Canter Bridge

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The very first chords of ‘Leaving New York’ assure us that Around the Sun will be classic R.E.M.

Not to mention the lyrics. As before, here is R.E.M. chronicling loneliness, leaving, being left, getting left behind:

you might have laughed if I told you
you might have hidden a frown
you might have succeeded in changing me
I might have been turned around

But of course the story line will not tolerate sudden changes, imposed reformation, reconciled lovers. It is about things that were, things that could have been, love and satisfaction overcome by life’s enduring entropy:

it’s easier to leave
than to be left behind
leaving was never my proud
leaving new york. never easy.
I saw the light fading out

That, after all, is what lights do. Fade. Flicker. Gone. But never forgotten.

R.E.M. is about remembering, their lyrics a complex narrative of loves lost but somehow present in the angst-ridden act of recalling things that simply couldn’t last. Didn’t last. Can’t last.

There is an almost existential embracing of this fragmentation that permeates the DNA of human experience. Loss, we are asked to suppose, without fear. ‘The Outsiders’:

A man walks away. when every muscle says to stay.
how many yesterdays? they each weigh heavy.
who says what changes may come. who says what we call home.

Who indeed? There is only loss, hands that no longer even grasp onto what they understand must slip away.

A persistent element of R.E.M.’s genius across two decades of narrating loss and speaking of memory, remembering, memories is the failure to raise their voice. They regret, but they do not rage.

Though ‘Final Straw’ is as angry as its title suggests, Michael Stipe almost whispers his resolve. Whispers, doesn’t shout:

if hatred makes a play on me tomorrow
and forgiveness takes a back seat to revenge
there’s a hurt down deep that has not been corrected.
there’s a voice in me that says you will not win.

A steely, simmering morality interpenetrates this track. The songwriter will not be overcome by hatred, but he will insist on understanding why:

for this fear will not destroy me.
and the fears that have been shed
it’s knowing now where I am weakest
and the voice in my head. in my head

then I raise my voice up higher (reviewer: morally, but Stipe is still almost at a whisper)
and I look you in the eye
and I offer love with one condition.
with conviction, tell me why.
tell me why.
tell me why.
look me in the eye.
tell me why.

Even pandemic regret insists on understanding why. Perhaps that’s what it means to be human. Perhaps.

R.E.M. is at its best in Around the Sun—as throughout the band’s career—when a down-tempo balladesque tone allows them to tell the story of regret, always regret. Trauma too intelligently bent on understanding to become numb. The embrace of the freedom that comes from not raising one’s voice.

Rage cut off at the margins by decency, forgiveness, even regret.

the crime of good men who can’t wrestle with change,
or are too afraid to face this life’s misjudged unknowns
you’re not hurting anybody else’s chances,
but you’re disfiguring your own.

A morality of regret. Beautifully sung, questions poignantly put. Asked. Put again.

All the way around the sun.