Cello
Elizabeth Murphy - Cello
Reid Harris - Viola
Heidi Nitchie - Viola
Deborah Workman - Oboe

Clif Norrell - Recording Engineer, Mixing Engineer
Ed Brooks - Second Engineer (Seattle)
George Cowan - Second Engineer (Bearsville)
John Keane - Recording Engineer (Athens)
Mark Howard - Second Engineer (New Orleans)
Tod Lemkuhl - Second Engineer (Seattle)
Ted Malia - Second Engineer (Atlanta)
Andrew Roshberg - Second Engineer (Miami)
Stephen Marcussen - Mastering Engineer
Tom Recchion - Art Direction, Design
Mark Mytrowitz - Technical Assistance
Fredrick Nilsen - Photography
Cecil Juanarena - Computer Imaging

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Turning away from the sweet pop of Out of Time, R.E.M. created a haunting, melancholy masterpiece with Automatic for the People. At its core, the album is a collection of folk songs about aging, death, and loss, but the music has a grand, epic sweep provided by layers of lush strings, interweaving acoustic instruments, and shimmering keyboards. Automatic for the People captures the group at a crossroads, as they moved from cult heroes to elder statesmen, and the album is a graceful transition into their new status. It is a reflective album, with frank discussions on mortality, but it is not a despairing record - "Nightswimming," "Everybody Hurts," and "Sweetness Follows" have a comforting melancholy, while "Find the River" provides a positive sense of closure. R.E.M. have never been as emotionally direct as they are on Automatic for the People, nor have they ever created music quite as rich and timeless, and while the record is not an easy listen, it is the most rewarding record in their oeuvre.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



It’s easy for the music world to take R.E.M. for granted, even though the band burst into mainstream fame last year with its No. 1 album, Out of Time. That record garnered the band three Grammys, including one for the single ”Losing My Religion,” while spawning pop hits big enough to get played in aerobics classes. Now R.E.M. offers the deeply moving and entirely idiosyncratic Automatic for the People, and to judge it simply as Out of Time’s follow-up would trivialize everything the group is about.

Automatic for the People, after all, was recorded by four guys who by now have stayed together — nobody died, nobody blustered off in a fit — for 12 years. They became college-radio faves with an inimitably homespun blend of perky strangeness and folklike melancholy, a sound spiced by wry comedy and ringing guitar, sweetened by unexpected bursts of soulful melody, and propelled with an alert rhythmic snap. That sound deepened as R.E.M. recorded eight albums — five for an independent label and three for a major — but the band’s gradual emergence on the charts (which began at the end of its indie era, with the 1987 top 10 success of “The One I Love”) never registered as any kind of musical turning point. The records only suggest that the group had grown a little older and seen more of life.

The new album clearly wasn’t crafted for the pop market. R.E.M.’s bass and keyboard player, Mike Mills, even calls the new songs ”weird,” though surely that’s only from the commercial point of view; more accurately, they tend to be rich and subdued, full of lush strings and deep feeling. The first single, ”Drive,” is somber, with minor-key acoustic guitar and lyrics obliquely mourning the restless choices made by kids with no plans for their future. There’s an oddly lively waltz, ”Try Not to Breathe,” about growing old; a gently droning meditation on the death of loved ones, ”Sweetness Follows”; and a slow, dark, almost groping number that’s unabashedly about sex, ”Star Me Kitten” (originally ”F— Me Kitten,” which is how the phrase is murmured in the song; in a small victory for censorship, the title was changed to avoid what would otherwise be an unwarranted ”Parental Advisory” sticker).

Subjects like these show the band moving into more personal territory than ever before, with clearer, less ambiguous emotion. Even the sole political number (”Ignoreland,” one of the few up-tempo tracks on the album) is something new: It’s a scathing attack on Republicans but mixed to sound as if it’s being shouted from a distance, and whimsically defused by singer Michael Stipe’s admission that, though he offers no solutions, ”I feel better having screamed.”

The record’s biggest surprise, however, is its one surefire pop hit, ”Everybody Hurts,” an almost unbearably passionate argument against suicide. It sounds like a gigantic arena transfiguration of a ’50s rock ballad, with Stipe’s voice pleading over triplets and massed strings, and surely will be played on radio for generations to come, right next to unforgettable anthems like ”Bridge Over Troubled Water.” It should also complete R.E.M.’s conquest of pop by reaching the Adult Contemporary market that lies beyond rock. But that’s only an incidental part of what may become the band’s greatest triumph — reaching everyone in the world while still sounding like no one but themselves.

Greg Sandow - January 17, 2015
Copyright © 2015 Entertainment Weekly Inc.



Continuing its admirable retreat from the pop compromises of "Green," the Georgia foursome penetrates further into the rusticated chamber music it developed on last year's "Out of Time." R.E.M.'s eighth album has its relatively rocking moments, but with its acoustic foundation and orchestral strings, it's like an arty version of deep-mountain folk music - lonely and ancient, tapping straight into the mysteries of the human spirit.

Even the high-tech elements have an organic feel - the fuzz and squeals behind the acoustic guitars of "Sweetness Follows" suggest an electric storm seen through bare trees. In these autumnal fields R.E.M. ponders matters of life and death, spews a little vitriol on the Reagan era (it doesn't really help, they admit, but it makes them feel better), considers concepts of illusion and play (citing Montgomery Clift and Andy Kaufman) and transforms nostalgia into something luminously spiritual.

R.E.M. hasn't adopted the manner of its former Athens neighbors the B-52's, but playfulness and humor regularly buoy and brighten the album, from odd song allusions (David Essex's 1973 echo exercise "Rock On," the folkie oldie "The Lion Sleeps Tonight") to Michael Stipe's quirky old-man's voice, which is often as amusing as it is emotionally compelling.

"Out of Time" sounded like a step away from commercialism and ended up a big seller and Grammy winner. "Automatic" might be a more advanced test of buyers' and voters' limits, but its intelligence and subtle passion make it an even more powerful work.

Richard Cromelin - October 04, 1992
Copyright © 2015 Los Angeles Times



Pop music fans often treat their favorite songs like piggy banks, turning words and melody upside down until the coin of meaning drops into their hands. They can get it all wrong, transforming a lyricist's scribbles into Proustian reflections. Michael Stipe, singer for R.E.M. and hero to a decade's worth of moody college kids, expresses his frustration over such misunderstandings on "Drive," the first single from the group's 10th album, "Automatic for the People" (Warner Brothers 4-44505; CD and cassette).

The song echoes with the weariness of lamentation. Peter Buck's acoustic guitar weaves a gentle ring around accordion, strings and ponderous drums as Stipe grumbles a canticle of dismissive phrases. "Hey, kids, rock-and-roll, nobody tells you where to go," he sings, sure that if he were to disappear, the song would go on as before.

It's a grim start for the follow-up to R.E.M.'s artistic and popular breakthrough, which came with the video and single "Losing My Religion" from last year's "Out of Time." But it's perfectly in step with the band's current elegiac mood. A sense of exhaustion permeates this album of acoustic meditations. A muted string section (arranged by the former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones) and occasional oboe or accordion provide subtle elaborations on the band's stripped-down ensemble work. Of 12 songs, only 3 go beyond midtempo. Stipe's lyrics, elliptical as always, evoke disconnection, failure and loss.

Only "Man on the Moon" shines with a wit that balances R.E.M.'s somber tendencies - and that song pays ironic homage to the late comic Andy Kaufman, known for his odd obsessions and confusing performances. Mentioning Kaufman in the same breath as Moses and Sir Isaac Newton, Stipe makes a game of human endeavor, insisting that it all ends in dust. "Let's play Twister, let's play Risk," Stipe jokes to the notables he's invoked. "I'll see you in heaven if you make the list." Buck's slippery guitar lines render Stipe's skepticism whimsical, but bitterness stirs beneath the song's surface.

Elsewhere, "Automatic for the People" confronts mortality in a more solemn mode. Knox Chandler's cello bears the rhythm of "Sweetness Follows" like a dark angel, as Stipe explores the need for rituals of grief. As the music dims, Stipe recalls a community torn apart by persistent misfortune. "It's these little things, they can pull you under," he murmurs. This painful story turns specific in "Monty Got a Raw Deal," which addresses an unspecified friend (perhaps Montgomery Clift, a patron saint for sensitive boys of another era) whom Stipe's words cannot save from violence. "You don't want this sympathy," Stipe sighs as Buck's mandolin rings over a quickening drumbeat. The beauty of the song struggles against the singer's sense of its pointlessness.

The sentiment is gray, but not entirely surprising. Stipe has, after all, always been wary of the role of pop sage. From the band's early years as the flagship of alternative rock to its current eminence as a hit group that has maintained its integrity, R.E.M. has kept its image unpretentious and its ambitions obscure.

In 10 albums, Stipe's dense lyrics melded with the radiant musicianship of Buck, the drummer Bill Berry and the bassist Mike Mills, recasting the American pastoral in a post-punk mode. Buck, a record collector, brought a slew of influences to the band, which soon came to represent alternative rock at its most lyrical. The band members' continued allegiance to the college town of Athens, Ga., further enhanced their image as pop Romantics.

As the group's music grew into a more radio-friendly sound and Stipe replaced his famous mumble with clearly enunciated phrases, a larger audience found significance in R.E.M.'s ambiguities. Stipe became an unglamorous icon, shunning the excesses of the arena-rock crowd in favor of the direct-action politics of organizations like Greenpeace and Act Up. Many consider him to be a highly successful celebrity activist. "Automatic" reveals Stipe's own disillusionment with this role, as he leads R.E.M. back toward the shelter of musical obscurity.

The litanies collected here bear dreams of retreat - from the political arena in "Ignoreland," fame in "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" and life itself in the unfinished suicide note "Try Not to Breathe." Stipe never clearly names the forces that drive him toward despair, but the album's tone of bereavement suggests that the AIDS crisis is at its heart. As friends and lovers lose their lives to a creeping illness that will not be coerced into making sense, and as a new generation of fans comes of age with their sexuality already under siege, pop artists like Stipe and R.E.M. intimately realize the limits to which art can change the world. Even the ability to communicate seems limited; words and music can only suggest, and never encompass, such sorrow. After all, even Orpheus finally failed to raise the dead Eurydice with his song. And pop music fans can't even seem to get the lyrics right.

Even in the midst of such disenchantment, R.E.M. can't resist its own talent for creating beautiful and moving sounds. "Automatic" never comes close to the epiphany of "Losing My Religion," but Buck, Mills and Berry can still conjure melodies that fall like summer sunlight. And Stipe still possesses a gorgeous voice that cannot shake its own gift for meaning. His self-doubt and evasiveness never completely squelch its evocative power.

Once on "Automatic," in the song "Everybody Hurts," he allows that strength to overcome his caution. Simple words run over a sing-along melody as Stipe assures a friend that he can survive his anguish. In such a sad world, the song concludes, mourning is precisely what we share. "If you think you've had too much of this life, hang on," Stipe whispers as Buck's arpeggios carry him toward a rousing finale. The song is "Automatic"s spark of hope, a nod to tomorrow on an album heavy with doubts about today.

Photo: R.E.M. (from left, Mike Mills, Peter Buck, Michael Stipe and Bill Berry) - Hitmakers with an unpretentious image. (Anton Corbijn/Warner Brothers)

Ann Powers - October 11, 1992
© 2015 The New York Times



R.E.M. has never made music more gorgeous than" "Nightswimming and "Find the River," the ballads that close Automatic for the Peopleand sum up its twilit, soulful intensity. A swirl of images natural and technological – midnight car rides and undertow, old photographs and headlong tides – the songs grapple, through a unifying metaphor of "the recklessness of water," with the interior world of memory, loss and yearning. This is the members of R.E.M. delving deeper than ever; grown sadder and wiser, the Athens subversives reveal a darker vision that shimmers with new, complex beauty.
Despite its difficult concerns, most of Automatic is musically irresistible. Still present, if at a slower tempo, is the tunefulness that without compromising the band's highly personal message, made these Georgia misfits platinum sellers. Since "The One I Love," its Top Forty hit from 1987, R.E.M. has conquered by means of artful videos, surer hooks and fatter production and by expanding thematically to embrace the doomsday politics of Document, the eco-utopianism of Green and the sweet rush of Out of Time. Brilliantly, the new album both questions and clinches that outreaching progress; having won the mainstream's ear, R.E.M. murmurs in voices of experience – from the heart, one on one.

In a minor key, "Drive" opens Automatic with Michael Stipe singing: "Hey kids/Where are you?/Nobody tells you what to do," a chorus that wryly echoes David Essex's glam-rock anthem "Rock On." In its imagining of youth apocalypse, "Drive" upsets the pat assumption that the members of R.E.M. might still see themselves as generational spokesmen. The group then further trashes anyone's expectation of a nice pop record with "Try Not to Breathe." Alluding presumably to "suicide doctor" Jack Kevorkian ("I will try not to breathe/This decision is mine/I have lived a full life/These are the eyes I want you to remember"), the song ushers in a series of meditations on mortality that makes Automatic as haunted at times as Lou Reed's Magic and Loss. Relief comes in the form of whimsical instrumentation (such low-tech keyboards as piano, clavinet, accordion); political satire ("Ignoreland") that suggests a revved-up Buffalo Springfield; and, on the catchy "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight," some of Stipe's niftier faux nursery rhymes ("A can of beans/Of black-eyed peas/Some Nescafe and ice/A candy bar/A falling star/Or a reading from Dr. Seuss"). Yet, without a single "Shiny Happy People" among its twelve songs, Automatic is assuredly an album edged in black.

Famous ghosts are tenderly remembered. The calypsolike "Man on the Moon" fantasizes holy-fool comedian Andy Kaufman in hip heaven ("Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?"), and a paean to Montgomery Clift, "Monty Got a Raw Deal," exhorts Hollywood's wrecked Adonis to "just let go." Hard grief inspires "Sweetness Follows" ("Readying to bury your father and your mother"), yet compassion wins out: The sorrows that make us "lost in our little lives," the song says, end in an inscrutable sweetness.

A homespun ditty, "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1," and the woozy jazz of "Star Me Kitten" (featuring the weirdest love lyrics imaginable: "I'm your possession/So fuck me, kitten") lighten Automatic somewhat, but the darker songs boast the stronger playing. Guitarist Peter Buck dazzles, not only with the finger picking that launched a thousand college bands but with feedback embellishments and sitarlike touches. As always, the rhythm section of bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry kicks; on about half the numbers, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones crafts string arrangements that recall, in their Moorish sweep, his orchestral work for the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request.

If "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" are R.E.M. at its most evocative, "Everybody Hurts," the album's third masterpiece, finds the band gaining a startling emotional directness. Spare triplets on electric piano carry a melody as sturdy as a Roy Orbison lament, and Stipe's voice rises to a keening power. "When you're sure you've had too much of this life, well, hang on," he entreats, asserting that in the face of the tough truths Automatic for the People explores, hope is, more than ever, essential.

Paul Evans - Oct 29, 1992
RollingStone.com



Automatic for the People is the eighth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1992 on Warner Bros. Records. Upon release, it reached number two on the U.S. album charts and yielded six singles. The album has sold 18 million copies worldwide and is widely considered one of the best records released in the 1990s.

Automatic for the People was released in October 1992. In the United States, the album reached number two on the Billboard 200 album charts. The album reached number one in the United Kingdom, where it topped the UK Albums Chart on four separate occasions. Despite not having toured after the release of Out of Time, R.E.M. again declined to tour in support of this album. Automatic for the People has been certified four times platinum in the United States (four million copies shipped), six times platinum in the United Kingdom (1.8 million shipped), and three times platinum in Australia (210,000 shipped). The album has sold 3.5 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan sales figures as of 2011.

Automatic for the People yielded six singles over the course of 1992 and 1993: "Drive", "Man on the Moon", "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite", "Everybody Hurts", "Nightswimming", and "Find the River". Lead single "Drive" was the album's highest-charting domestic hit, reaching number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100. Other singles charted higher overseas: "Everybody Hurts" charted in the top ten in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. A re-recorded, slower version of Star Me Kitten was released on Songs  in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by the X-Files. The music videos from the album were included in Parallel.

In 2005, Warner Bros. Records issued a two-disc edition of Automatic for the People which includes a CD, a DVD-Audio disc containing a 5.1-channel surround sound mix of the album done by Elliot Scheiner, and the original CD booklet with expanded liner notes.

R.E.M. biographer David Buckley wrote, "Automatic for the People is regarded by Peter Buck and Mike Mills, and by most critics, as being the finest R.E.M. album ever recorded." Rolling Stone gave the album five stars. Reviewer Paul Evans wrote, "Despite its difficult concerns, most of Automatic is musically irresistible." Melody Maker reviewer Allan Jones commented, "It's almost impossible to write about the record without mentioning the recent grim rumors concerning Stipe's health," in reference to the rumors at the time that the singer was dying of AIDS or cancer. Jones concluded his review by noting, "Amazingly, initial reactions to Automatic for the People in this particular vicinity have been mixed [...] Psshaw to them. Automatic for the People is R.E.M. at the very top of their form." Ann Powers, reviewing the album for The New York Times, noted that only three of the songs on the album went beyond mid-tempo and said, "Only 'Man on the Moon' shines with a wit that balances R.E.M.'s somber tendencies." Powers finished her review by saying, "Even in the midst of such disenchantment, R.E.M. can't resist its own talent for creating beautiful and moving sounds. [...] Buck, Mills and Berry can still conjure melodies that fall like summer sunlight. And Stipe still possesses a gorgeous voice that cannot shake its own gift for meaning." Guy Garcia, for Time, also noted the album's themes of "hopelessness, anger and loss". Garcia added that the album proves "that a so-called alternative band can keep its edge after conquering the musical mainstream" and that it "manages to dodge predictability without ever sounding aimless or unfocussed."

Automatic for the People placed third in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop year-end critics' poll. The album was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards of 1994. It was also ranked #247 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone also ranked it at #18 on its "100 Greatest Albums of the 90s" list.

In 2006, British Hit Singles & Albums and NME organised a poll of which, 40,000 people worldwide voted for the 100 best albums ever and Automatic for the People was placed at #37 on the list.

"I'm not so crazy about 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite'," Buck reflected in 2001, "but overall I think it sounds great."

Wikipedia.org
 

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