Getting past the unavoidable clichés surrounding R.E.M.’s seminal album Murmur is a treacherous path. Too many stale descriptions associated with the album undermine the ingenuity of the songs, the creativity of the band, and the near-invincibility of its lasting sound. R.E.M. are described appropriately as Southern gothic by many that have come before have established, Stipe’s lyrics are indeed cryptic, reflecting the album’s title, Buck’s guitar is jangly, and Mills and Berry redefine a traditional rhythm section. Besides personal anecdotes, what else can we say?

A lot, actually. The territory left unexplored is boundless and R.E.M.’s album deserves more than just a passing critical glance and author, critic, and musician J. Niimi offers a deep and worthwhile glimpse into the personalities, sounds, and theories that shaped one of the greatest albums of the past century.

Section one details the journey of R.E.M. in their respective southern locales: their beginnings in Athens, GA and their trek to Charlotte, NC to record Murmur with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter at Reflection Sound Studios. Thankfully, Niimi skims the early history that most music buffs already know and that countless articles have detailed. Instead, he recounts with explicit and intriguing detail the recording process for all the songs on the album. What sounds like a painfully dull 54 pages ends up deepening the album by providing context and insight into the recording techniques and tricks Dixon and Easter employed. Through Niimi’s excavation, we learn R.E.M. may have been the builders of Murmur’s sound but Dixon and Easter were the unseen architects, employing analog techniques that bands pay top dollar for today. Writing about the aural connotations of an album can be a bit awkward so for the best experience, I recommend repeated listening to the tracks after reading about them—otherwise, the book is somewhat useless without its most integral piece, the LP.

It’s the small forgotten explanations on Murmur that provide just enough of the puzzle to feel good about the surrounding image. Knowing that the thunderstorm sounds on “We Walk” is actually a recording of the band playing billiards and that Berry dropped a hi-hat beat in the first bars of “Catapult” shine just enough light over the cryptic muddle to let us know, “you’re not crazy, you really did just hear that.”

The second half of the book is devoted to an academic view of Murmur’s finer points including all elements from the lighting on the album cover to Stipe’s personal affection for a Walker Percy essay “Metaphor as Mistake” that directly influenced his garbled style. For those ready to accept their beloved pop music as much a part of art as say Picasso or Dalai (and why shouldn’t it be? Is it any different to see reproductions of Dalai for sale at the same mall where one might purchase Murmur?), Niimi’s dissection is convincing:
One immediately obvious fact about the cover of Murmur is that there are no band pictures on it…no creepy head shots like Hall and Oates or Phil Collins; no chintzy fantasy illustration like Journey or Rush…the Murmur cover is the exception to a decade defined by the aesthetic visions of graphic illustrator Patrick Nagel, the anal-retentive high-modernist architecture of Rich Meier, and the unstructured blazer fetishism of Michael Mann (the director of Miami Vice fame) (66)

Niimi goes on to reference James Dickey, Flannery O’Connor, John Hughes, and all other figures of post-60s culture without whom Murmur would not exist. If all the name dropping and academic theory seems too much to wade through, Niimi is quick to bring it back to the music and the effect the music has on us not just as listeners, but as humans involved in the creation of experience—because what is music without a listener? Ultimately, Niimi manages to accomplish in a slim 129 pages what all good critics should do: translate theories from the listener’s brain to the page, and deepen the bond between the listener and the music that engages them.

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