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Liner Notes
A weekly column by Tampa Tribune pop music critic Curtis Ross
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Published: November 20, 2008
Few albums have had the initial impact on me as did R.E.M.'s 1983 debut full-length, "Murmur." By the time the needle had reached the first chorus of "Radio Free Europe," I knew I was hearing music I had waited for most of my life.
I was a student at The University of Alabama. R.E.M. hailed from another Southern college town, Athens, Ga.
Their music was Southern in a way Southern Rock wasn't.
R.E.M. didn't sing about the South - not in an explicit, "The South's Gonna Do It Again," way, at least - but you could hear the South in every chime of Pete Buck's guitar, in the subtle but insistent rhythms of drummer Bill Berry and bassist Mike Mills, and in the murky vocals of Michael Stipe which revealed almost nothing but insinuated so very much.
I have no idea what Michael Stipe is singing, much less singing about, on most of "Murmur," but I understand it in a way I do very few other albums. And nothing I could ever learn about Stipe's literal meaning - assuming there are is any - would shake my belief in that understanding.
The music was humid, dense, the way it feels just before a summer storm, or warm and hazy like a spring afternoon when motion seems so unnecessary. It's got the rhythms, the inflections and the accents of the South embedded in every note.
"Murmur" is the sound - not the soundtrack, but for me the actual sound - of a pre-dawn hike through the woods to the banks of the river. It's sitting on a friend's porch watching the rain. It's walking everywhere because every place worth getting to is within walking distance. It's drinking draft beer at Egan's and having my last cigarette bummed as my night ends around 7 a.m.
A deluxe edition of "Murmur" will be released Tuesday. The original album has been remastered and there's also a bonus disc, a live set from 1983.
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