25th anniversary reissue, accompanied by contemporaneous live showโ€ฆ

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โ€œI donโ€™t know if I have any commercial expectations for this one at all,โ€ Peter Buck told Rolling Stone prior to the release of R.E.M.โ€™s fifth album. โ€œI donโ€™t see this as the record thatโ€™s going to blast apart the chart. Although you never know. Weirder things have happened.โ€

Indeed. If 1986โ€™s Lifes Rich Pageant had marked the beginnings of R.E.M.โ€™s emergence from their cocoon of indie diffidence, 1987โ€™s Document was where they first properly reconciled themselves to their destiny as the only group of the 1980s American college-rock milieu to graduate to stadiums, and stay there. This remastered 25th anniversary double-CD edition of โ€œDocumentโ€ โ€“ also available in 180-gram vinyl โ€“ is packaged with a complete concert, recorded on the subsequent โ€œWorkโ€ tour on September 14th, 1987, at Utrechtโ€™s Musiekcentrum Vredenberg: the previously unreleased show just about triumphs over a tinny, clattering sound, amounting to a twenty-track Greatest Hits of R.E.M.โ€™s pre-Warners period. The Dutch crowd, clearly still unfamiliar with the new work, donโ€™t quite hit their cue on the โ€œLeonard Bernstein!โ€ exclamation, but are properly hushed for the mournful, half-paced closer of โ€œSo. Central Rainโ€.

For all Buckโ€™s pre-release expectation-lowering vis-a-vis Document, it is barely conceivable that the man whoโ€™d just recorded the guitars on โ€œThe One I Loveโ€, which sounded like a Byrds song played by U2, was entirely astonished when Document went swiftly platinum (Buck would have had cause, however, to be baffled when โ€œThe One I Loveโ€ became a popular wedding tune, hopefully only among couples who hadnโ€™t quite heard the bit about โ€œA simple prop/To occupy my timeโ€).

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Document was appropriately titled. It was, fairly straightforwardly โ€“ in conception if not execution โ€“ intended as R.E.M.โ€™s state-of-the-nation address. Given that the nation whose state R.E.M. were addressing was the piously purse-lipped yet triumphally patriotic United States which had been dominated for seven years by Ronald Reagan, it does R.E.M. considerable credit โ€“ though the United States possibly less so โ€“ that Document has weathered a quarter century so well. Some of the praise for this should be directed towards producer Scott Litt, beginning a long association with the band. Litt disdained most of the defining sonic tropes of the late 1980s โ€“ although a suspicion that Mike Mills applies his thumb to the bass in the coda of โ€œFinest Worksongโ€ cannot be ruled out.

Document mostly endures, however, because R.E.M. resisted the temptation which often overwhelms the youngish and politically agitated: at no point did Document seize by the lapels and rant, instead making its points with an obliqueness that verged on the Dada. The elegiac โ€œFireplaceโ€ reacted to the โ€œCrazy crazy worldโ€ and these โ€œcrazy crazy timesโ€ by commanding โ€œClear the floor to danceโ€. Wireโ€™s โ€œStrangeโ€, rendered even more fidgety and frenetic than the original, was recalibrated as the inchoate indignantion of someone slowly figuring out that the world isnโ€™t fair (the line โ€œThereโ€™s something going on thatโ€™s not quite rightโ€ could have been an alternative title of the album). โ€œItโ€™s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)โ€ was (thirteen years early) a 21st century โ€œSubterranean Homesick Bluesโ€, a playful and deliriously jumbled portent of apocalypse.

Even when Document was relatively obvious, the emphasis was firmly on the โ€œrelativelyโ€. โ€œWelcome To The Occupationโ€ was a hazy survey of the same Central American frontlines previously depicted on โ€œFlowers Of Guatemalaโ€ and โ€œGreen Grow The Rushesโ€. The jaunty โ€œExhuming McCarthyโ€ โ€“ a template for the subsequent โ€œStandโ€ and โ€œPop Song 89โ€, more of what Buck once defined as R.E.M.โ€™s โ€œvampire surf guitar funkโ€ โ€“ invoked Senator Joe McCarthy, the demented Wisconsonian witchhunter of the 1950s, as the eternal bogeyman of R.E.M.โ€™s fellow fretfully paranoid liberals. The sample of US Army counsel Joseph Welchโ€™s famous rebuke to McCarthy โ€“ โ€œHave you no sense of decency, Sir?โ€ โ€“ was, in this context, another iteration of the question asked of America by generations of protest singers, in whose ranks R.E.M. had formally, if hesitantly, enlisted themselves.

EXTRAS: Liner notes by David Daley, four postcards, and a complete concert.

Andrew Mueller