Canter Bridge

Can it be 16 years since this brooding, sinister, insightful CD, opening memorably as it did with the softly sung lyrics to `Drive’?:

Smashed!
Cracked!
Bushwacked!
Tie another one to the rack.
Baby ….

Hey!
Kids!
Rock and roll!
Nobody tells you where to go!

What if I ride?
What if you walk?
What if you rock around the clock?
Tick … Tock … Tick … Tock …

The dark nature of the album finds deeper expression in the enigmatic (an adjective that seemingly always pops up when REM is in play) `Try Not to Breathe’. The haunting tune is graced with lyrics that make its title not an exhortation to someone else but rather a determined effort on behalf of the speaker himself:

I will try not to breathe.
This decision is mine. I have lived a full life
And these are the eyes that I want you to remember.

The song sets up to wonder about a theme that is primus inter pares in this album, that of death, its imminence, and the ability to choose its moment.

If `enigmatic’ is the right word, `The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight’ calls for it in all caps. Is the joke on the listener who looks for its inner logic, because there is none? Maybe. Good bands—and REM is a definitive good band—can get away with that kind of thing once or twice every second album or so. Lesser artists just look like posers. So one takes this track with a grand of sand because what follows is indisputably, memorably golden.

The precious ore in this album is concentrated in the mega-hit pondering called `Everybody hurts’. It would be difficult to exaggerate the enthralling comfort of this piece. Recalling at the outset Chicago’s unforgettable `Colour My World’, the song’s simple lyrics channel powerful consolation to the listener who hurts. Really hurts. In the hearing, he discovers a comfort that is more like shared grief than denied pain:

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,
When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on.
Don’t let yourself go, everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes …

Everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends.
Everybody hurts. Don’t throw your hand. Oh, no. Don’t throw your hand
If you feel like you’re alone, no, no, no, you are not alone.

The insistent refusal of the last line quoted achieves the a realistic rather than an evasive confrontation with the wish to end it all. It is truth so sheer it seems almost apostolic in its quintessence: you are not alone.

There are lesser gems. They own a penultimate ranking not because of inherent deficiency but because `Everybody Hurts’ is too damn good to brook much competition. Consider `Sweetness Follows’, an exquisite look backwards at the absurdity of family. The conclusion is memorable:

It’s these little things, they can pull you under.
Live your life filled with joy and thunder.
Yeah, yeah, we were altogether
Lost in our little lives.

Oh. Oh. Ah.

Oh, oh, but sweetness follows.
Oh, oh, but sweetness follows.

The band’s odd and persistent narrative Jones gets some satisfaction in `Monty got a raw deal’. Without a context, this narrative stream may prove impossible to navigate. Still, the sound is gorgeous.

Similar things can be said of `Nightswimming’ and `Find the River’.

‘Enigmatic’ goes a long way towards explaining R.E.M.’s deep and sturdy appeal. In their trajectory to date, this album was a milestone. It is still a remarkable musical moment these many years later.