R.E.M.
Automatic For The People

After the success of "Out of Time" (as of today, 16 million copies sold), which made them international stars, REM, after some show-cases around Europe, returned to the studio to compose the new album.

Publishing it just a year later shows clearly the reason why it was done: to ride the wave of success from 1991.

What is surprising is the fact that, while the sequels to great successes are usually inferior to the original, this sequel is one of the greatest masterpieces of "Sophisticated Pop," a jewel that artfully mixes folk, folk-rock, and classical music, and which, due to the depth of its lyrics, can certainly be compared to "Synchronicity," surpassing the Police's masterpiece in terms of emotion, thanks to a Michael Stipe so obsessed with pain and death (despite his young age), that he echoes this obsession in his voice, in a way so sincere it leaves the listener breathless, as never before and never after, especially in the two greatest achievements of the album: "Drive" and "Everybody Hurts," two true miracles of compositional minimalism, two lessons on how to write a masterpiece with a single musical idea.

Almost at the same level of enchantment are "Nightswimming" (Mills' pianistic masterpiece), and "Find the River" (apparently a simple acoustic-piano ballad with three stanzas and three predictable choruses, yet astounding with every listen, with Stipe's plaintive voice joining Mills' truly stunning counter-melodies).

"Try not to Breathe" (vibrant folk-rock), "Star Me Kitten" (excellent slow electric), "Man of the Moon" (dedicated to comedian Andy Kaufman), "Monty Got a Raw Deal" (dedicated to actor Montgomery Clift) and "Sweetness Follows" are the gems that join the four above-mentioned masterpieces.

"Ignoreland" (the only rock track (although very soft) and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" (with the too broad vocal line) slightly break the album's atmosphere of mournful reflectiveness and serene (musical) peace, and constitute frankly avoidable episodes of the record, which with just the previous 9 songs would have constituted a superb synthesis of the "melancholic ballad" genre.