R.E.M.

A sober, introspective collection -- as if the kids who wrote "Perfect Circle" in 1983 decided to make an album full of songs just like that. Only now they're famous grown ups who can afford string sections and have actually watched friends die. Not every track is successful, but most are, and a few achieve a majesty unlike anything else the band has ever recorded.

R.E.M. has never made music more gorgeous than" "Nightswimming and "Find the River," the
ballads that close Automatic for the Peopleand sum up its twilit, soulful intensity. A swirl of
images natural and technological – midnight car rides and undertow, old photographs and
headlong tides – the songs grapple, through a unifying metaphor of "the recklessness of
water," with the interior world of memory, loss and yearning. This is the membe... More >