REMtrospective 4: Fables of the Reconstruction
May 9th, 2008 by Curt Holman in Listening Stack
Title: Fables of the Reconstruction
Released on: June 10, 1985
Favorite tracks: “Feeling Gravitys Pull,†“Old Man Kensey,†“Can’t Get There From Hereâ€
Supposedly Fables of the Reconstruction (or would that be Reconstruction of the Fables?) is about the American South. The term “Reconstruction†harks back to Dixie following the Civil War, and there are little references to Southern geography in the songs. Rumor has it that “Maps and Legends†is allegedly dedicated to outsider artist Howard Finster of Summerville, Ga., who did the Reckoning cover. Stipe’s lyrics always pepper in bits of Southern vernacular, although I’m not sure that “Can’t Get There From Here†counts as a “Southern†expression. The song does refer to Philomath, Georgia, though. And the soft banjo in the album-closing “Wendell Gee†delicately evokes bluegrass.
I have a hard time interpreting Fables as some kind of alt-rock equivalent to a William Faulkner novel, though. (“Swan Swan H†on R.E.M.’s subsequent album, Lifes Rich Pageant, does have more of a Southern “literary†theme, however.) To me, its “Southern†mostly in the ways that Chronic Town feels Southern, and generally seems like a continuation of some of Chronic Town’s ideas. Someone could probably make a case that R.E.M., who helped turn Athens, Ga., into an alt-rock mecca, influenced Southern rock and roll more than Southern music influenced it.
Many of the songs have that “night flight†sensation of urgent motion that I detect in Chronic Town. Fables has two “train songs,†“Driver 8†and “Auctioneer (Another Engine),†which to me sound like elaborations of lyrical and musical notions from “Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars).†(Do trains count as exclusively “Southern?†I would not assume so.) I can imagine the songs on Fables shaped not by conscious meditations about the South, but about the experience of touring around the South (and elsewhere), watching the scenery passing by. On long car-trips I can feel both energized by driving and hypnotized by the road; “energetic hypnotism†could be an R.E.M. effect.
My favorite song on Fables — and one of my all-time favorite R.E.M. songs – is the album-opener, “Feeling Gravitys Pull†(creating a precedent for awesome album openers that, for me, continued through 1991). It starts with Peter Buck’s piercing, eerie guitar licks — DEE-Di-DOOO — and then lurches into slow, powerful drumbeats. Supposedly it’s about falling asleep while reading, and I get that from the first lines, but it’s also apocalyptic: “Peel back the mountains, peel back the sky,†“Oceans fall and mountains drift.†If you start listening to Fables expecting more “Pretty Persuasion,†“Feeling Gravitys Pull†could put you off. Apparently the guitar work is different (a “chromatic†style rather than Buck’s trademark “arpeggio†style). To me, it sounds like a great soundtrack for a a giant monster movie — the opening chords show a still body of water, with portentous ripples moving across it; the thudding rhythm section later accompanies a Cloverfield-like creature galumphing over a landscape. But maybe that’s just me.
I can see why people call the song and the album “murky,†but here it’s also a big sound, a tall sound — it anticipates the booming, roof-rattling songs of Document. When Fables came out, we talked about how we didn’t like it as much as the predecessors, and apparently the band members have mixed feelings about it. Our friend Clark said at the time that he thought of their other albums as being in black and white, and Fables as being in color. I don’t really know what that means, but it sounds good, and nods at details like the horn section and Stipe’s lower, growlier singing on “Can’t Get There From Here.â€
My rediscovery this time around is “Old Man Kensey,†which I think I just found weird 20 years ago, but now I find deliciously weird. The slow, snaky, insistent beat draws me in, and Stipe’s vaguely threatening delivery adds an edge to the deranged words: “Old Man Kensey wants to be a sign painter / First he’s got to learn to read / He’s gonna be a clown on TV.†It’s the kind of song that initially sounds like a character study of an eccentric, but may be more of an exercise in surrealism, along the lines of “Come Together.â€
Early listening conditions: Fables may not have been the first R.E.M. album I ever bought, but it was definitely the first one I bought new. Fables also marked a kind of tradition among my music-reviewing friends: whenever they’d write about the latest REM album during this period, they’d inevitably say something like, “… and this time, you can almost understand every word Michael Stipe says!†I believe this ritual continued through every R.E.M. album through Green. I saw R.E.M. for the first time (on the Vanderbilt campus) when they were touring for Fables.
In the early 1980s, R.E.M. seemed to really HATE music videos and the very idea of them (I think they said as much when they introduced their first collection of music videos). The video for “Can’t Get There From Here†is pretty fun, though (and I wonder if it partially inspired the credits for Natural Born Killers?
For Reckoning, click here.
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