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.