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"&lt;p&gt;Yes, it&amp;apos;s a departure, but no, it&amp;apos;s not so radical a departure that it is unrecognizable as R.E.M. &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt; moves this unconventional band another step forward; a discernible connection to past records remains, but it is not constricting. The point is that R.E.M. has done it again: defied and fulfilled the conflicting expectation of a broad, mainstream audience and a smaller, more demanding &amp;#x2014; and possessive &amp;#x2014; cult. This may well be America&amp;apos;s best rock &amp;amp; roll band, as this magazine&amp;apos;s cover once proclaimed, but the group would probably wave off that honorific. Surely, however, R.E.M. is America&amp;apos;s most resourceful rock &amp;amp; roll band.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;R.E.M.&amp;apos;s greatest resource is its four members &amp;#x2014; not their musicianship, in technical terms, so much as the ideas and personalities that they express through their music &amp;#x2014; and they&amp;apos;ve remained unerringly true to their instincts. Such fidelity is difficult to maintain amid critical acclaim and climbing sales figures, which you&amp;apos;d expect might lead them self-consciously to break with or replicate a successful formula. But R.E.M., unpredictable and self-invented, has always operated more on intuition than formulas. This band does not carry a map, and not knowing what lies around the next curve is part of the fascination and fun of following R.E.M.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Musically, &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt; is R.E.M.&amp;apos;s most baroque album; it breaks out of the guitar-bass-drums-voice format to make room for everything from harpsichord and strings, on &amp;quot;Half a World Away,&amp;quot; to funky, Jimmy Smith-style organ and a cameo rap by KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions, on &amp;quot;Radio Song.&amp;quot; The songs are enriched, not cluttered, by these embellishments. Kate Pierson of the B-52&amp;apos;s sings on three numbers, shining on the roistering folk-country duet &amp;quot;Me in Honey,&amp;quot; and Peter Holsapple, the former dB&amp;apos;s leader who accompanied the band on its last tour, lends a hand here and there on guitar and bass.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;All of this indicates that R.E.M. is no longer a closed circle, and the outreach allows the group to broaden its scope without diluting its essential character. As on &lt;em&gt;Document&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Green&lt;/em&gt;, the band and Scott Litt share the production credit on &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt;, and despite the added flourishes the album is certainly not overproduced. There&amp;apos;s no superficial glazing, and the raw, unvarnished content of the songs cuts through. The strings convey emotion, whether they are as sepulchral as doomsday (&amp;quot;Low&amp;quot;) or as lithe as springtime (&amp;quot;Near Wild Heaven&amp;quot;). Even when instruments are layered upon one another, as in the subtle swell of strings, guitars and mandolins on the existentially despondent &amp;quot;Losing My Religion,&amp;quot; they make a point. That point is &amp;quot;Life gets bigger,&amp;quot; and R.E.M. deals with life&amp;apos;s billowing complexities throughout &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;The band members, especially bassist Mike Mills, move outside of their prescribed roles to experiment a little. Mills, for instance, pumps up the jam on &amp;quot;Radio Song,&amp;quot; ripping into its prickly innards on organ, while guitarist Peter Buck creates sparks with his serrated &amp;quot;Fame&amp;quot;-style attack and drummer Bill Berry syncopates like an honorary Funkadelic. Mills&amp;apos;s organ also sets the funereal mood of &amp;quot;Low,&amp;quot; on which Berry can be heard tapping congas, and Buck&amp;apos;s stinging sustain drenches &amp;quot;Country Feedback&amp;quot; in plaintive, rippling waves of sound.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;As the instrumentalists open themselves up, singer Michael Stipe bares his soul. He&amp;apos;s long since stopped concealing his identity in an artful murmur, of course, but the extent to which, on &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt;, he unburdens himself of doubt, disappointment and bile &amp;#x2014; and suggest maybe just a faint ray of cock-eyed hope &amp;#x2014; is nothing short of revelatory. Except for &amp;quot;Endgame&amp;quot; and a strange, fable-like ramble entitled &amp;quot;Belong,&amp;quot; all of the album is sung in the first person. Every song has an &amp;quot;I,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;me,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;my&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;mine&amp;quot; in it, and there&amp;apos;s often a &amp;quot;you&amp;quot; as well. Even &amp;quot;Radio Song,&amp;quot; an in-your-face number that makes an objective statement about the world outside the self, springs from a subjective reaction: &amp;quot;I tried to sing along, but damn that radio&amp;apos;s song!&amp;quot; Most of the time, Stipe waxes downbeat, sounding &amp;quot;low low low&amp;quot; and outcast. He sings, &amp;quot;This could be the saddest dusk I&amp;apos;ve ever seen,&amp;quot; on &amp;quot;Half a World Away,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;It&amp;apos;s all the same, the same, a shame, for me,&amp;quot; on &amp;quot;Me in Honey.&amp;quot; Technically, he has never sounded better, singing with surety, power and control. He dissects interpersonal relationships with a resigned sense of inevitability, filling songs with concrete details and unsparing analysis: &amp;quot;It&amp;apos;s crazy what you could have had/I mean it, I need this,&amp;quot; he sings with mounting emotion in &amp;quot;Country Feedback.&amp;quot; The effect is arresting; his verisimilitude can&amp;apos;t be denied, because his voice insists on it.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;In contrast, there&amp;apos;s the heavenly pop chorale of &amp;quot;Near Wild Heaven&amp;quot; (recalling nothing quite so much as &amp;quot;Good Vibration&amp;quot;-era Beach Boys) and the breezy, evocative &amp;quot;Endgame,&amp;quot; the former largely sung by Mills and the latter mostly played by Buck. Stipe himself gets joyful, or appears to, on &amp;quot;Shiny Happy People,&amp;quot; which commences with a sprightly waltz figure, then is yoked by a spunky riff from Buck before Stipe chimes in: &amp;quot;Meet me in the crowd/ People, people/Throw your love around/ Love me, love me/ Take it into town/Happy, happy/Put it in the ground where the flowers grow.&amp;quot; These are either the most absurdly sunny or bitingly cynical lyrics he&amp;apos;s ever written, and your guess is as good as mine or maybe even Stipe&amp;apos;s. More characteristic of &amp;quot;Out of Time &amp;quot; is &amp;quot;Half a World Away,&amp;quot; in which urgent, minor-key music is married to doleful words as the singer steels himself &amp;quot;to go it alone and hold it alone, haul it along and hold it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;The songs on &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt; are seemingly small scale in their first-person obsessions, but their meanings spread out to encompass shared feelings of dread, loneliness, anomie and a growing loss of faith. There are no treatises on ecology or foreign policy, no oblique strategies or hidden agendas. There doesn&amp;apos;t have to be; all of that is implicit in the atmosphere of entropy, of things falling apart, that&amp;apos;s evoked and detailed candidly, with glimmering beauty and unsurpassable sadness, on &lt;em&gt;Out of Time&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/out-of-time-19910321>