The Albums of R.E.M.

The Albums of R.E.M.

Awl pal Matthew Perpetua assesses the oeuvre of R.E.M. You will almost certainly disagree with the order in which he has arranged the albums, but I suppose that’s the point of these things. As someone who remembers a spring of many years ago where it seemed to rain every day — back when a persistent bout of bad weather was something seen as temporarily dispiriting rather than the inevitable result of our attack on the planet — I will never rank anything more highly than Murmur, which I had on both sides of a cassette that remained in the deck on auto-reverse until summer finally burned through, but I guess everyone’s got their own number one.