Disturbance At The Heron House

Along with Welcome To The Occupation this is one of my favourite songs on Document. I'd describe it as an intelligent rock song, a very mature song considering all of R.E.M. were only in their late twenties when they wrote this song.

It is relatively straightforward in terms of structure and even features a rare Peter Buck guitar solo. But it's the opening riff that I most admire about the song, on the album it sounds clean and polished, whereas live it takes on a mechanical, dirty sound. Though I haven't got the riff spot on I'm certainly playing it better than I would have done two years ago! It's a really difficult riff to play, there are a multitude of notes crammed into a very short space of time (I will encounter similar difficulties when I tackle Pretty Persuasion!) made to sound easy when played by Peter Buck.

The Lifting

I was talked into covering The Lifting by a friend who loves the song. Initially I said I wasn't even going to attempt to reproduce the rich (arguably over-produced) electronic textures of the album version. So he sent me a live version performed in Rio in 2001 and, at first, I wasn't over-keen on this either. So he set me the task of taking the best of both versions and merging them into one which I thought could sound embarassingly bad but ended up being something I'm quite proud of.

In listening to the song carefully I grew to appreciate it more and more and it's now one of my favourite songs on Reveal. I also really love the slowed down demo version (B-side of Imitation of Life) and could have gone down that route also. I do much prefer the chorus on the slower version but can see why it wouldn't have worked sped up.

On another note, I also prefer the demo version of Beat A Drum to the album version. It means more to me than the album version which, again, feels over-produced and strips the song of all it's intensity and emotion.

Driver 8

Driver 8 is the quintessential mid 1980's R.E.M. song full of railway imagery and homesickness. It's also a fairly straightforward song musically and, taking the obscurity of Fables into consideration, relatively mainstream.

They wrote the song I believe in 1984 and played it several times throughout the Reckoning Tour and, needless to say, it was a staple of their set during the Reconstruction tour but not played a great deal since. My cover is based on the Fables album version with the acoustic guitars quite prominent running alongside the jangly electric guitar and another of Mike Mills's driving bass lines. Sky blue bells ringing......