Sorry about that absence. It's getting to the point where Summer is just a long span of pure boredom with a lot of time and no energy to do anything. Well, it's been that point for about a month now. Anyway, think I'd get this alive again with a band I have been digging for a little over a year and a half now. Of rather should I say, some bands I'd like to name check, and one of them is REM. Pretty sure you heard of them, they were pretty popular in the early to mid nineties, and they still have some solid hits going into the aughts. They have nearly been around for 30 f'ning years now, so this discography thing is gonna take some time. REM are pretty much the band that turned the punk/post-punk/new-wave scene into the Alternative Rock in the eighties. Alt. Rock is kind of a lame genre name in my opinion, but I feel like REM live up to the name in full, their blend of rock is much more introspective and humble than the overblown styling of "rock" at the time. While they were bearing of that tag and Indie Rock (won't even get into that one), they were pretty much a Jangle Pop band early on. Jangle Pop being chiming, jangly guitars mixed with mid to late sixties folk-rock, but they also had a love of proto-punk/punk groups like Velvet Underground, The Patti Smith Group, and Television and post-punk like Wire and Gang Of Four. This lead to a sort of sweet and sour combination, sort of like Kurt Cobain's "Beatles meets Black Sabbath" coda. REM themselves were four ordinary dudes from the college town of Athens, GA. Micheal Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry. They made music simply because they wanted to "waste time, creatively". It blows my mind how simple dudes like that made such amazing melodies, they must of had a ear for the stuff. No better represented than this EP, a tight, quick and solid collection of early REM classics.
The EP starts off with Wolves, Lower, which is a great opener. It's kind of post-punk-ish, though seems much more energetic and less experimental than most post-punk. Full of chiming arpeggios and pounding, somewhat chaotic percussion that accommodates to Stipe's mumbled vocals. The chorus is pure joy, as Mills sings House in Order, House In Order, House In Order, House In Order and Stipes ahhhhs a long. Then comes Gardening At Night, what many REM-heads call REM's first anthem of sorts. It's the worst track off the EP IMO. It just loses depth after many listens, and I did listen to it a lot when I got into REM. It's still good, the finest example of Stipe's mumbled vocals (barring Sitting Still), in which only the chorus is understandable, and that intro leading up to the burst is still great. Plus, it retain a feel of the name of the track, gardening at night, in a really great way. Carnival Of Sorts (Box Cars) is probably my favorite off the EP, it starts off sounding like a song off a soundtrack to a spy film, but then explodes into a mysterious post-punk-ish tune. The guitar just hits out of nowhere and the bassline just keeps the rhythm plodding away. The lyrics are just indescribably fantastic, keeping up with the spy motif, as Stipe howls Gentlemen don't get caught, cages under cage. The track almost comes off like a car-ride through a dark and desolate town, just very great. 1,000,000 is jangle-pop through and through, it's a very upbeat track. I didn't like it at first, as Stipes vocals almost sound bratty, but fitting it in with the lyrics it makes sense. The track describes an arrogant brat who feels that he is more evolved than previous generations and thus he feels he Could live a million. It was probably the track that I got more from the lyrics than any other one. Great live track too. Stumble is another one of my favorite REM songs all together, just barely below CoS. It's the longest track of the album and to some can be a little repetitive. I really love it though, the whole intro with chiming build-up of the Buck's guitar and Stipe saying "Haha, Teeth" just sounds so strange and absurd. Then the drums come in from everywhere, just pure craziness. The lyrics then hit, putting you in a southern field, perhaps a forest? That's the wonder of early REM, they can put very intense images, mostly rural ones. The music though feels more like a carinval ride, just jerking you back and forth through it's 5 minutes. You also gotta love it when Stipe mentions a Hipster Town . Just a great end to a great EP.
A great little taste of what's to come, or rather what's to be perfected. :D
4.5/5
-Jackson
