Various Artists - Smash 11 (1992)

1) Erasure - S.O.S.; 2) Was (Not Was) - Shake Your Head; 3) Dr. Alban - It's My Life; 4) Shakespear's Sister - I Don't Care; 5) Elton John - The One; 6) Felix - Don't You Want Me; 7) Kim Wilde - Who Do You Think You Are?; 8) Chyp-Notic - Still in Love with You; 9) Take That - I Found Heaven; 10) U96 - Das Boot; 11) Ringo Starr - Weight of the World; 12) Indra - Misery; 13) Del Amitri - Always the Last to Know; 14) Glenn Frey - I've Got Mine; 15) Blue System - I Will Survive

One from the personal archives, a childhood favourite compilation from the years before the music nerd instincts truly kicked in. Erratic at places but some of this music is timelessly great.

Key tracks: Erasure - "S.O.S.", Was (Not Was) - "Shake Your Head", Indra - "Misery"

I grew up on V/A hit compilations before I started getting into music on a more artist-focused basis, and prior to the start of my own collection of more contemporary collections I would borrow my sister's old CDs that she had left lying around. I didn't really know anything about any of the artists or 90% of the songs on Smash 11 when I first heard it, but this was one of my most played albums when I was much, much younger.

I was also a lot more skip-happy as a child than I am now and in fact, the pre-pubescent version of myself has kindly marked the tracks officially decreed as worthy of listening in the liner notes with a ballpoint pen. There's not too many of them, and revisiting this collection a decades later it becomes clear why, i.e. because this is a rather random selection of songs. The bulk of the tracklist is very heavily based on early 1990s dance and pop - lots of classic looped beats, gorgeous house pianos, nascent eurodance synths - but then there's also a sappy Elton John MOR ballad? Del Amitri's cowboy rocking? Kim Wilde kicking it like it's still the 1980s (shocked to find out "Who Do You Think You Are" was in fact released in 1992)? Ringo freaking Starr!? Smash 11 takes a direction and then throws in wild curveballs when you least expect it. Even some of the songs more in line with the general theme stand out, with choices like U96's techno remix of the Das Boot theme (apparently a top 10 hit in Finland and a massive German smash?) or songs like Indra's "Misery" or Blue System's  "I Will Survive" (not the cover you'd expect) which I don't think ever were actual hits. This feels more like someone's personal mixtape rather than a various artists compilation of chart-toppers that I'd expect to see in store shelves, though for what it's worth I have no idea what the actual lineage or concept behind the Smash series is - the cover says "familiar from TV" but I've no idea what the program was?

Whatever the idea behind this was it's full of classics big and small, and I'm happy to say that the past version of myself already had a great taste because of each of those marked tracks are still top tier. "It's My Life" and "Baby Got Back" are of course iconic and evergreen, the former one of the finest anthems of eurodance and the latter a true refuge in audacity that wins over by embracing its own over-the-top horniness. Of the lesser known cuts, Shakespear's Sister's rollicking "I Don't Care" comes with that excellent early 90s rock energy and has a real unique flair to it with its ethereal high pitch vocal hooks, a bizarre spoken word interlude and some fantastically corny MIDI horns. The "Das Boot" techno remix is also a hoot - sometimes a way to make a famous film theme even better is to run it through a 1990s club filter and marvel at how perfectly the melody works within a dark, claustrophobic groove full of orchestral hits and robotic vocals. The most significant unearthing of the old favourites is Indra's "Misery", a song I had no recollection of but which reveals itself to be a stellar early 90s dance pop jam full of rad attitude and neon colour cool. It doesn't look like it was ever anything more than a minor regional hit, but it's one of those songs I wish would have a stronger legacy or a bigger name attached to it, because it's got such a good groove to it. As I said, I clearly already knew what's good when I was young.

There are two very big personal favourites though, right there at the start. Erasure's version of ABBA's "S.O.S." was the first version I heard of the song and to me it's the definitive one, with no disrespect to the original creators. The cold and dreamy synth pop production and Andy Bell's emotionally distant vocals work so flawlessly with that killer melody and the lyrical tone, to the extent that the warmth in the original version now sounds jarring to my ears. This is my "S.O.S.", and it's one of the finest synth pop songs of the 1990s. The "Walk the Dinosaur"-hitmaker Was (Not Was)' "Shake Your Head" on the other hand is a fever dream which I can't believe exists but I'm sure glad it does. Kim Basinger and Ozzy Osbourne trade non-sequiturs with increasing surreality, somehow escalating into "let's go to bed", under a near seven-minute dance production (thanks to the extended mix featured here) with an off-kilter vocal loop hook. It's mad but very specifically it's mad genius - it's one of the most off-kilter chart cuts of the 1990s through its star power alone. I already respect how off the rails it is, but it's just a killer in general, a gem of a pop song with the most infectious hooks in the entire collection.

Beyond the classic favourites, this is definitely a mixed bag but maybe not in the way you'd expect. This is a really solid collection of both classics and lesser known examples of early-mid 1990s pop/dance sound, if you are into that at all - which I absolutely am, even without the nostalgia filter - and e.g. the tracks in the middle from the likes of Felix, Chyp-Notic et all work excellently as part of that stylistic suite. It just also comes with a caveat because of its more awkward side tracts. Not all the non-dance cuts are by no means bad (I've already attested my love for "I Don't Care" and the Kim Wilde cut also slaps) but like all hits compilations it could do without anything close to a ballad (hi Elton), and the classic rock dinosaurs certainly don't have a place here (again, hi Elton here too). The album also starts running out of steam towards the final third when it starts pouring the MOR superstars from Ringo to Del Amitri to Glenn Frey's poor man's "Another Day in Paradise", with only Indra there in the middle to save the day and Blue System's euphoric "Go West" -esque "I Will Survive" closing the record off with a bang; though as a mea culpa I don't actually think they are bad tracks per se, I appreciate their warmly dated vibe to some extent, but they're in the wrong company. I also have this irrational aversion towards Take That that I've never been able to cure myself of, and so they still go on the skip pile. Some of the strays aside though, a good amount of this set is simply excellent pop music that time has gilded. I'm not going to say this random chart compilation is a lost classic, but it's a footnote in my own musical history and so it comes with a lot of personal weight. That said, the best rediscovery ever since I brought this album back in my collection is that solid gold jams are timeless regardless of any nostalgia.

Rating: 7/10

CMX - Aurinko (1992)

1) Pyhiinvaeltaja; 2) Härjät); 3) Aivosähköä; 4) Katariinanpyörä; 5) Todellisuuksien ylhäiset luokat; 6) Tähteinvälinen; 7) Manalainen; 8) Ainomieli; 9) Kaksi jokea; 10) Timanttirumpu; 11) Marian ilmestys; 12) Yö ei ole pimeä päivä

A lot of vigour and noise, but they're at the crossroads and uncertain where to go.

Key tracks: "Manalainen", "Ainomieli", "Marian ilmestys"

Aurinko was CMX's first album on a major label, and it has the overwhelming feeling of the band doing their darnest to convince their existing fans that they've not sold out. Or, at least that's how its downright stubborn attitude comes across for me. Its more energized moments are full of spit and brawn like the band's earliest recordings and its experimental side is drawn out to extremes to test the audience's patience, all in service of an uncompromising major label debut: a case of a band sticking it to temptations and label suggestions upon receipt of creative freedom for their big audience debut.

That's not necessarily good, or at least Aurinko is a surprisingly lackluster album after the interesting twists and turns the preceding Veljeskunta and its follow-up EP suggested. Aurinko tries to have its cake and eat it: it's absolutely a more self-assured record in its presentation than either of its predecessors and the band's vast range of influences is starting to creep through more clearly, but despite that Aurinko still sounds like a step backwards. It's a record that makes a lot of noise but wields it aimlessly, sounding feisty and raucous but trampling its song material underneath, and the first half makes it abundantly clear. Bar the calmer "Katariinanpyörä" which strums along with Veljeskunta-esque goth cool, the initial run of songs are more or less the same cranky rock gremlin repeated over and over again, barely distinguishing themselves from one another. There's an effort to sharpen the band's dynamic but the single-minded storming ahead is underwritten each time and despite their punk-meets-alternative volume, very few of these songs are any interesting or exciting at all. The only one that sticks with me is "Aivosähköä" because of its admittedly quite hilarious full stop in the middle of a chorus before a sudden breakdown occurs, but the rest is a series of copy/paste songs that sound desperate to prove CMX are still CMX, even under EMI. Problem is, it was more engaging the last time around.

Aurinko is an album with clear two distinct halves though and bar "Kaksi jokea" that's like a straggler epilogue to the first five songs, the second half is where CMX start branching out their ideas. It brings some life to the record and paves the way forward, but the issue is, I still don't think it makes for a particularly great set of songs. Many of the songs on the second half are either underbaked or they pick a shtick and stretch it until it's thin. That's we get the completely atonal and unbearable shaman drum jam "Timanttirumpu" (the worst of early CMX's many folklore drum circle bangers) and "Tähteinvälinen" which on paper sounds great - a beautiful interstellar declaration of love driven by organ and woodwind - but instead drones on and on, like it was threatening to be something too soft and just had to be dirtied up. The most interesting parts are the ones that clearly hint towards the next album, by way of the angry "Manalainen" that does what the first album tried to do but pulls it off and throws a surprising and impressively oppressing string section underneath itself, and the prog rock mood piece "Marian ilmestys" and its chopped off outro "Yö ei ole pimeä päivä" though you'd hear better versions of both songs in the near future. Unlike the first half of Aurinko the second half is actually memorable; they're still songs that all come with a 'but' attached to them when you describe them, but it's where CMX start brushing off the past and get ready for something unexpected and new, and that counts for something.

And then there's "Ainomieli", a genuinely excellent alternative radio pop gem, sitting in the middle of this mess. "Ainomieli" is the antithesis to everything else on Aurinko - self-composed, polished, welcoming and honestly a ton of fun - and that's why it's beaming with more confidence and boldness than anything else on the record. It's the exact kind of thing that CMX try to avoid for the rest of the album - it's the kind of radio-ready hit single that the band proactively reacted against by never making it one despite label pleads - but you can hear how much more focused and passionate they are about it compared to anything else around it. Its riotously jolly rapid fire chorus is one of CMX's key iconic moments and the rest of the song builds up around that centerpiece section with clarity and an understanding of melody which prior to this the band had often obscured under their raw approach. "Ainomieli" is a classic and singlehandedly rescues Aurinko: it's the song you want to return to, the song that keeps you going and the song that invites you to give a second chance to everything else around it.

I've given plenty of those second chances to Aurinko and over time it's warmed up to me slightly to the extent that I feel self-conscious when I'm harsh about it, but it is so obviously CMX in growing pains. If they had actually made an abrasive or difficult album to go with that ethos than fair play, but the cardinal sin of Aurinko is that for good parts of its duration it just isn't as interesting as the ruckus it tries to raise makes it out to be. It sees the band take cautious step back while building up the courage to take the leap forward, and I'd rather just listen to the truly wild early days or the confidently forward-thinking albums afterwards instead rather than the awkward in-between years.

Rating: 5/10

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)

1) Xtal; 2) Tha; 3) Pulsewidth; 4) Ageispolis; 5) i; 6) Green Calx; 7) Heliosphan; 8) We Are the Music Makers; 9) Schottkey 7th Path; 10) Ptolemy; 11) Hedphelym; 12) Delphium; 13) Actium

The humble beginnings of Aphex Twin, but with a blatantly melodic touch he'd later forego, and which makes it something special.

Key tracks: "Xtal", "Ageispolis", "Heliosphan"

Many artists try to conjure a mysterious aura around themselves but Richard D. James takes the cake. I'm of the type who loves reading about the things they listen to, be it Wikipedia articles or various interviews, so that I can understand the context around the music further. So, the Wikipedia entry for Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which is the very famous and highly influential debut from a man commonly cited as one of the key figures in electronic music, includes a caveat or a weasel word for nearly every statement about the album's history, to the extent that we don't even know for sure whether the date range of the title is factual to begin with given Richard would have been around 14 in 1985 (which, I mean, is possible but...). The title is about as blatant as Aphex Twin gets, and it's still a question mark. Not even the genre part of the title is accurate because this isn't ambient as you'd come to expect it. The atmospheric focus of the genre is fully and heavily present on SAW 85-92, but there's a kick and a backbone driving these songs forward, sometimes at surprisingly high speeds. Ambient techno would be a more accurate moniker, even if less catchy - the songs are soundscapes first and foremost, but they're ones that actively take the jump to life.

For an Aphex Twin record SAW 85-92 is pretty straightforward as well; no swerves or twists, largely just calm and collected compositions that stay where they started in. James hasn't yet started to experiment with structures and hyperactive beat programming, and so while the songs clock at an average 6-7 minutes for most parts, they often showcase all their ideas within the first minute or two and then stretch and subtly build on them across the remaining length. This is fine, because I am an inherently boring person and I find that some of James' later works, full of their wizardly programming magic and off-kilter twists, obscure the more melodic aspects of his craft which I appreciate the most. When it comes to instrumental electronic music in general, much of the magic is in the production and chosen sound elements for me, and the sound world of SAW 85-92 is the most gorgeous thing about it. The record is full of lovely, warm analog synth tones, blessed by time rather than coming across dated. There's a little bit of fuzz throughout in its audio that could just as well be an intentional stylistic choice as it could be a limitation of James' recording technology, but which makes its atmosphere even deeper; it sounds like it's underwater, somewhere distant from anything else. They're the kind of sounds that I find to instantly invoke a setting or a tone, guiding the listener down into particular atmospheric paths and worlds that the music begins to create. They're the sort of sounds I could sink into forever, which is exactly what ambient should conjure at its most ideal. 

Saying that, there's a hint of irony in that statement because the 74-minute SAW 85-92 is definitely too long for its own good and it creaks in places where James goes askew from the general scope. "Green Calx", for example, has a more abrasive, aggressive tone which sits a bit unwell with the rest of the class even if on its own right it's a fine song, and the migraine-pounder "Hedphelym" is one of the handful of songs where shaving off a few minutes would have actually done a world of good. But most of the album's running length feels absolutely essential, and the record's opening salvo especially is the kind of introduction that instantly makes you understand why the album holds the clout it has. The first four songs represent everything great about the album's sound: the shimmery synths and ethereal vocal samples of "Xtal", the sustained atmosphere of "Tha", the playful bounce of "Pulsewidth" and the lush shine of "Ageispolis", all marvellous pieces of dreamlike moods with a tight, melodic skeleton underneath. The bulk of the album from thereon offers variations on the same elements these songs are made out of, to varying degrees of success, but one stands out and steals the show: "Heliosphan" is by and far the fantastic peak of the album right in the middle, a perfect mixture of an urgent, sci-fi metropolitan drive with an intensely dreamy ambient touch taking it somewhere further into the galaxy. It's basically the album's recipe honed down to a T and then amplified on both the ambient and the techno ends, to produce something instantly immortal. It's one of my all-time electronic songs and to this day it gives me pleasant chills down the spine.

If not already obvious, I wouldn't call myself a general Aphex Twin fan and I am ready to admit I have a limited knowledge of the actual historic quality or context of SAW 85-92 (partially thanks to James' own obscuring of it). What the blank slate nature of the record and how I've experienced it (from semi-random shared mp3s to the physical release, which is the most bare-bones CD packaging I own) has done though is that the album experience has become all about the personal context I've built for it over the years. It's music that not just has the atmospheric zone-out qualities that ambient by nature possesses, but those additional melodic and rhythmic ideas throughout help latch it onto the world around it. So this album is about the university study sessions, the revelatory discovery of "Heliosphan", the late night trips it's soundtracked, all echoing in my head - all which I can recall more clearly than I can some of the track titles. The two Selected Ambient Works records are arguably the most single-mindedly focused Aphex Twin albums, which gives them a very distinct character among his works, and out of the two this one is where the melodic touch is more present. It makes it "accessible", I guess, if that's how you want to call it, but maybe moreso instantly welcoming. You know right from the invitingly comfortable synth waves of "Xtal" that you've landed on music that can really transport you elsewhere, and it's a journey for the ages from there, through the waves of sound that wash through.

Rating: 8/10

Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists (1992)

1) Slash 'n' Burn; 2) Nat West - Barclays - Midlands - Lloyds; 3) Born to End; 4) Motorcycle Emptiness; 5) You Love Us; 6) Love's Sweet Exile; 7) Little Baby Nothing; 8) Repeat (Stars and Stripes); 9) Tennessee; 10) Another Invented Disease; 11) Stay Beautiful; 12) So Dead; 13) Repeat (UK); 14) Spectators of Suicide; 15) Damn Dog; 16) Crucifix Kiss; 17) Methadone Pretty, 18) Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll

An over the top mess of eyeliner, spray paint and hard rock riffs. But what fun it is.

Key tracks: "Slash 'n' Burn", "Motorcycle Emptiness", "Stay Beautiful"

The goal was to sell sixteen million copies and then break up in a blaze of fire. The cover art was meant to be a photo of the infamous Piss Christ art exhibition and when that failed, the band wanted the packaging to be made out of sand paper so the record would destroy the albums you placed next to it on the shelf. Each song comes with its own quote in the liner notes, from Sylvia Plath to Chuck D, in a wild mix of reading list braggadocio. Manic Street Preachers were going to bring down everything you held dear and take their place as your object of worship whether you wanted to or not - the only love song they had written blatantly stated "you love us", and that wasn't a request.

In reality though, Manic Street Preachers were four young men from Wales with more guts than skill. The supposed rhythm guitarist couldn't even play his instrument, but it's okay because the lead guitarist had more skill than everyone else in the band combined - and the drummer didn't play on the album because he got so obsessed with getting the slickest possible drum sound that the final product is all MIDI programming. They intended their debut album to be too big to ignore, so it was intentionally stuffed to its brims to create something monolithic. Behind the self-built hype machine, you had four nobodies testing just how much bravado they could get away with while having a giggle antagonising every member of the press they came across.

Generation Terrorists certainly was an entrance to remember. Its mixture of 80s hard rock guitars, punk rock power and snappy pop hooks was already out of place and somewhat outdated by the early 90s, but the band had such belief in it you'd be forgiven for thinking they had come up with the sound all on their own. The lyrics are frequently more preoccupied with how many literal references and dictionary deep cuts could be crammed into them, syllable counts or coherency be damned, while the politics the band proudly held up and front were tailored into snappy, attention-grabbing pull quotes. It is, politely put, a mess of an album. But it's a beautiful mess, and the band openly embraced and identified with that very notion - "we're a mess of eyeliner and spray paint"; "we won't die of devotion / understand we can never belong"; "rock and roll is our epiphany / culture, alienation, boredom and despair". When they weren't holding up a finger at the world, they were proudly in love with their own disillusionment and lack of belonging.

There was a chance the band could have realised their lofty ambitions - there is a classic record's worth of material within Generation Terrorists. A lion's share of the credit goes to James Dean Bradfield: Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards may have been the face of the band and in charge of the high-level concepts and themes, but Bradfield carries them. He was a little ridiculous himself and fully in cahoots with Wire and Edwards' plans, but he had the most musical talent out of the lot. He was obviously wearing his Guns 'n' Roses fan club badge on his sleeve and frequently indulges in over-the-top shredding solos; culminating in "Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll", the wonderfully pompous closer of the already-pompous album, which is basically Bradfield showing off his guitar chops (both original and clear rip-offs) for several minutes and it's really hard not to love the sheer audacity of it. But he was already a strong frontman with vocal chops powerful enough to inject real passion and conviction into the shtick his band is pulling, and more importantly his actual songwriting is already well beyond his years here. The actual meat of Generation Terrorists is in riff-laden, glammed-up hair metal/punk rock hybrids and while ludicrous and over the top (thus perfectly befitting their image at the time), Bradfield hits a bullseye chorus after chorus, blasts a signature earworm riff for nearly every tune and has the perfect melodic vocal delivery to any of Wire and Edwards' shout-along lines. "Slash 'n' Burn", "You Love Us" (beefed up here compared to the quirkier early version with its singalong ending replaced by more solos), "Born to End", "Stay Beautiful", "Love's Sweet Exile", "Another Invented Disease", "Methadone Pretty"... that's a run of songs that could constitute for one band's hit singles collection on its own, and only some of those make up Manics'. But those strikes just keep on coming, and each one is a born and bred anthem of pure rock and roll power, performed with the zeal of furious young men wanting to rule the world.

Bradfield's talent also provides the band with the capability to stretch their wings beyond what you would expect, snd scattered throughout Generation Terrorists' running length are flashes of ideas beyond the initial scope. "Little Baby Nothing" continues the love affair with 80s cheese the album is generally characterised by but turns the direction towards honest rock power anthems, and it's utterly marvellous in it because somehow there's still actual sincerity in there: in particular its finale, with Bradfield and guest star Traci Lords (they couldn't get Kylie Minogue like they wanted so their next choice was... a porn star, in true early Manics fashion) raising their voices for their final lines as the fireworks go off behind them is the kind of genuine rock and roll dreams coming true that Meat Loaf could only yearn for. Moving further beyond the established ruleset, the early pre-album b-side "Spectators of Suicide" is transformed from a traditional rock slowburner into an atypically atmospheric dreamscape - there's a surprising ache to its ambience and after already a full album's worth of high intense energy, it's a needed break, even if it loses a little of the original version's gravitas. The undeniable standout is "Motorcycle Emptiness" in all its fame and glory, as stunning as it is baffling: sandwiched between these glammed-up rock takes is a majestic, carefully arranged skyscraper of an anthem that predicted the late 90s Britrock sound to a T, and which really reveals that there's so much more depth to this ramshackle group than the first glance would show. It's a song that could have appeared in any later Manics album and still sound incredible, with its career-defining signature riff and awe-inspiring middle eight, but because where it's placed it sounds even more phenomenal. It's a once in a lifetime kind of song for a band, and here they're just wheeling it out like it's an accidental fluke.

But then there's the rest, and Generation Terrorists' one genuine issue is the inarguable fact that in the process of wanting to make the album bigger, the band threw in a whole load of material that never had an actual place on the record. Some of it is literal, genuine filler that no one would have given a second thought to a minute after recording it: "Damn Dog" is a short cover of an obscure in-universe film song which screams throwaway in concept alone let alone execution, and the Stars and Stripes version of "Repeat" is an aimless remix that tries to inject some vaguely US-styled big-budget beats into a song that isn't particularly interesting even in its original, monarchy-cursing punk take (here labeled as "Repeat (UK)", another three-minute should-be cast-off). While Bradfield's knack for melody is enough to insert at least one memorable hook or another into even the weaker songs, it's still not enough to warrant the need to include the likes of "Tennessee", an early demo that maybe didn't need a reappearance, or "Crucifix Kiss" which is the winner of the album's most uninspired song award - and it really is just dull, in the kind of rare way where nothing of interest registers between going in from one ear and out the other.

The duds are lucky to be in such a good company because they are carried across the finish line by their stronger comrades, but they do slog things down and even when they grow on you, it's akin to developing a tolerance for them for the rest of the album's sake while suppressing the reflex to hit the skip button. Key part of that is the overwhelming charisma of the whole record. The band never genuinely believed they were making an all-time immortal record, but they are absolutely 100% in on their own game, which cuts through the album's silliness, bloat and poor production. The tunes are tailor-made for pogoing and air guitaring, the band's strong personality is constantly present and as clumsy as its lyrics often are, they are perfect soundbites to shout along to music like this. So while the filler is not forgiven, the album's too much fun for the weaker tracks to do too much damage, with only "Repeat (Stars and Stripes)" effectively pausing the album to a halt simply because of the jarring style change. The rest you can deal with, even if you give them a judging side-eye.

If that sounds like too much familiarity required to brush off the flaws then that's fine, because these days Generation Terrorists is largely a fans-only affair. It's hard to imagine someone new coming across this in this day and age and get excited about it, and it certainly doesn't offer anything for people who seek out more things akin to the band's big albums. But for the established fans, it's a way of hearing their favourites operating at the peak of their early day nonsense and that's a valid thing to get your kicks out of. There are great songs but there's also a sufficient amount of clunkiness that's jarring to anyone at first listen and it only becomes endearing once you get to grips with the band's history and the context behind the record, like jumping into a prequel without being familiar with the actual core of the franchise first. Once you find yourself beyond that border though, the album becomes a joyful relic of the past in a way that's clearly biased, but unashamedly so. Of any Manics album this is the one that's grown on me the most over the years because the biggest gap stylistically in their catalogue is between this and everything else and it took some time to adjust; but it while may not be the kind of immortalisation they sought out, the charm inherent in Generation Terrorists is still intact and working after all this time.

Rating: 8/10

R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (1992)

1) Drive; 2) Try Not to Breathe: 3) The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite: 4) Everybody Hurts; 5) New Orleans Instrumental No. 1; 6) Sweetness Follows; 7) Monty Got a Raw Deal; 8) Ignoreland; 9) Star Me Kitten; 10) Man on the Moon; 11) Nightswimming; 12) Find the River

The quintessential R.E.M. experience. Somber but not sad, grand but intimate, and a masterpiece of songwriting and arrangement.

Key tracks: "Drive", "Try Not to Breathe", "Man on the Moon"

The two albums preceding Automatic for the People - Green and Out of Time - saw R.E.M. broadening their scope and actively pushing their sound forward. One of the defining characteristics for those albums is their variance, full of stylistic experiments and the overall sound dominated by the band introducing new elements. They are classic albums in their own right, and a great deal of their quality is due to how fearlessly the band followed every instinct and idea they had. Automatic for the People, released roughly a year after Out of Time (made easier by the band’s decision not to tour in-between), is the logical conclusion: the new depth the band now had in their sound utilised for a cohesive collection of songs rather than every single separate idea.

R.E.M. cemented their legacy with the result.

One of the things I’ve harped on about on my R.E.M. reviews - and one I’ll probably continue to mention in my future ones - is how R.E.M. have always been masters of choosing the perfect opening song that lays out a statement for the album and signals its intentions right from the start. “Drive” once again does the same: the quiet acoustic base, the increasing dynamics that take the song from minor beginnings to something unpredictable and grand, and the orchestral touch which gives the song its grandeur are all elements that replicate throughout Automatic for the People in varying degrees. But the key thing is the mood: the heavy melancholy that follows the track around, from Stipe’s low drawl to the slow crawl of the music. R.E.M. haven’t been unfamiliar with a moody streak but “Drive” makes it its signature element. Automatic is an album that lets the atmospheric side of the band’s writing take the wheel, and focuses on setting a particular contemplative mood.

Don’t mistake that for sadness. Automatic is obsessed with mortality and loss, literal or metaphorical - death and fleeting time feature throughout the album’s imagery, and even when nothing is ticking away the characters in the songs are still obsessed with their own personal legacies and what will eventually be left behind. But the overall atmosphere is more elegiac than anything: finding the small moments of hope during the darkest times and celebrating life where you can. “Try Not to Breathe” is literally about the last thoughts of an old man dying but with Buck’s gorgeous guitar work and Mills and Berry’s heavenly harmonies, it sounds like a song of praise rather than a lament. Despite the somber tones of the record the band frequently let the songs soar away from the melancholy within.

In fact, I’d make a case for that Automatic for the People is ultimately a carefully joyous album, even if that joy is at times reflected through one kind of sadness or another. Take “Everybody Hurts”, the big break-out power ballad that’s become one of the de facto sad bastard songs in popular culture, but which is ultimately a shoulder to lean against and a helping hand to pick you up, more concerned in conquering the melancholy than dwelling in it. “Nightswimming” and “Find the River” are laced with nostalgia but it’s happy that these moments in life happened rather than being sad about them now having gone. This kind of uplifting melancholy is at the center of Automatic and makes it a wistful yet ultimately celebratory experience. This also helps it tie its various songs together and makes everything fit into the whole. The hyper-happy, stream-of-consciousness jangle pop of “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”, which riffs on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and is so upbeat that Stipe breaks into a giggle halfway through a line at one point, initially comes off like another style-shattering stand-out along the lines of “Stand” or “Shiny Happy People”, but finds a cohesive footing with the other songs through the warmth that beats even within the album’s darkest moments. Similarly “Man on the Moon” is the album’s great culmination point in this regard, picking up all the strands of nostalgia and loss and bundling them into a life-affirming anthem that’s close to a catharsis for everything before.

Automatic gets the grace it needs to balance all these emotional building blocks via the expansion of sound and increased detail of arrangement R.E.M. had worked on during the past couple of albums, forming an appropriate musical backing to match Stipe. The general, more acoustic-based approach hasn’t changed much from Out of Time and effectively pegs Automatic as the former’s sibling album, and similarly that core is used as a launchpad for an expanded palette. The intricate orchestral sections (arranged by former Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones) give the music wings, and in particular the moments when they suddenly appear during “Drive” and “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” are incredible flashes of brilliance that change the tone of the songs in an instant. The expanded instrumental section puts more weight than ever into Mills’ piano and keyboard playing, with several of the songs carried by Mills’ delicate playing, while Buck’s increased armory of string instruments keep his part of the sound varied throughout, flicking between styles from distorted guitars to gently plucked mandolin. Berry and Mills also go all-out with their harmonies, working together over multiple songs to counter Stipe’s drawl and their backing vocals become integral to the songs’ impact, be it call-and-answer or wordless melodies. The level of detail in the carefully arranged layers is stupendous and Automatic expects you to pay attention to it, hiding intricacies even in its quietest moments (the countdown in the beginning of “Drive” took me an embarrassing amount of years to hear). Automatic is honestly beautiful both on a technical level and in its arrangements, and the sound they have chosen for the album give it its vulnerable, intimate warmth. Even the instrumental interlude (“New Orleans Instrumental No. 1”) resonates, evoking that quiet solemn moment late at night when staring through the window into the sleeping world and everything is still in life for a while.

That even the most obvious filler cut among the tracklist can bring up an emotional reaction like that is to the band’s credit, and underlines why Automatic for the People is such a special album. It’s a stunningly beautiful album, sometimes tragic and sometimes uplifting, but always one that tugs for a reaction straight from the heart. The music has an inherent richness and warmth to it which make it emotionally charged, and while Stipe’s lyrics tell very specific stories for most of Automatic, there’s a quality to them and the words he uses which feel like they manage to condense something very integral to the entire human experience within some verses and choruses. And of course, the songs themselves and the writing. The layers of Automatic aren’t used just to place instruments together but to add up strong melodies and gorgeous musical moments together. The songwriting on Automatic is gold on its own, right down to its curveballs: the grunge-lite “Ignoreland” gives the album a fire in its belly just when it needed one, and “Star Me Kitten” is a genuine delight whether you take it on face value as a dreamy lullaby and find amusement on how its soothing surface is matched with one of Stipe’s unashamedly thirstiest lyrics. You don’t really even need the intricacies: strip these songs down to their acoustic core and they’d be touching as is. “Nightswimming” is just piano, strings and Stipe and yet it’s enormously powerful and the kind of thing that happy tears were made for, and the relatively straightforward mid-tempo alt rocker “Monty Got a Raw Deal” is arguably the album’s best kept secret, a parallel universe hit anthem dressed up in modest garbs, navigating somewhere between swaggering and mystical with a one-two punch chorus hooks with both Buck’s simple guitar melody and Mills’ backing vocals. It’s a set of incredible songs, and a blunt statement like that is probably the best way to put it across - arguably better than a lot of my usual waffling about.

These songs are so incredible in fact that Automatic is among my all-time favourites. Unlike many other albums in that small category, Automatic hasn’t become so because it tied itself to one particular part of my life and became an important channel of expression forevermore; instead, it’s a relationship that’s grown from the enchanted initial listens to this state where I find myself emotionally rejuvenated whenever the album has finished playing. Even without the personal bias Automatic is a stunning album, an example of a band at their prime in a remarkable creative spree, following their instincts flawlessly. It’s the kind of concentration of quality that every artist aspires to make and which takes select creative and contextual sparks in order to happen. Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe not only managed to strike those sparks but made them so strong the warmth from them is still there each listen. They managed to contain something essential about life into their album; through that, it’s integrally tied into mine.

Rating: 10/10