What’s the frequency?
Extensive transmission from BBC archives catches early and lateperiod gravitas. By Victoria Segal. R.E.M. ★★★★ R.E.M. At The BBC CRAFT RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
THE YEARS between 1985 and 1991 were a fertile, febrile stage in R.E.M.’s career, a time of rapid evolution that saw them bloom at time-lapse speed. 1985’s Fables Of The Reconstruction was the kudzu-draped pinnacle of their Southern Gothic; Lifes Rich Pageant showed them letting the world in, handspinning bright, beautiful protest songs. Document turned their politics up along with their volume, while breakthrough Green showed them playing with the very concept of being in a band, flirting, however cautiously, with direct communication. Unfortunately, however, those are years that barely figure on this eight-disc collection of live and session tracks from the BBC archives. There are performances of songs from those records – although very few – but the most concrete evidence of that period is the accompanying DVD’s inclusion of 1989’s superb megaphone-wielding performance of Orange Crush on Top Of The Pops. As a result, it’s an oddly lop-sided compilation. The earliest material is from 1984: their Old Grey Whistle Test appearance on the DVD, Michael Stipe looking like a stained-glass angel in a tramp’s suit, singing his beloved Moon River; DJ Pete Drummond introduces “those boys from Athens, Georgia!” before the broadcast of their show at Nottingham’s Rock City on November 21, a performance that, through the hectic postpunk whirl, catches R.E.M.’s otherworldly light. To leap chronologically to the Into The Night Session from March 13, 1991, the day after Out Of Time’s release is a disorienting time-slip, like meeting a once-Bohemian old flame at a school reunion and finding they now out-earn the Prime Minister. What is present, however, is a wealth of material from 1995 onwards, a period that was, in its own way, rich in shifts and transitions. It encourages reappraisal of their post-Monster career, moments when it seemed it wasn’t always easy to find new ways of being R.E.M. They play with styles and pastiches; the clouds around the lyrics thin; they start to lighten up, write love songs and Elvis vamps. The July 1995 broadcast from Milton Keynes Bowl catches them at full glam throttle, even turning the once-magisterial storm of Drive into a horrid Radio Song-style groove. This – theatrical, unabashed, slightly arch – was the enduring mode that would see them through the Glastonbury 1999 show, too, or their glittereyeshadowed 1998 Later Special. It’s interesting to see what they value of their past at this point: “this is technically known as a crowd-pleaser,” says Stipe at Glastonbury before The One I Love. On the Around The Sun-promoting broadcast from St James Church in 2004, where Thom Yorke appears for E-Bow The Letter, they stray no further back than Losing My Religion (one of five versions here). Only on a 1998 Radio 1 session do they visit what Stipe calls, in DVD short Accelerating Backwards, “the stone age”, with Perfect Circle. Instead, they look to the new, clearly loving Up’s Walk Unafraid, The Apologist, Daysleeper – arguably few people’s favourite R.E.M. songs, but given a rightful chance to step centre-stage here. R.E.M. At The BBC is not a definitive history, but as a corrective to the idea that the post-Monster years were just R.E.M.’s long sweep into elder statesmanhood, it presents a fine alternative one.