'Try Not To Breathe'

In my opinion, I believe this to be the best song that R.E.M. have written in their career. If 1992's Automatic For The People was their creative peak then Try Not To Breathe is a creative peak within a creative peak. There's an effortless charm about this song. These days the band would have to work hard and long to create a piece of music only 80% as memorable as this.

Try Not To Breathe is a chorus of organs weaving their way through the song guided by a lively bass line and accompanied by a rhythmic acoustic guitar played with some passion by Peter Buck. Musically it's quite complex, which probably explains why they never recreated this live except for on the Monster tour where it was played a few times as a rock song with electric guitars and none of the finer details of the album recording.

I'm aware I've stole the intro from the album version and looped it all the way through! But the rest is my own work. If a cover of a song like Second Guessing might fall together relatively quickly then this is the exact opposite. As a guitarist it took great determination to cover this one because the guitar alone just doesn't do the job, it's the organs and the bass that drive the song.