Word: stipe
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...best song of the album is "Nightswimming," the second-to-last. This magical effort--a gorgeous piano-and-cello-driven recollection of skinny-dipping with old high school friends--captures Automatic for the people's lost youth theme with passion and energy. Stipe's performance is poetic. His voice is innocent, soulful, beautiful; his lyrics are filled with gut-wrenching imagery of times long gone. And the vocals run along independent of the musical score, imparting a wonderful feeling of nightswimming--of youthful bliss...
Sorrow, yearning and longing are central themes on Automatic for the people. The album's last song, "Find the River," offers a dose of reserved optimism, with a hopeful piano and comforting guitar-strumming and lyrics. Stipe's last line is the happiest of them all: "All of this is coming your way." And he does send a lot out way in the most intense 49 minutes of music R.E.M. has ever recorded. Automatic for the people is not to be missed...
...first song, immediately signals this change in R.E.M.'s emphasis. The metallic guitar-picking of Chronic Town has been replaced with an intimate layered sound-Peter Buck's Brooding acoustic strumming, Mike Mills' subdued bass and ex-Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones' rich string arrangement. Singer Michael Stipe, meanwhile, provides a compelling vocal that aches for carefree younger years. This is definitely an older Stipe speaking. In Murmur's "Catapult" from 1983, he ponders childhood ("We were little boys/We were little girls... Did we miss anything?"). Now, ten years later, it's early adulthood he recalls ("Hey kids, rock...
...image of death is explored in "Try Not To Breathe," a song that flows like "Half a World Away" from Out of Time but carries a much sadder message. Stipe sings of a man who has lived a long life and is ready to die--a man whom Stipe himself resembles in a picture in the liner notes: The singer's lifeless eyes, embedded in a scarred, wrinkled face, peer from inside a hooded jacket. In "Breathe," the elderly man's "eyes are the eyes of the old"--the eyes of the hooded Stipe. "I will hold my breath," until...
...Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite," for example, is a happy upbeat piece about virtually, is happy upbeat piece about virtually nothing that has Stipe singing faster and higher than he's used to. He blazes through the chorus ("I won't even try to wake her up"), sings of "black-eyed peas, some Nescafe and ice," and chuckles through "reading from Dr. Seuss." Strings and Buck's guitar adorn the song nicely...