R.E.M.
Fables of the Reconstruction (reissue)
(Capitol/EMI)
In this era of instant gratification, it’s strange to think that R.E.M. took more that a decade to develop into the group that would find global fame with the release of 1991’s breakthrough single ‘Losing My Religion’. The band have been revisiting their past of late, reissuing their early records to commemorate the 25th anniversaries of their respective release dates. First it was their wonderful debut 1983 Murmur, then its 1984 brassier follow-up Reckoning, and this month it’s the turn of 1985’s Fables of the Reconstruction to get the deluxe re-issue treatment.
Reissued with a bonus disc of demos, Fables... remains a strange and wonderful record. It wasn’t a commercial hit, but its sound arguably laid out a whacking great blueprint for a style that would be an unexpected success a decade or two later. You can hear obvious echoes of Fleet Foxes and Midlake here - the latter’s Van Occupanther could have walked straight of this album’s landscape - along with the likes of Iron & Wine and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.
The first flowering of the R.E.M. we know today probably happened with Fables...’ successor, Lifes Rich Pageant [sic] - for the band’s first three albums, Michael Stipe’s vocals were buried deep in the mixes, making it a constant battle to work out exactly what he was on about (especially as the lyrics weren’t included on the album sleeves). As such, this certainly isn’t a record that grabs you on first listen. It’s is a record that you need to listen to, not just hear - but every listening session reveals more of the album’s depths.
Even the title is ambiguous: along the spine of the album it’s Reconstruction of the Fables. Both titles tie in with the music on the record, and indeed, the combination of the two provides a neat summation of its subject matter. The Reconstruction referenced in the reverse title is the post-Civil War Reconstruction of the US south, the period from 1865-1877 when the secessionist states of the south were brought back into the union. Several of the folk tales on which Stipe draws for his lyrics date could well back to this era, although they’re definitely also “reconstructed” in the singer’s inimitable style.
Either way, the idea of storytelling is prominent throughout. Whereas R.E.M.’s first two albums were largely constructed in the first person, Fables... found Stipe investigating narrative styles. Several of its lyrics are built around strange characters, misfits and oddballs whose very existence is at odds with the world they inhabit, creations who seem to have walked straight out of folk tales – or, indeed, out of fables.
There’s ‘Life and How To Live It’, an early career highlight that discusses a disturbed resident of the band’s home town who apparently built a wall down the middle of his house, converting it into two separate areas that reflected the two sides of his personality. He moved from side to side over the years, all the while writing a book that he would eventually stash in a locked closet. The book was discovered after his death, and was called Life: How to Live. ‘Old Man Kensey’ - again, apparently based on a real character - portrays a man whose eccentricities leave him isolated and mocked, while ‘Wendell Gee’ takes the idea one step further, relating the tale of a man who disappears into a tree.
In keeping with the subject matter, the language Stipe uses is often archaic and idiosyncratic, evocative of a bygone era. Nothing is ever quite what it seems, though: ‘Green Grow the Rushes’, for instance, exhorts travellers to “Stay off that highway/Word is it’s not so safe”, conjuring images of unseen dangers lurking in the rural landscape, the “amber waves of grain”. On closer listening, however, it becomes clear that the danger is “the grasses that hide the greenback”, and that he’s not singing “the amber waves of grain” at all; it’s “the amber waves of gain”. Suddenly the song is wrenched back out of a forgotten deep south and into the self-centred surrounds of the Reagan years.
Musically, Fables... is a strange beast - it’s largely based around country-tinged melancholy, with Peter Buck’s Byrdsian 12-string Rickenbacker jangle the dominant influence, but there are moments like the atonal riff of ‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull’ and the incongruously rocking ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ to break things up. What really set this album apart from its predecessors, though, was the work of Fairport Convention producer Joe Boyd, who makes the album sound like it’s been recorded on a tape that’s been buried for several months. The murky production alienated plenty of fans at the time, but in retrospect, it’s a huge part of what lends this album its unique and enduring atmosphere.
The demos that come with the deluxe reissue don’t depart greatly from the album versions – if anything, their most interesting aspect is that they give an indication of how this album sounded before Boyd was brought on board: clearer, basically. Those who still have a problem with the production on Fables may well consider them an indication of what might have been - to me, the fact that the album’s depths are buried under so many layers is part of its appeal. The unreleased cut - ‘Throw Those Trolls Away’ - was clearly unreleased for a reason, and eventually became another song (Lifes Rich Pageant’s ‘I Believe’).
If your experience of R.E.M. extends no further than ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Losing My Religon’, then you might find yourself pleasantly surprised by their early work, and this is a fine place to start investigating. But whether you’re buying this album for the first time or you’re a completist, the extra tracks are gravy – and a fine reward for investing in what remains, 25 years later, perhaps the band’s most intriguing work.
Tom Hawking