197 - R.E.M. - Murmur
Yay! When my customer service issues with Rhapsody caused me to cancel my subscription there, I unintentionally took a break from listening to the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums list. I finally put my TuneIn Radio app on my phone to use and have been listening to my favorite radio stations from previous markets - Lightning 100 from Nashville, 'HFS in Balt/DC, and KEOM in Mesquite/Dallas. I also went on a hunt for a service to replace Rhapsody. What really sucked about that is all of the music streaming services provide next to no details about their service. You get a half dozen or so selling points on their websites and that's about it. A few issues and wishes I developed during my time with Rhapsody were items I wanted to check out while I shopped around. Alas, it became a game of trying out different services in order to figure out the answers to my questions. At this time, I've signed up for Spotify.
Okay, now to the post at hand...
There are two things that stand out to me about R.E.M.'s Murmur:
1. The band sounds so mature - This doesn't sound like a debut album. The band had put enough time into these songs on the road that the songs don't seem incomplete or sloppy. Along with this is how mellow the band is. It always annoyed me that during the Monster era that the band kept insisting that they used to rock just as hard. I'm sorry, but Murmur sounds nothing like Monster, even if you focus on “9-9” and “West of the Fields” as being songs that rock. The band sound far more like The Byrds than they do a garage band on their debut.
2. Mystery - Whether we are talking about Micheal’s garbled lyrics, the unidentified rumbling and booming sounds that decorate some of the songs (these sounds are most obvious in “We Walk”), or the fact that many of the songs sound as if the producer draped all of the mics in the studio with scarves. The muffling helps to give the album a timelessness, too.
Songs I Knew I Liked: “Radio Free Europe,” “Pilgrimage,” “Laughing,” “Talk About the Passion,” “Moral Kiosk,” “Perfect Circle,” “Catapult,” “Shaking Through,” and “We Walk”
Songs I Now Like: I think I'd probably put the full album in the above category if I had it all to do over again. Honestly, those not listed above are songs that have merely slipped being individually identified (as opposed to “that song on side 2 where they sing...”) and not that I like them markedly less than those mentioned.
Songs I Don't Want to Ever Hear Again: None
Okay, now to the post at hand...
There are two things that stand out to me about R.E.M.'s Murmur:
1. The band sounds so mature - This doesn't sound like a debut album. The band had put enough time into these songs on the road that the songs don't seem incomplete or sloppy. Along with this is how mellow the band is. It always annoyed me that during the Monster era that the band kept insisting that they used to rock just as hard. I'm sorry, but Murmur sounds nothing like Monster, even if you focus on “9-9” and “West of the Fields” as being songs that rock. The band sound far more like The Byrds than they do a garage band on their debut.
2. Mystery - Whether we are talking about Micheal’s garbled lyrics, the unidentified rumbling and booming sounds that decorate some of the songs (these sounds are most obvious in “We Walk”), or the fact that many of the songs sound as if the producer draped all of the mics in the studio with scarves. The muffling helps to give the album a timelessness, too.
Songs I Knew I Liked: “Radio Free Europe,” “Pilgrimage,” “Laughing,” “Talk About the Passion,” “Moral Kiosk,” “Perfect Circle,” “Catapult,” “Shaking Through,” and “We Walk”
Songs I Now Like: I think I'd probably put the full album in the above category if I had it all to do over again. Honestly, those not listed above are songs that have merely slipped being individually identified (as opposed to “that song on side 2 where they sing...”) and not that I like them markedly less than those mentioned.
Songs I Don't Want to Ever Hear Again: None