Just to recap: R. E. M. had spent a year rocking on the road to support their album Green. When it came time to think about a follow up release, they were burnt out on playing electric, and Out of Time came out a very acoustic flavored collection of songs. And then when they headed back in the studio to follow up that album, the intention was to create an album of full tilt electric guitar-dominated rock. But the songs they wrote with that in mind just didnt jell. And the group found themselves swapping instruments and creating songs in the same way as they had for Out of Time. In Marcus Grays band biography, It Crawled from the South, he recounts the recording process that brought Automatic for the People into the world. Rather than work together, the individual members of the band came in one or two at a time, and built up the finished song part by part. Peter recorded all his guitars first, then Mike his embellishments, Bill his extra percussion, and Michael his vocals. Automatic wasnt a real band record, Peter admitted in 1994. It was like a solo record for individuals. Nobody played on all the tracks. That was a hard record to focus on, said Bill that same year. The songs were these nebulous ideas that we just allowed to take shape as we were recording them. It had been decided to use strings again, but to limit full orchestration to four tracks. The prospect of interminable mixing sessions was almost certainly a factor, but R.E.M. were also loath to make another album quite so lush sounding as the last. Although they had enjoyed the experiment, they were not happy about being thought of as purveyors of laid back easy listening music. In fact, Peter was so concerned that the new songs might sound overly soft that he pressed for something edgy and unnerving to be included on almost all of them. A good example is the second track on album, Try Not to Breathe. As Peter had recently taken delivery of a custom-built electric dulcimer - it gives you more of a sitar feel - he played that on the track, and Mike contributed keyboards and a lot of background vocals. Peter still felt the result was too jolly for a song about death, so he added feedback at the bridge and other weird guitar tones and textures underneath to try and make it more unsettling. youtube/watch?v=_jpptsy2qbU
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:56:38 +0000
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