R.E.M.’s Murmur (2005)

J. Niimi’s 33-1/3 entry departs in some interesting ways from the usual in this series. His track-by-track rundown is more abbreviated and his history of the band is a bit of a rush job. Murmur is R.E.M.’s first full-length album, though they had already hit by then with a first single in 1981 (“Radio Free Europe,” an alternative version of which kicks off Murmur) and followed it with an equally auspicious EP in 1982, Chronic Town. The album was thus eagerly anticipated and for many fulfilled all expectations. Niimi sprinkles in some personal details of buying it when he was a young teen and how much it meant to him. He bought the cassette tape from a store in greater Chicagoland. But he seems more interested in exploring the lyrical strategies of the album, the singer, and the band. Full disclosure, Murmur has always been mostly lost on me though I’ve come to make my peace with it. In this book, written around 2004, I wish Niimi would have written more about what followed for R.E.M., because what interests him most about the album—the (enduring) mystery of its indeterminacy—is something that changed across the band’s career. Niimi passes along, with a straight face, a story about how the title Murmur was chosen because someone in the band (I think it was singer Michael Stipe) read somewhere that it’s one of the easiest words in the English language to pronounce. Fair enough, and ha ha ha, but let’s also look at a dictionary definition: “a soft, indistinct sound made by a person” (Encyclopedia.com, emphasis mine). The indeterminacy of the lyrics is mostly what Niimi is focused on here. He’s read reasonably widely in semiotics and such and has the wit to pull in both David Johansen and Wire as influences on either side of Stipe in terms of lyrics. I’m generally dubious about the project of focusing on lyrics over anything else in rock music. Niimi has some balance and perspective, but the mystery of the lyrics remains his defining quest with Murmur. I more hear an interesting variation on Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September Song” or the Cocteau Twins, who came after R.E.M. All those syllables come across to me like blank slates on which to project. Nearly as often they sound like people who ran out of time or inclination to say anything distinctly. I like Murmur now, but it has never sounded or felt profound to me. If you feel another way about it then this book might be just what the doctor ordered.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.