R.E.M.

Murmur (1983)

Produced by Mitch Easter and Don Dixon at a studio in Winston-Salem, Murmur established R.E.M.'s sonic identity with unusual completeness for a debut — Michael Stipe's deliberately obscured vocals over Peter Buck's chiming Rickenbacker guitar created a texture that sounded like no other American band then operating. 'Radio Free Europe' is the definitive statement; 'Talk About the Passion' and 'Perfect Circle' demonstrate the band's range between urgency and atmosphere. Murmur served as the bridge between punk energy and pop songcraft that American independent rock needed, with a precision that seemed effortless.

Sleeve notes

Murmur · 1983

R.E.M.'s 1983 debut Murmur arrived sounding like it had been made somewhere else: Athens, Georgia, which was itself somewhere else — a college town, southern but not southern-rock, full of people with eccentric record collections. Michael Stipe's vocals were buried in the mix and treated more as texture than as words; Peter Buck's guitar, jangly and melodic, drew on the Byrds and Big Star in equal measure; Mike Mills's bass was almost choral. The whole thing sounded like indie music before indie music was a genre.

The trajectory from Murmur to Automatic for the People (1992) is one of the great arcs in American rock: from obscurity to ubiquity without the essential qualities changing, only becoming more assured. Automatic for the People achieved the rare thing of being both critically acclaimed and genuinely popular — "Everybody Hurts" is a song that people use in real crises, which is not something you can manufacture. The post-Berry records were less essential, but the first twelve albums contain multitudes.