Stumble

Here's one for Halloween, no, not the scarily bad bass playing but the ghoulish sound effects during the song's Middle 8! I spent a long time looking for audio clips of "tortured screams" until it dawned on me that the eerie sound heard amongst the backwards guitars during the middle 8 is actually the sound of howling wind.

Stumble is a strange one, at 5 minutes and 41 seconds it's one of the longest songs R.E.M. have ever recorded, at a time in their career when everything was short, fast and straight to the point. But it's not long in a Pink Floyd/epic kind of way, more in a purposefully obscure way. It's more of a showcase for where R.E.M. were at in 1982. Interestingly it was never played live anywhere near as many times as the other songs on Chronic Town.

But despite not having the longevity of some of its neighbouring songs it's a great song nevertheless and I hope my cover goes part the way to doing it justice.