Out of Time

Though there is some debate about whether it is REM's best work, Out of Time is without doubt a classic.

Most people will have only heard of Losing My Religion, deservedly one of their biggest hits, but beyond that the songs that will stay with you just keep coming.

Happy songs are what the album is best known for and the jangling, uplifting pop of Near Wild Heaven, Texakarna and Half A World Away are melodic easy to listen to but with more depth than your average rock song.

The true quality of the album though is in the darker, more introverted songs. Low is a stripped down, rhythmic examination of the end of a relationship, looking back and climaxing in an emotive acceptance of moving on.

Country Feedback however, is my true favourite, an orchestrated ballad of missed opportunities, drenched in fatigue and a general feeling of being washed out and drained (You come to me with excuses/Ducked out in a row/You wear me out). The slow, simple guitar accompanied by strings fills the background while a wailing, almost atonal lead guitar melody weaves around the lyrics and sears its way into your brain.

You need this.

This was the first REM album I listened to and , although I have listened to all their subsequent albums and Document, Life's Rich Pageant and Green before it, it still remains the most pleasurable. Like most REM albums, it has multiple meanings but it has generally come to be regarded as their 'love' album. This effect is partly achieved by Kate Pierson's warm and lively presence on tracks like Shiny Happy People and Me in Honey. To me, this album sounds like a lost summer, the mandolins and baroque instrumentation mourning loss of love, loss of lots of things. Automatic for the People would wallow more blatantly in nostalgia on Man on the Moon and politics in Drive and Ignoreland and twisted the tunes even more than Country Feedback was threatening on OOT. Their ultimate twisted album to come was Monster, that picked up where Automatic's Star Me Kitten left off.
So Out of Time is a lot of things- KRS-One's funny, ironic rap that makes you think (Radio Song) a sunny surf/road album (Near Wild Heaven, Texarkana), a baroque meditation (Losing my religion, Endgame, Half the World Away), and something inbetween (Shiny Happy People). The likes of Low and Belong sound ancient and tribal, a perfect counter-evolution of the Beach Boy style harmonies. But there is nothing simple about the thought processes behind this album- it takes a lot of intelligence, a lot of avant-garde thinking, to sound this upbeat yet this sombre. Michael Stipe's warm, resonant voice is recorded in digital while the instruments are recorded by analogue. The cover art and inside sleeves are, Green to some extent aside, clear and attractive for a change. Natural images of plant-life and the ocean are juxtaposed with their treatment- rendered in artistic photography, cut up, their colour changed and reinstalled like the marble steps and peep show images displayed in the sleeve's cartoons. The album looks lovely, the sound is crystal clear and it resonates with that sense of being revolutionary yet innocent that fully emerged, blinking in the summer of the very early nineties, from the likes of The La's, The Stone Roses and, in their own, more directly destructive way, Nirvana. To any ordinary band, this would be, undisputedly, their finest moment, but REM, almost unique amongst the majority of bands, have always had the intelligence and staying power to evolve on their best ideas. A work of genius.

if you only buy one rem album,make it this one.never have a band broken free from the'college band'shackles produced an album encompassing so many styles.beautifull,jangly and melancholic are words that spring to mind.from the funky 'radio song' to the emotional and profoundly massive breakthrough anthem 'losing my religion' to the ironic pop of 'shiny happy people',stopping of at the beautiful 'me in honey' and the touching pop of'near wild heaven' and texarkana'.And what makes this so great is the varying of the vocals.guest appearances from the talented kate pierson and krs-1 and the majestic mike mills.buy it!now!