Album: A; Bonus CD: C+
R.E.M. has mastered the art of effortlessly mismatching itself from album to album, and even song to song, but the band didnât start doing so until its third album, 1985âs Fables Of The Reconstruction. âFeeling Gravitys Pullâ introduces the album with a sense of grandeur that nobody wouldâve heard even in the swells of Reckoningâs âTime After Timeâ or âCamera.â Peter Buckâs guitar hangs creepy and alone at first, and Michael Stipeâs lyrics evoke a near-arrogant moment of creative self-discovery: âTime and distance are out of place here.â And the Fables track list keeps turning the sonic map upside down and inside out. When the album jumps, for instance, from the minor bassline of âOld Man Kenseyâ to the hyper soul of âCanât Get There From Here,â a haze of suspicion remains over fun and supposedly Southern-gothic moments alike. Tracks that might otherwise have fit beautifully into R.E.M.âs first two albumsââGreen Grow The Rushes andâ âGood Advicesââtrade some of the bandâs early understatement for suspense.
That quality is a little harder to hear on the CD of demos (recorded in Athens, before R.E.M. went to England to record) that comes with Fablesâ 25th-anniversary reissue. The band performs âDriver 8â a notch or two below the brisk tempo that brought out the songâs gnawing anxiety on the final version. âMaps And Legendsâ comes off more as sloppy than mysterious or stately, and in general, the songwriting is already there, but the slyly disorienting execution isnât. The only real treats on the bonus disc peek ahead to 1986âs Lifes Rich Pageant. R.E.M. sounds much more in the mood for the sparky Pageant song âHyenaâ than for any of the darker Fables tracks, and âThrow Those Trolls Awayâ contains lyrics that wound up in Pageantâs âI Believe.â The rest feels uncertain and inhibited. This reissue does reveal how much R.E.M. ended up growing into these songs, not only as a band, but as a dramatic force. Fables could have been one shadowy, incongruous mess, but instead, R.E.M. pulled off one in a long trail of shadowy, incongruous masterpieces.