Body Count

I consider Body Count to be one of the more mature unreleased songs to emerge from the band's very early days. Partly in that it's the first song they wrote with a topical subject matter (though it is a rather cringe-worthy attempt at a song about the Vietnam War!). Also, in the structure of the song which is quite ambitious for the band at the time. It is essentially two songs with fairly similar melodies joined together by a sonic splurge of feedback and freeform noise in the middle of the song.

But it was an early favourite of mine when I first got my hands on some early R.E.M. bootlegs and it stood out from other early songs. It's more of a hint at what R.E.M. would become than other songs like Baby I and Dangerous Times. R.E.M. would of course adopt a much more subtle, effective approach to topical songs in years to come, Body Count stands as a rather immature first attempt.

In terms of my approach to the song, I found the best quality version I could on YouTube and used this as a template. I'm aware there are versions out there without the second half of the song but I particularly wanted to feature the whole song. I improvised with the bass as I couldn't clearly work out what Mike was doing most the time. I added guitar overdubs during the second half of the song too.

Electron Blue

With Electron Blue I've done a full on cover of the live version of the song. The album version is far too "spacey" for my liking. And, since I was going for a more raw sound with this, I had some fun adding layers of experimental guitar noises and feedback. I actually use a kitchen knife on the guitar strings at one point to achieve the sound I'm after.

Electron Blue was one of those songs I wasn't keen on when I first bought Around The Sun but it has grown on me over the years and I now consider it to be one of the more successful of their genre-experiment songs.

Aftermath

Aftermath may well be the most boring song R.E.M. have ever wrote, with lyrics that fall into Stipe's "pep-talk" category and a video that the band should be ashamed of! Instrumentally, the drums are so uninspiring, it would be interesting to know what Bill Berry might have done differently to give the song more life, that's assuming Bill would have allowed the song to make it on to an album in the first place. Even Mike Mills can't come to the rescue this time with an interesting bass line.

I was as bored covering this as I am listening to it so I wanted to make it a bit more guitar-orientated than the piano/organ dirge on Around The Sun. I also brought in the mandolin, mainly just for the hell of it. The result isn't that bad, I think, considering what I was given to work with...

Boy In The Well

Another example of a song that is actually rather good but because it exists on an album surrounded by other slow-tempo ballads it comes across a bit bland and uninspiring. But, like a lot of songs on Around The Sun, Boy In The Well is rescued by the rich, emotion-laden quality of Stipe's voice.

As is often the case with my covers I aim to strike a balance between the album and live version. In this case, the live version is from the 2005 Dublin performance from the R.E.M. Live CD/DVD. The band have often commented that the songs from Around The Sun subsequently worked better live which is often true but there is a beauty about the album version that is lost when played live. 

In attempting to mix and match the best parts for my cover the most obvious thing is the electric guitar during the verses which is as per the live version. To my knowledge the band only played this song once acoustically and that was for the album recording. I've kept the strings and electric piano parts from the album version as they sound particularly nice in the intro and verses. I've gone for a more feedback-driven electric guitar sound for the choruses and middle 8 which, again, is based on the way they played the song live. Finally, I've added a mandolin to the choruses just to fill the sound out.

I Took Your Name

It was inevitable that I would cover this song while working on Crush With Eyeliner as it pretty much provides a musical template for I Took Your Name. 

I Took Your Name is a really easy, fun song to play. This probably explains why the band often chose it to open sets with – it's a handy warm-up song.

There isn't really much to add to this song other than to say that, despite its simplicity, I'm pleased with how my cover turned out and had real fun recording it.

Suspicion

It was listening to the studio demo of this song, on the Warner Brothers Rarities album that made me decide to cover this song. It's a little more guitar orientated and more of a "band performance" than the version that appears on Up.

But the strength of the song is in its mood and feel rather than in the music itself. The song plays out like a dream and it's the vibraphone and strings (and the heavy reverbing of these instruments) that help achieve this sleepy, semi-conscious feeling. So I found myself setting out to create a more stripped down version of the song but found myself adding the album embellishments back in as I went along.

The sound of the guitar solo is the closest approximation that I could get. For a while I wasn't convinced it was even a guitar playing this part but I guess it is, just heavily modulated and delayed. The performance of the song at The Bridge School Benefit is on YouTube and the song is played acoustically and it's quite interesting to watch Peter Buck play this solo on acoustic guitar with no effects.

This also marks the first use of my voice in a recording within this covers project! See if you can spot it!

Crush With Eyeliner

 

Monster gets mixed opinions. Some feel it's massively inferior to the two albums that preceded it, others find it an exciting change of direction. I kind of see both sides of the argument. Yes, musically it's not maintaining the dizzy heights of most of Automatic For The People but it would have been wrong for the band to create another acoustic, sombre record despite how much we would have all liked that.

Monster also sees R.E.M. becoming fashionable again and, for a while, it wasn't embarrassing as a teenager to admit to being an R.E.M. fan. Nirvana were always a bit too heavy for me but when R.E.M. went all grunge in 1994 it was certainly something I was going to take notice of. In actual fact, the term "grunge" has been wrongly associated with Monster, glam rock would have been a better description for their latest genre experiment.

Crush With Eyeliner marks the start of "the new material" as most will have already heard What's The Frequency Kenneth? on the radio by the time of the release of Monster. It also marks the introduction of the tremolo-effect guitar which was always going to be my biggest hurdle when taking on a cover of this song. It took me a while to work out that it was actually a tremolo and not delay or echo. For a while I was struggling with different echo settings but I knew it wasn't right. Then I stumbled across the "mono tremolo" setting which was a pretty close approximation of the sound on the album. The problem being I couldn't find the exact tremolo speed that would match the rhythm of the song. I do believe there is a type of tremolo that locks in to the tempo of the music. But not having access to this I had to settle for a faster tremolo which I don't think spoils it too much.

Star Me Kitten

Star Me Kitten is one of those great little forgotten R.E.M. songs that sounds nothing like anything else they've done. It features Stipe in, what I describe as, his "quiet menace" mode. It's a pre album track, a respite before the high-energy political rant of Ignoreland.

It was, and still is, my intention to reproduce the 10CC-I'm Not In Love-style voice effect for this song. I tried it with my voice and got the desired effect except that my self-loathing kicked in and I'd much rather leave it to my friend Rob who I know will sound a lot better. But to explain the process – I had to sing "aaah" in every note (and it's sharp/flat equivalent) and then load each recording on to the keys of a software instrument so I could effectively play back my voice like an instrument. I believe this is the effect Mike Mills used on the album version. You can see him working on this in the Rough Cut documentary shortly before they perform the song in soundcheck.

I didn't feel like there was a lot to do in my cover, which is a reason I've been reluctant to cover the song. In other words, to reproduce it note for note is no great feat of musicianship. But what it lacks in instrumentation it makes up for in mood and a lot of this I achieved by using a lot of reverb and light tremolo.

Make It All Okay

Here's a song I've never heard anyone say a good word about. The band have never mentioned it and, to my knowledge, have never played it live either. I'm aware lyrically it's rather bland, it doesn't push any boundaries musically and it's tempo is really really slow but I've always found it really pleasing to my ears.

The first time I heard Make It All Okay was a really poor quality recording of them practicing it in soundcheck on the 2003 tour. Straight away I really liked the chords and the sadness of the piano. I do like the album version but, and this is something I find myself saying a lot, was disappointed by the over-production and all the overdubs. My cover was an attempt at stripping it down a bit to how I originally heard the song.

One thing this song can claim is, in my opinion, the nicest closing chord of any R.E.M. song. When the piano and guitars play that F add 9 chord after Stipe sings "didn't you" the organs kick in and it's one of the loveliest ways in which they've ever ended a song.

Unfortunately thought it's emotion-laden, slow-tempo ballads like this that give R.E.M. a bad name. It's not really what they're about but it's a label that gets pinned on them a lot. If I wanted to play someone an album to say "see, R.E.M. are really cool" Around The Sun is the last thing I'd play them and yet I actually really enjoy listening to the album. It's like the band have created a guilty pleasure record just for their hardcore fans!

All The Way To Reno

My first exposure to this song was when they played it live on Later With Jools Holland in 2001 and I remember thinking this was the most exciting new R.E.M. song I'd heard since the mid 1990s. I loved the chorus, thinking it was really catchy and that the song could become a real big hit.

But when Reveal came out I was so disappointed to hear what they had done with the song. The guitars were kept to a real minimum, except for the chiming solo notes at the end of each verse and chorus which were actually the album version's main redeeming feature. The tempo was slowed down to a crawl depriving the song of its sense of urgency and making the chorus sappy rather than edgy. Finally, layers of overdubs, backwards loops and sound effects were added.

So why cover the song you may ask? Well, the band made a lot of production errors after they lost their quality control department – Mr Bill Berry. It doesn't mean the songs are poor, just that that they are treated wrong. My aim, as is often the case, is to provide an alternative studio take to what we ended up with on Reveal. I do backtrack though, there are elements of the album version which I've kept because I like them, such as the strings, the lead guitar parts and the occasional backwards guitar loop. In terms of tempo mine is a compromise between the live version and the album version though I wish I'd leaned more towards the tempo of the Jools Holland version which I like the most.

New Test Leper

Having fallen in love with the acoustic version of this song, which was issued as a B-side of the Bittersweet Me single, I recall being a bit disappointed with how different the album version was when it came out. But I can see why the band did it that way. I often prefer stripped down versions of songs, I was the same with The Lifting and Beat A Drum, but for New Test Leper to appear on New Adventures In Hi Fi in its acoustic format would have left the song feeling out of place on a mostly electric album. Plus, if the album version had never seen the light of day no one would ever have heard Mike Mills’s bass line! I often praise Mike Mills for his bass lines but often it’s not until you really start to study the songs that you learn how impressive some of the more subtle aspects of the songs are. The bass parts on this, in particular the verse, dance all over the place, it’s like he’s playing a different song to what Peter is playing on rhythm guitar. It was real fun to work out and to play.

Despite my love for the acoustic version, my cover is pretty much a direct reproduction of the album version, mainly because this made it more of an interesting project. I suppose the only outside influence is the way I treat the guitars is more inspired by the way they tended to play this live. On the album the electric guitar is really distorted and yet live it’s a lot more jangly.

Incidentally the chorus riff I play on guitar, even though I have my suspicions that it’s actually played on an organ. I may be wrong but I just don’t know how you’d get a guitar to sound like that.

Near Wild Heaven

If Near Wild Heaven is to be thrown in with Stand and Shiny Happy People as one of the band's bubblegum pop songs then it may be my favourite in the category, certainly at the moment. No song makes me smile when it comes on the radio more than Near Wild Heaven, it’s instantly recognised as an R.E.M. song with its double tracked Rickenbacker guitar riff that weaves in and around the beat in Peter Buck’s signature style and gorgeous Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies.

One of two Mike Mills solo vocals on Out Of Time. But where Texarkana is purely Mike Mills for the most part Near Wild Heaven is predominantly a duel vocal between Mills and Stipe. This I think helps rescue the vocal as, let’s be honest, one gets the impression Mike Mills isn’t a naturally gifted singer. I remember watching Mike sing a piano rendition of Don’t Go Back To Rockville on VH1 Storytellers and it really wasn’t great!

My incentive to cover the song was my love for the guitar riff and determination to learn it and play it just right. In covering the song I discovered the bass parts are really interesting too. I added an acoustic guitar doing the same as the electric just to bring out the definition of the notes.

Mr Richards

I remember being a bit disappointed when I first heard the album version of Mr Richards. It was always one of my favourites from the Dublin rehearsals but when it appeared on the album I felt it was a little too glossy and had lost its charm somewhat. I wasn't a fan of the treatment of Stipes vocals and felt some of the overdubs were unnecessary. So I guess my aim in covering the song was to create a studio version of what the song could have turned out like.

Houston

Houston's a strange song in that, if it were not on Accelerate it could have turned out to be a gentle, acoustic song – not unlike something you might hear on Out Of Time or Automatic For The People, with it's acoustic picking guitar style and a touch of mandolin in the chorus. But instead it's made in to something quite brash and rugged with its creepy organ sound, bellowing fog horn and distorted drums. I've not always been particularly taken by Jacknife Lee's production on Accelerate but on Houston I really like the sound he's achieved.

It took me quite a while to figure out it's in drop D tuning which I guess makes sense as so is the other acoustic song on Accelerate, Until The Day Is Done. 

I remember hearing the song at the Dublin rehearsals thinking that it could turn in to something quite nice when it's finished and then it appeared on Accelerate in much the same format running at just 2:05. On any other album it would have sounded unfinished but on Accelerate it works just fine.

Night Swim

I was quite surprised when I first learnt this was an outtake from Out Of Time as it sounds like something they might have done in the mid 1980s. I guess they rejected it for Out Of Time the same way they rejected Title for Green – that it sounded too much like themselves and therefore not fitting with the new direction they wanted to go in.

Night Swim is certainly nothing special, a minor-key, mid-tempo song, probably the type of song Peter Buck could write in his sleep. I guess Stipe wasn’t inspired by the music presented to him because, at the start of the second verse, he mutters something and doesn’t sing the rest of the song.

But I wouldn’t have covered it if I didn’t at least like it in some way. It’s a pleasant enough backing track with some nice R.E.M-esque chord changes and I like the way the middle 8 gathers momentum and urgency before calming down for the final verse. Vocally, I actually love the melody Stipe came up with for the verse even if the chorus is a bit of a non-starter.

Mystery To Me

Considering Lifes Rich Pageant is such a fresh, vital addition to R.E.M.’s discography you wouldn’t think so given the track list and the songs that were being demoed for the album. It’s almost as if ideas were few and far between in 1985/1986 hence their early ideas which were deemed unworthy back in 1982 were being re-considered this time round.

Mystery To Me, along with Wait, All The Right Friends, Just A Touch and Get On Their Way were the five pre-Chronic Town compositions demoed for Lifes Rich Pageant but only the last two made the album. 

I have nothing against Mystery For Me but I would have been more interested in hearing a 1986 demo of Body Count or Scheherezade.

Fireplace

I don't know whether it's purely nostalgia but I regard Document as an R.E.M. album quite like no other. The nostalgia element comes from the fact this was my first exposure to the music of R.E.M. at the age of 8, six years before I became a fan and made the connection between "that cassette my Dad used to play in the car" actually being by my newfound favourite band.

Songs like Fireplace through to Oddfellows Local 151 are, in my opinion, some of the best understated album tracks of their career. Songs full of menace and dirty electric guitar. Fireplace in particular is full of menace and I just love Stipe's voice.

Musically it's all power chords except for the middle 8 which re-appears at the end of the song during the long horn solo. The drums are powerful, as they are on a lot of Document, and the bass is lively too. The piano part helps add to the menace of the song, during the verse mostly echoing the melody that Stipe sings. For obvious reasons I haven't tried to reproduce the Horn parts neither have I attempted to substitute them for any other instrument.

Falls To Climb

It's a genuine coincidence that I chose a mandolin-based approach to this song and then discovered, just by searching for the song on YouTube, that the original demo the band did for the song was much the same as what I'd set out to do.

There's only a handful of songs on Up that I do like but this is one. I've always thought it's a beautifully simple song with a really great vocal from Stipe. I guess I just wanted to see what a more traditional approach to the song might sound like – Hairshirt – that's what it sounds like! With its similar chords and the mandolin/organ combination it does sound a lot like Hairshirt. Maybe this was the reason the band completely re-worked it, this and the fact the electronic version suits the sound of Up better.

Swan Swan H

After finishing a batch of acoustic mandolin songs I was looking for further ideas for songs with minimal percussion that would lend themselves to the mandolin. Swan Swan H seemed the perfect choice.

I've gone for a balance between the original Lifes Rich Pageant version and the Athens Demo version. I really like the urgency of the Athens Demo version but I hold back until the start of the 2nd verse before bringing in the marching band-style percussion.

Weirdly I had never attributed the lovely sound of the acoustic guitar in this song to being because it was played on a 12-string acoustic. I should have recognised the sound really, or at least spotted the 12 tuning pegs on Peter's guitar in the Athens GA/Inside-Out video! Sadly I had to settle for 6 strings despite attempts at emulating the 12 string sound. I don't think it's a problem once all the other instruments kick in.

Half A World Away

It wasn’t until I took this song on that I realised just how experimental it is. Musically it’s not that adventurous, just a series of minor chords, but they took a mediocre song and coloured it with instruments that were oustide of their comfort zone, like a harpsichord, violin and, to a lesser extent, the mandolin. 
It was also another obvious choice now that I’ve started playing mandolin. It’s a fairly basic mandolin part, no riffs just strumming along doing the same chords as the acoustic guitar. The bass part is basic too. But it’s the organs, harpsichord and, of course, Stipe’s vocals that make this song what it is.

And no, I don’t own a harpischord, violin or an organ! Sadly, these parts are software-generated, still created by me, just with my mouse not my bare hands...

Losing My Religion

I was never going to tackle this song as it is far too mainstream and well known but getting the mandolin meant it would be crazy to pass this up. At first I was going to just do a stripped down version of the song, even more stripped down than their unplugged version – literally just guitar and mandolin but in the end I decided to just go for it.
Though I wouldn’t say the mandolin part to Losing My Religion is particularly complex, it is certainly a lot more advanced and distinctive than some previous songs, Peter Buck’s mandolin skills have come a long way since You Are The Everything, for example. But it’s not just the mandolin that is firing on all cylinders in this song, Mike Mills’s bass part is also very distinctive and really fun to play.

This was never going to be one of my best covers as it’s a song that is universally known and so mine will always fall short. But you can’t expect me to get a mandolin and then not cover this song!

Mandolin Strum

This is actually one of my favourite unreleased instrumentals in that it is just so R.E.M! It must be something about the chord changes, the tempo or the use of mandolin and organ combined. 
I suppose the band considered it to be too R.E.M. and discarded it as they moved forward towards Automatic For The People. Or maybe Stipe just had trouble finding a vocal melody for it.
Instrumentally it’s all about the mandolin and acoustic guitar. There is no percussion, very limited use of bass guitar. I believe there are two mandolins playing in the verse although I just play the one part, plus I wanted to keep the verse shorter and the second mandolin was just an attempt at adding variation to the verse.
It took me quite some time to figure out the mandolin part to this song, it’s on par with Losing My Religion in terms of complexity and actually shares the first two notes with that song. The verse is basically just a riff around the A minor chord.

I think it’s become a bit of a stigma that R.E.M. write sad songs consisting of minor-chord changes. I think I recall Peter Buck saying the same thing at some point. On that basis this song has to be the pinacle of that observation as it’s full of them!

You Are The Everything

An obvious choice now that I have a mandolin. Aside from the riff at the end of the chorus (which is a little tricky for a beginner) this is a really easy song to play on mandolin, just four chords.
Not meaning to speak badly of Mr Buck but in the process of covering this song I’ve come to the opinion that this is a real “Ive just bought a mandolin and this is the first song I’ve written on it” type of song. It really is so sparse, but really quite beautiful. It has a lively bass part that doesn’t really follow the chords of the song at all, the mandolin and of course the accordian. The middle 8 features the only percussion in the entire song and some one finger piano work.