1992 - every streetlight a reminder

R.E.M., 'Nightswimming'

A haunting melancholy and loss wrapped around the keening vocal of masterful Michael Stipe. A longing piano line loop, its repetition a magical meditation, an otherworldly effort to bring back the good old days. Also I think they played it on Dawson’s Creek once.

‘Nightswimming’ is a four-minute flashing neon sign that says, you can’t go back. It’s what my best friend said to me when I recently asked if he fancied catching the local leg of a double-header rock reunion tour from 2002-ish. Not that we doubted it would’ve been a decent night; more that he somehow knew which part of me wanted to be there.

And again, not that I’d rather be any other version of me – I’m finally somewhat confident in my writing, I’ve got a nice job after a springtime career wobble, and I’ve got two beautiful people to come home to every day (or vice versa – I work from home). But in 2002 I was 17 and possessed of that innate confidence that I was the fucking man. Bottling that distinct flavour of confidence has forever been the marketing dream, so I’d be mad not to want to chug it down once in a while.

But before you reach for whatever hit of nostalgia you’ve got bottled in your fridge, here are these newly minted global megastars to play you an album about death, and loss, and loss, and yearning, and death. Automatic For The People is the sound of youth and innocence fading fast.

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You know that weird turn of phrase, or word of warning, about not “sleeping on” something or someone? It means, don’t overlook something.

I sleep on R.E.M. all the time. I sleep on a bed made out of R.E.M. Every night at bedtime, I plump my R.E.M. pillow and I drift off right on top of them. I simply forget about them, because unlike some other bands they’re not lodged in my algorithm or consistently played in pubs. They aren’t so intrinsically wrapped up in my story so far like some of these other songs on my Mixtape are. The band remains forever under my radar, forever outside my grasp when I’m trying to decide what album to stick on during a writing session or a nice autumnal walk.

I don’t even know how that’d be possible, considering the body of work. The late Eighties and near-entirety of the Nineties given over to single after successful single, supported by good-to-great albums each time. Of course in my experience it all started with ‘Losing My Religion’, the song which shot them to universal superstardom, but the all-important follow-up album to Out of Time is, for me, an all-round richer listening experience.

Automatic for the People is, well, it’s a depressing listen innit. Apart from ‘Sidewinder’, obviously, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s on a different album anyway; a jauntily sore thumb among the long faces that make up the rest of the tracks. Especially followed by ‘Everybody Hurts’ as it is. But once you’re close to the end of the album and you’ve gone through the different, saddening subjects – ruminations on mortality, terminal illness, and loneliness – you then get that bittersweet memory of skinny-dipping in the dark. Stipe has said ‘Nightswimming’ is about "kind of an innocence that's either kind of desperately clung onto or obviously lost," and it’s as mournful of youth as the other songs are of life itself – something to be treasured, and missed once gone.

Photo by Altınay Dinç on Unsplash

Mike Mills plays piano, Stipe searches his soul on vocals. There’s this belief that the repetition of something is the foundation of a magic spell. It’s possible the musicians are trying to conjure their way back to the past, with the simple, soothing piano lines. Then, the strings stick even more hypnotic hooks into you, and before you know it you’re lost in your own nostalgic shallows – wistful, and feeling that sad sense of happiness for what came before, and how it brought you here.

Even so, I’ll still sleep on R.E.M. It only really hit me when browsing through my the CD collection of my then-girlfriend, now-wife that I happened on one of their Greatest Hits compilations, and stood there listing off great song after great song. And ‘Nightswimming’ is on there last, it would seem – the best of The Best Of, left to the end to bring back their career full circle and remind you, you can’t go back. Unless it’s to one of those Nineties Throwback indie weekends I keep seeing them throw at Butlins in the off-season. Then you can.