R.E.M.
Around The Sun

They had ignored it, critiqued it, slammed it, torn it apart as if it were just any disc by the Guns N' Roses or Tokyo Hotel, yet somehow, even before buying it, I already knew that "Around The Sun" would be the most suitable choice for a first approach to R.E.M. (second considering the best of). My instinct suggested it, my perhaps unhealthy inclination to always and anyway go against the tide, the exact same inner voice that urged me to start exploring Judas Priest beginning with "Demolition" or even to buy "Tyr" blindly after the burning disappointment of "Paranoid."

Perhaps never before had an album given me such strange and immediately recognizable sensations as this ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE dated 2004. The first time I listened to it, from the first note of "Leaving New York" to the last of "Around The Sun" I felt like a cobra before the flute of the enchanter. I was simply Mesmerized. Hypnotized. Fascinated. In a trance but still awake...

"Around The Sun" consists of thirteen songs, thirteen ballads that succeed one another slowly and fluidly in a straight line. Thirteen gems of rare beauty in which uneasiness, sweetness, and disillusionment are mixed. Most of the guitars are acoustic, the percussion is reduced to the bare essentials, pianos and various keyboards often peek out, adding shadows, lights, and nuances to the sound fabric of the work, and through it all dominates the voice of Michael Stipe: a perfect voice, a voice sweet and expressive capable of fully conveying the enormous value and depth of its lyrics, very imaginative and visionary lyrics, lyrics that use sophisticated and somewhat quirky metaphors to describe anomalies and conflicts both internal and related to the restless and controversial America of the III millennium.

It's impossible not to be captivated by "Leaving New York": that nocturnal, almost dark atmosphere, then that chorus emerging with the force of a shiver, that almost liberating final crescendo. And then there’s "Electron Blue", that slow whirlpool of keyboards in which it's sweet to drown, that intimate text, and that voice that makes you daydream. There are sweet and poignant ballads like "Make It All Okay" and "I Wanted To Be Wrong", there is a carefree march (but not entirely), "Wanderlust" offering the listener a pleasant oasis of lighter pop in the engaged context of the album, there are the rarefied atmospheres of "High Speed Train" and "The Worst Joke Ever", there are restless and hypnotic songs like "Final Straw", characterized by Spanish-influenced guitars and the monumental "Boy In The Well", which to define as wonderful might be underestimating, a song that insidiously penetrates your veins never to leave, there is also the fascinating and indecipherable "The Outsiders", there are "Aftermath" and "The Ascent Of Man", which give goosebumps with every listen, whether it's the first or the fifty-second, and there is a title track that, with its message, filtering a ray of hope.

"Around The Sun" is all this and much more, it is an album that, while offering in its tracklist diamonds that shine with their own light (practically every single song is worth the full price of the disc) finds its strength and its magnetic charm in the exaltation of the collective and cohesion, like a 55-minute suite divided into thirteen parts. I bow and take my hat off to the ugliest and least inspired album by R.E.M., the lowest point in their career, a true misstep. But go chase the rats, as they say in my parts...

"And who am I? I'm just a guy. I've got a story like everyone"

"Drawing patterns with a cork on a tablecloth, promising volcanic change of plot, where does this leave us? I'm scared of the storm, the outsiders are gathering, a new day is born"

Tracklist and Videos