Living in a small, isolated Nebraska town in the late 1980s meant getting access to underground music was not easy. I was basically limited to whatever they stocked at the Musicland at the local mall, or what was played on top 40 radio and MTV. At that time one band had bubbled up from the world of college radio to a high enough mainstream level that I could access: REM. I heard "The One I Love" on the radio and loved it. Peter Buck's jangling guitar and Michael Stipe's keening sounded like nothing I'd heard before.
Beyond the music, REM had a special appeal from me. They hailed from Athens, Georgia, and did not seem interested in being big time. They had emerged from a small town world and their music being off the beaten track felt like an affirmation for those of us living in the sticks. A friend had an REM t-shirt with an image of an old Athens warehouse on the front, and it looked like a scene straight out of my railroad town hometown. To me this seemingly innocuous image was a signifier of identity.
It was perfect then that REM's first collection of recording was called Chronic Town. Living in a small town means a lot of time for dreaming and contemplation, especially if you're a person who doesn't fit into the rigid social conventions of small town life. If there's one thing I miss about living in small towns it's that time slows down enough there for my mind to wander distant fields it never seems to visit nowadays. REM's early music grabbed me because it sounded like the inside of my mind on a darker than dark rural night while I laid in bed, seemingly in another world as the train horns whined in the distance.
The first song, "Wolves, Lower" lets the listener know that REM is taking us to that liminal space, from the title to the mumbled lyrics to the mysterious noises beneath the guitars. While it sounds much more postpunk than future REM music, this song is an apt introduction to the band. There's Peter Buck's aforementioned jangle on guitar, Mike Mills' melodic bass and background vocals, Michael Stipe's haunting and illegible voice, and Bill Berry's driving yet subtle drums. I still have no clue what it's about, and that's fine. Early REM music is impressionistic and abstract, like a Kandinsky painting. It hits you with sensations that your mind makes meaning out of in its own way. Rock music rarely does this, and when it did before this it would be at the hands of someone more self-consciously experimental like Brian Eno. REM were still doing this as a scruffy band of young men from a college town in the South.
The lyrics didn't get any easier to discern on "Gardening At Night," but the sitar added splashes of psychedelia that was an obvious influence on the band as much as punk rock. The first side of the EP closes out with "Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)," where the album's title comes from. REM's small town origins are most evident here in a song that evokes the rhythm of a freight train moving through a junction. I grew up in a town where two major railroads intersected, so it's something I know really well. The constant movement of trains was always a weird contrast to the quiet and empty streets of the town.
Side two of the EP starts with "1,000,000," which has a more anthemic sound that what had come on side one. The bounce of reigning new wave music is evident here as well. I think one reason for REM's success was how their sound drew from 60s psychedelia, post punk, and new wave without ever aping those styles and instead creating something original. The EP closes with "Stumble," which might be a song about growing up if I were impertinent enough to assign hard meanings to REM songs from this era. All in all it's a vital, original set of songs that still holds up extremely well today. It's hard to think of other groups so fully realized coming straight out of the gate.
While I bought up all of REM's back catalog of studio albums in the summer of 1991 after completely falling in love with the band post Out of Time, Chronic Town was the one exception, since it was so hard to find. (I also didn't know that the tracks were included on Dead Letter Office! Damn lack of internet!) I finally got to hear it two summers later when I was working in the corn fields in my summer job detasseling. Our foremen were all teachers earning extra income, and one of them, en elementary school gym teacher, learned I loved REM. He loaned me a cassette tape of the EP to listen to on my walkman as we worked. It turns out that this jock-y gym teacher fell in love with the band at the moment of their birth, and even saw them live in Omaha at a club show well before anyone knew who they were.
As we had to ride the bus to and from the fields to work I asked him about what that was like, but also just shared my REM opinions with him. It was rare to find one of my peers who shared my musical interests, so it was validating to see that an older person loved what I loved with the same level of devotion. As much as I love the music of REM, I can never separate it from those formative moments of developing my own interests and personality. I guess that's why I'm still listening to their music and bothering to write a lot about it over 25 years later.
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OUTTAKE/B-SIDE HIGHLIGHT: "Ages of You"
Evidently this song was replaced by "Wolves, Lower" at the behest of the record label. I've always liked it, even if it probably isn't up to the level of the album. The drum pattern at the start is very Joy Division.
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