In R.E.M.'s hometown of Athens, Ga., there's a soul food diner called Weaver D's where every customer's order is met with a hearty "Automatic!" Hence the title of their eighth album, which arrives just eight months after the upbeat Out of Time won three Grammys. But titles can deceive, and fans of perky Time tunes like "Shiny Happy People" will be surprised by Automatic, a dark harkening back to mid-'80s R.E.M., when the brooding heroes of college radio cranked out stark underground hits like "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" and "Driver 8."
The mostly acoustic record is filled with dark, intimate songs. Baleful mandolins shiver across lush string arrangements by Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and cello work by Knox Chandler of Psychedelic Furs. Confronting mortality is the pervasive theme. In "Everybody Hurts," vocalist Michael Stipe succeeds at talking a friend out of suicide; "Try Not to Breathe" relates the fear of being forgotten by loved ones after one's death; only the title of "Sweetness Follows" suggests renewal following the grief of a death in the family.
Stipe's raw, haunting voice and the band's signature sound, a kind of new Southern gothic rock, possess an insistent energy that lifts the album out of despair. Recorded in Athens, Atlanta, New Orleans, Woodstock, N., Miami and Seattle, Automatic suggests a series of late-night confessional phone calls made to the listener by a lonely friend out on the road. With this strong, cerebral and deeply personal album, R.E.M. returns to the somber strengths that made them the new pooh-bahs of American alternative rock. (Warner Bros.)
Junior Reid
Reggae is awakening from what may, to nonfans, seem a long post-Marley slumber. Recently two Jamaican artists, Super Cat and Mad Cobra, released interesting rap-reggae hybrids that percolate the rapid vocal rhythms of Jamaican toasting—one of rap's precursors—through a tough street sensibility, complete (in the Cobra's case) with suave ballads and gentler dance rhythms than rap usually offers.
Compared with these albums, Reid's acute, emphatic Long Road is equally progressive and state-of-the-art electronic but more faithful to reggae's supple melodic traditions and Marleyan moral fire. Reid, who started recording in Jamaica in 1979 when he was 14, was already a noted performer when he joined Black Uhuru for three albums in the late '80s. With snakingly insistent songs like "Actions Speak Louder than Words," "Shantytown" and "Who Loves You," Reid has made a reggae album that is anything but a tropical cooler. (Cohiba)
Tamiya Lynn
Lynn, a New Orleans—bred singer known for her backup work with the Rolling Stones, the Neville Brothers and Dr. John, has stocked her first solo album in about two decades with rapturous, candlelight-and-red-wine examinations of romantic and spiritual love—songs in which the moon figures prominently.
The breezy blend of adult pop, jazz lite and Afro-Caribbean styles (Lynn wrote all the songs) inevitably brings to mind Sade, but Lynn doesn't display that performer's control. Though blessed with a full-throated, resonant voice, she rarely downshifts from emotional fifth gear. And the arrangements, marred by pallid synthesizers and overwrought electric guitars, don't help matters. But Lynn is a gifted singer, and her intensely personal, evocative songwriting would undoubtedly) fare better in a more sophisticated setting. (Liberty)
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
Don't be fooled by a band name and album title that suggest a disco revival. This British duo has delivered an unloving, unsexy and extremely intelligent third album. Band mates Jim Bob (Jim Morrison) and Fruitbat (Leslie Carter) garnish their synthrock songs with a dollop of cynical, sarcastic humor.
The titles and lyrics, which seem as lighthearted as the jumpy rhythms of the drum machines, usually hide dark double meanings. "Is Wrestling Fixed?" expresses disillusionment merely by posing rhetorical questions like the title. In "Do Re Me, So Far So Good" singer Jim Bob ridicules mind-numbing pop and compares himself to Shakespeare's avenging Macduff.
Jim Bob has the kind of clipped British accent that always sounds wicked and witty, particularly as he twists outworn homilies to new use. In "England," a forceful dig at his home turf, he sings, "Oh come all ye faithful, joyful, triumphant and pathetically weak."
Because of the popping arrangements, the songs never sink too far into depression. Jim Bob and Fruitbat, who share duties on guitars and synthesizers, make dramatic transitions from lush symphonic cadences to macho rock rhythms or spare vaudeville-style oompah heats. The final number, a rendition of "The Impossible Dream," pushes contradiction over the limit. As synthesizers churn out crashing percussion and majestic chords, Jim Bob screams, "This is my quest/ To follow that star!" Turning himself into a rock Don Quixote, he desperately tries to seize a moment of hope in a decade when idealism often seems like a joke. (Chrysalis)
- Contributors:
- Rob Spillman,
- Eric Levin,
- Michael Rubiner,
- Michael Small.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
