REMtrospective, 8: Green
August 29th, 2008 by Curt Holman in Listening Stack
Title: Orange Green
Released on: Nov. 7, 1988
Favorite tracks: “Turn You Inside-Out,” “Orange Crush,” “You Are the Everything”
I really enjoy REM’s first album for Warner Bros., Orange Green. Given that it features the hit song “Orange Crush” and has that distinctive orange-colored album cover, Orange Green is just the perfect name for the album. I think that whenever I hear the songs, I think of the color orange, and when I see that shade of orange elsewhere, I think of that name, Orange Green.
Then again, a friend of mine passed along a rumor that they called it Green in honor of the payday they received from signing with Warner Brothers. I’m not sure I believe it, but it has a logic.
Green continues along the spectrum away from the obscure, murmury sound of the early albums, towards greater clarity and articulate lyrics. The simplicity of the Green sound really strikes me when I listen today. Songs like “Stand,” “Get Up” and “Pop Song 89” obviously have a bouncy pop sensibility — in some ways, they dare to be dumb. (”Stand” was even the title song of Chris Elliott’s slacker sitcom, “Get a Life.”) Many of them take a straightforward melodic idea, give it a simple, surprising adornment (the wah-wah guitar of “Stand,” the piano of “World Leader Pretend,” the cricket sounds of “You Are the Everything”), and then lay it out with lots of energy but little fuss.
Probably the most conspicuous sonic addition is Peter Buck’s mandolin. Somehow, I don’t see that as being something that the record label crammed down their throat. (“I’ve got a fever and the only cure… is more mandolin!”) The mandolin appears in “You Are the Everything,” “The Wrong Child” and “Hairshirt” and feels almost like an instant fixture in their music. Maybe Buck’s previous guitar work was always “mandolin-like.” When I think of the plucky mandolin sound, and the “prickly” verbal imagery of “Hairshirt,” I associate Green’s music with having a fuzzy, bristly quality.
I read this on Wikipedia: “The members of R.E.M. consciously changed their usual recording practices in order to avoid falling into the trap of putting out the same album year after year. Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Mike Mills learned each other’s instruments and frequently switched roles during the recording. Michael Stipe also partook in the new songwriting process. Instead of writing lyrics to go with completed songs as he had done on previous albums, he began writing the lyrics during or before the songwriting.”
I would have guessed that about Stipe’s songwriting simply from listening to it. For good or ill (mostly good), Stipe’s introspective, poetic lyrics really came to the fore with Green. The liner notes even including all the words to “World Leader Pretend,” which was unheard of for the band at the time, like seeing the first translation of a lost language, or something like that. I rather like “World Leader Pretend” – it’s subject to any number of interpretations, but I read it as a song about isolation, like Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” without the self-pity.
Boy, do I hate “The Wrong Child,” though. I find it shamelessly sappy, and the way Stipe’s voice breaks on the big lines in the song: “I’ll try to make a happy game… to plaaaAAAaaaAAAaaayyy!” Thanks, Alfalfa. There’s a faux-naif streak in some of Stipe’s lyrics that comes up in future albums, and it’s my least favorite aspect of REM.
Green is mostly just fun, though. I like the way “Pop Song 89” goofs on the opening of The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You.” I particularly enjoy rediscovering “Turn You Inside-Out” with its blend of psychedelia and arena-rock sound. (And starts very much like a quieter, draggier “Finest Worksong.”) Those crickets and the night-time imagery of “You Are the Everything” really captures the feeling of a night in Georgia, to me. (Plus, its one of the childhood epiphany songs I like, along with “Belong”). “I Remember California” sounds not unlike the tracks of Fables of the Reconstruction.
I do think that the Green sound isn’t as intricate as on the other albums, and while there’s nothing wrong with it – it’s a good album – it doesn’t satisfy me as much as REM’s others. Maybe the trading-off-instrument thing made them a little less daring, and maybe they wanted to defer more to the lyrics, after years of the lyrics deferring to the instruments and melodies. In some ways, I think Green’s ideas were really brought to fruition with Out of Time.
Early listening conditions: Appropriately enough, I bought Green at an Athens, Ga., music store, and shortly thereafter made a tape of it and Document. It’s almost 20 years old, but it’s the one I’ve been listening to.
Click here for Document
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