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R.E.M. - MURMUR
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The truism that you only get one chance to make a first impression applies more strictly to rock’n’roll than to most areas of endeavour. A debut album is what you spend the rest of your career, should you be lucky enough to have one, living up to, or living down, or both. It’s your best opportunity to create that most exciting, improbable and wonderful of things: the album that sounds like nothing else anyone has heard before. Nobody who reads this magazine – or, indeed, just turns on the radio occasionally – needs to be reminded that R.E.M. are a long-standing component of the cultural furniture, as venerable, reliable and immovable as a grandfather clock. Twenty-five years ago, however, their debut album, Murmur, seemed as surprising and strange and beautiful as catching the aforesaid timepiece unaccountably waltzing in the hallway. Twenty-five years later, it still does....full text |
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| Spunickmusic |
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Over the past year I've really learnt to not only appreciate alternative music, but accept it as one of my favourite genres of music. Granted, the majority of the bands and albums are of the 90's variety, and it is likely that I've been exposed to said bands before I actively sought out the genre. That said, despite my affinity to the more polished, digestible acts I indirectly grew up with, I still maintain a slight fascination with some of the genre's earlier groups. One of the first of such bands I decided to check out was R.E.M. One of the first alternative acts to gain popularity in the college rock scene of the 80's, the band has released a series of rather successful albums which have managed to get the American band hailed as one of the pioneers of the genre, despite their varying levels of quality. Leading the way as one of the finer studio albums in their discography is Murmur, R.E.M.'s highly praised debut album. It isn't quite difficult to see why Murmur is so well liked. The forty-four minute album is chock full of jangling guitars, infectious melodies, and simple, yet effective song writing. Another element, perhaps just as important as the jangling guitars, is the vocals of Michael Stipe. Technically speaking, Stipe isn't among the strongest singers around, but his almost murmured vocal efforts compliment the other musicians rather well. Similarly to the guitars, the drumming and bass work are both rather simple as they serve to add both rhythm and extra depth to the music. The result, of course, is a quite interesting. R.E.M. maintains a tight performance throughout each of the tracks, and the band manages to connect each moment together superbly. The album varies between fast paced, catchy tracks such as Talk About the Passion and Radio Free Europe as well as slower, more emotional offerings such as Perfect Circle without disrupting the flow of the album....full text |
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| Popmatters |
| In 1983, punk was D-E-A-D, desiccated and spread across the radio waves as New Wave. The underground had gone below ground, but there were inklings of a new scene coalescing around college radio stations and newspapers all across the country, not limited to regional acts or styles. There wasn’t really a word for what we now call “alternative”, or “indie”—maybe “college”. Punk had been angry and political, diametrically opposed to the mainstream of corporate music culture. When the embers finally died the ashes blew into the atmosphere and circulated the globe: if many of the groups who picked up the banner of punk were not as angry nor as violent, they were still dedicated to the idea of creating an opposition to corporate rock culture....full text |
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