I have always and will always object to the lumping together of R.E.M. and the Smiths. Yes, both bands purveyed alternative 80s jangly indie rock at a time when the airwaves were awash with hairbrained bubblegum chewing synthesizer-based pop, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s where the similarities end. The Smiths were infused with the defiant, cantankerous, at times borderline misanthropic energy of British punk (“hating everything, but not being offensively hateful”, was how Morrissey himself put it), and their lyrics were highly literate stalagmites of icy intellect, which were frequently only tangentially related to Johnny Marr’s manic backing music. By contrast, R.E.M. are and remain a bunch of limp-wristed hippies, moaning endlessly about Republican presidents and tiresomely forcing their kitschy conception of “love” and “compassion” down your throat, whether you like it or not. Plus the lyrics are mostly mushy, nebulous hogwash, but we’ll get to that presently.
And yet, despite my obvious and considerable animus against these “American cousins of the Smiths”, I can’t deny that there’s a long list of R.E.M. songs that I like, and in some cases even love. And bugger me if most of them aren’t on Automatic for the People. Last year I reviewed Out of Time, the predecessor to this album, and found it to be a mixed bag, a hit-and-miss assemblage of splendidly tight indie anthems alongside irredeemably naff experimental guff. Automatic for the People is much more consistent and, in fact, very good from start to finish, though it pains me to admit it, particularly after watching a 45-minute track-by-track interview with Michael Stipe and Mike Mills intended to mark its thirty-year anniversary.
This is the very interview where Stipe admits to not knowing what he’s actually writing about when he pens R.E.M.’s lyrics. I find this galling in the extreme because, to me, Stipe had the best job in the world. He was spared the onerous task of writing music or having to practice with an actual instrument – the boring stuff – and instead he got to do the bookish, literary, enjoyable part; writing words and then singing them. In the interview, he admits to hating every second spent doing the former, and so he attacked his task in the time-honored manner of all intellectually arid rockstars; by instinctively writing down a collection of words that sound good and vaguely suggestive, but which mean nothing.
This is a huge black mark against Automatic for the People, in my opinion. Should the listener sit and pay close attention to, say, “Monty Got a Raw Deal” or “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight”, they may assume that the lyrics are “cryptic” or “open to multiple interpretations”, and then strain to understand them or somehow piece the jigsaw together in their pretty little heads. But this would be a waste of time, and the unsuspecting victim should take care not to read or listen to any interviews with Stipe, in which he openly admits to just writing random words down without thinking too much about what they mean. Why even write lyrics, if this is the case? Why not just wail in a made-up language, like the insufferable village idiots of Icelandic girlband Sigur Rós?
Most frustratingly of all, Stipe doesn’t always get it wrong; the words to the discombobulated and downbeat opener “Drive”, or the by-turns plaintive and rousing “Man on the Moon”, a tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman, are evocative and intriguing. These are the best two songs on the album, for my money, and impressively, they’re accompanied by a veritable deluge of recognizable and catchy singles; the frenetic “Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight”, the stately and delicate “Nightswimming”, the world-weary “Find the River.” The album tracks naturally hit less hard but most of them are a cut above the usual filler, especially the rancorous “Ignoreland” and the eerie, funereal “Sweetness Follows.”
Perhaps the only weak entry on this otherwise excellent album is the almost unlistenably twee “Everybody Hurts”, an anti-suicide anthem so unrepentantly soppy that, ironically, it makes me want to shoot myself in the head. This misstep, plus the at-times maddeningly nebulous lyrics, preclude the awarding of five stars to Automatic for the People, though I freely admit that this may reflect my own bad-tempered British bias. Still, though, the Smiths were better, and that’s not open to debate.
Overall rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Man on the Moon”