The British version of college radio jangle pop gave us the endearingly misanthropic and maudlin Morrissey, whereas the American equivalent introduced the world to Michael Stipe and his limp-wristed, post-hippie, achingly sincere on-stage sub-flower-power mincing. God save the Queen, is all I can say to that, though she’s dead, boys. Nevertheless, at some point I had to wearily accept that it’s impossible to embark on a journey through the a(n)nals of rock without at least touching on the oeuvre of R.E.-fucking-M., given their unhappy centrality to American alternative rock in the 80s and 90s. And, well, I’ll be damned, because, judging by this album, they’re not as insufferable as I initially assumed.
As the non-existent readership of this blog will know, my priority is usually to tease out and order my album reviews according to the lyrical or conceptual themes that underpin and run throughout particular records. The lyrics don’t have to provide existentialist meditations on being and nothingness, or on Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence – the last album I looked at, Achtung Baby, can be broadly broken down into songs about (i) partying, (ii) love, and (iii) heartbreak. But, and especially from the 1970s on, I’ve noticed an insidious trend becoming more and more unmistakeable; vague, free association, stream of consciousness lyrics with no discernible meaning, arrangements of nice sounding but ultimately empty words which are “open to interpretation” – i.e. which the songwriter couldn’t be bothered to put any thought into.
In my opinion, this baleful tendency reached its apotheosis in the 1990s, and Out of Time is irredeemably guilty of perpetuating it. Michael Stipe was a repeat offender, an arch-purveyor of nebulous whittering disguised as song lyrics. He constantly complained throughout his career about how much he hated writing them, how he just scribbled down random lines literally minutes before recording his vocals, which rather begs the question of why he didn’t just get Bernie Taupin to do it for him, like Reginald Dwight did. Anyway, I find this kind of thing unforgivable and objectionable, but opinions are like assholes, I suppose.
So in the absence of cohesive lyrics, we are left to organise our analysis of Out of Time with reference to its dominant sounds or musical styles, an area in which I’m not very well-versed and not particularly interested, though in the case of this album, one tradition is preeminent; radio-friendly folk music rendered somewhat rocky (mainly with electric guitars) and somewhat experimental (mainly with strings). R.E.M. by numbers, I suppose, but you know what – it’s not such a bad sound, in fact it’s perfectly agreeable, eminently digestible, and I’d even say that I enjoy listening to it. Its most perfect distillation on this record is “Shiny Happy People”, which starts with saccharine strings, an ecstatic guitar riff, and inexorably upbeat lyrics about “shiny happy people holding hands” and “everyone around, love them, love them”. When I was younger, I assumed that this song was a sly critique of the relentless, slightly forced, SSRI-fuelled optimism of American culture but, apparently, it isn’t; it’s meant to be taken as prescribed, as a “song about spreading love”, according to guest vocalist Kate Pierson. Which is rather sickening, if you ask me.
And yet there’s no denying the irrepressible catchiness of “Shiny Happy People”, the ease with which it passes through the brain. This breeziness is a most attractive feature of much of Out of Time. “Near Wild Heaven” sounds like the Beach Boys doing folk rock. The swooping swings are conspicuous by their absence, but the hallmarks of Brian Wilson are otherwise abundant; the sunny (if slightly unhinged) vibe, the “ba ba ba ba das”, the tormented, childlike lyrics (“Whenever we hold each other / There’s a feeling that something has gone wrong”). The closing song, “Me in Honey”, is moodier, and the lyrics are once again contemptibly trivial and opaque, but the East Coast grooviness is there and it remains rather appealing. “Texarkana” and the instrumental “Endgame” are also enjoyable and easy on the ear, although, toward the end of the album, the limits of R.E.M.’s jubilant jangle-folk-rock style become increasingly perceptible, especially when there are no underlying lyrical ideas to sustain it.
To be fair to R.E.M., they do manage to change the pace, shifting occasionally from bouncy and bright to sad and droopy but, somehow, when they do, I don’t buy it; their hearts aren’t in it. The pretty, tender, melancholy, string-drenched “Half a World Away” is – I assume – about an intoxicated Michael watching the sunset (“This could be the saddest dusk I’ve ever seen”) but, despite its ostensibly downbeat air, it still sounds fundamentally warm, good-tempered, and, well, not really all that sad. “Country Feedback” is unapologetic cowboy rock, Clint Eastwood trudging grimly across a starlit desert to confront his nemesis, and more obtuse lyrics that are manifestly about nothing (“a paper weight, junk garage / Winter rain, a honey pot / Crazy, all the lovers have been tagged”). I actually like these songs but, once again, though, there’s a strange emotional shallowness to the whole thing, which I find is often the case with R.E.M. I’ve always thought that their trademark tearjerker, “Everybody Hurts”, sounds like mass produced melancholy pop rock, complete with clumsy Hallmark lyrics (“if you feel like you’re alone / no, you’re not alone” – *wets the bed*).
But with all that said, there is one point on Out of Time where R.E.M. do manage to make a genuine emotional connection; “Losing My Religion”, a distressed, string-drenched, twangy folk number with lyrics which, for once, actually sound like they coalesce around a unifying idea. The song is profoundly disturbed; to my mind, Michael isn’t losing his religious faith, he’s going back and forth in his own head about declaring his unrequited love for someone (“I’ve said too much / I haven’t said enough”) and ruminating on possible rejection and humiliation (“I thought that I heard you laughing”). It’s a generational song but, in my opinion, it remains a rare moment of plausible and authentic emotional depth on a record of rather superficial, if agreeable and enjoyable, radio rock.
Unfortunately, this does not yet conclude our exploration of Out of Time, because when they’re not shifting between jubilant and droopy pop rock, R.E.M. deign to “experiment with their sound” and throw some musical curveballs at the defenceless and unsuspecting listener. This is a hit and miss exercise, to say the least. The opener, “Radio Song”, apparently gets a lot of stick from their fans, and the involvement of flash-in-the-pan vegan rapper KRS-One is indeed cringe inducing. Personally, though, I can’t help but like it; it has prescient lyrics about “the world collapsing around our ears”, there’s a bit more fire and brimstone than on the rest of the album, and I think it makes for a suitably raucous opener before Michael and chums paddle with predictable desperation back to the safe, familiar shores of Alt-Country Island. On “Low”, meanwhile, the creepy guitar, funereal keyboard, hushed singing, and lyrics like “dusk is dawn is day” are so redolent of the Doors that it’s practically a cover version, and again, I just don’t buy the 50kg, 86-year-old Stipe as a prophet of doom. And the less said about “Belong”, a nonsensical spoken word poem about a woman holding her baby and staring at the sea, the better.
Overall, I enjoyed Out of Time, without being blown away by it. It’s an easy listen – alongside the monster hits “Losing My Religion” and “Shiny Happy People”, most of the album slides by pleasantly and gracefully enough, which I certainly can’t say about every record I’ve put myself through in the process of writing this blog. “Half the World Away” and “Near Wild Heaven” are very good songs, and “Radio” got my blood pumping, despite the unfortunate cameo by the thinking man’s Tupac. But the profoundly fatuous lyrics makes the album feel flaccid and, worst of all, there’s a serious problem with the sequencing, as rivers of folk rock flow uncomfortably around hideous and incongruous boulders like “Belong”. This gives the record an incohesive and awkward feel: they should have just front loaded it with all the accessible jangle pop and melancholy country, and hidden the weird stuff at the end, in which case Out of Time would be very strong.
8/10
Highlights: “Losing My Religion”, “Near Wild Heaven”, “Half the World Away”