Gardening At Night

A more complex song to take on but one I felt necessary to cover as I do like the song and it's the band's self confessed "first song they were really pleased with". I say complex because of the bridge and all the psychedelic parts which give it a real dark, gothic sound. 

There are three main additions to the bridge which set this apart from being just another guitar, drums, bass arrangement. These are 1) A backwards guitar with a chorus effect applied to it. 2) A downward strum on the start of each chord which I have panned to the left and also applied a subtle chorus effect. 3) My favourite one, the little riff that sounds almost Indian in tone that I have played on acoustic guitar but would love to know what instrument was actually used on the Chronic Town version.

The other notable feature of this song is that it is played in drop D tuning which makes it sound extra jangly and makes those treble strings resonate and chime even more. It is one of three R.E.M. songs played in drop D tuning, the others being Kohoutek and Until The Day Is Done.

I've taken the extended intro from the way they used to play it live in the early 1980s, it would sometimes start off being played as a bit of a jam session reminiscent of Skank until the opening riff kicked in.

On a side note, I much prefer the Eponymous (harder vocal) version of this song to the softer vocal used on Chronic Town. I also like the way Stipe sang it live in the 1980s where he would kind of join the fragments of the verse rather than have clear breaks between lines - see the live version on the IRS extended release of Murmur.