If you’re up on music news, you’ve no doubt heard that REM — a group known more by my generation for providing the background music to the Independence Day commercial than for being one of the most influential alternate rock groups in American history — has gone the way of the Dodo, the Dinosaurs, Dukakis and every other funny sounding word beginning in the letter D. After 30 some odd years, the group that broke into the musical world with the fucking brilliant Chronic Town EP (or, if we’re only counting albums, the equally stellar Murmur) and exited with the pandering, bloated, and quite-frankly depressing Collapse into Now (which I still can’t finish) is calling it quits.

To say the revelation came as something of a shock would be an understatement. When I stumbled upon that headline in Friday’s newspaper, my jaw dropped, slack. For literally a minute I forgot everything I was doing: the student I was tutoring, the lesson-plan I was designing, and the dinner plans I was concocting in my mind all took a back seat to my shock. REM may not be my favorite band, but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t occupy a rather large place in my heart. Everything up to and including Monster is great (even if noticeably flawed, as was the case with Green and the overly ambitious Life’s Rich Pageantry; imperfect as they may be, they’re still remarkable works) and everything after that is…

Let’s face it: the popular conception that REM ceased to be relevant after Automatic for the People isn’t too far removed from reality. Though I’d gladly defend Monster and will even speak out for a few tracks on New Adventures in Hi- (at least for “Leave” and “E-Bow the Letter”), nothing in the world could make me love their work beyond that. See, something happened to REM after Automatic: some clowns decided to prematurely declare that it was the “the finest album R.E.M. ever recorded.” Sadly, those clowns include Mike Mills and Peter Buck [at least according to R.E.M. biographer David Buckley]; you might remember them as the members of the band who WEREN’T Michael Stipe (and shame on you for thinking of them like that! Those men are musical giants in their own right! Don’t take too seriously my use of the word “clowns”). See, once a work you’ve made has been proclaimed “your best,” or “most significant” or definitive and you start believing it? At that point you enter a rut, even if subconsciously, and no matter how you try to escape it you’e fighting an uphill battle. On some level, everything you work on after that is going to be measured by yourself and everyone against that masterpiece, and so you’ll constantly be working to conquer those expectations. It is worth noting, though, that I do not mean to suggest that R.E.M.’s popularity killed them; I do not even mean that their being critically well-received is what put them under (hell, they had been commercially and critically successful for years prior to Automatic; hell, many of their albums, including Green and Out of Time went double platinum before Automatic was even ANNOUNCED ). What really poisoned the band is that with this album, they seem to have become complacent, convinced that they had finished their greatest work to date and that anything afterwards would just be an attempt to recapture that glory.

Every album after that is a clear attempt to either “reinvent themselves” (which just ends up with them unconsciously trying to remake Automatic; see Up) or an attempt to “return to their roots” (you can see where this is going…). It is at this point that the band decided they had become spokesmen for social issues, the point where they stopped focusing on the music and started focusing on the statement, the sort of self-righteous world-view that naturally culminates in such pandering numbers as “Houston” and “Oh My Heart” (pathetic statements of solidarity with the people of New Orleans in a post-Katrina world. Sorry, guys, but there’s nothing more obnoxious than for natives to be told by rich, famous and powerful that, “hey, it’s OK: we get it, we understand your suffering!” As friends who lost loved ones in Katrina have explained to me, no, you will not, and there’s nothing more insulting than disingenuous pity that assures you you’re not alone. Just because you are worldly and talented and intelligent does not mean you are the ones best fit to solve the world’s ills). This might have been fine on earlier songs, such as “I Could Turn You Inside Out,” or “Orange Crush,” which criticize the Exxon Corporation and the Vietnam War, because the lyrics were not didactic, not simple and easily digested pap. Back then Stipe knew how to turn a beautiful phrase, knew that it was best to shy away from the literal and go more for the evocative. No doubt he took a hint whenever the critics complained that the lyrics on Murmur were nonsense, slurred muttering devoid of purpose [bah! I say to them!]; every album afterwards showed a marked movement towards the lyrically literal (without ever fully crossing into such plain territory). But when you’re trying to make a marked stand against a social ill? Well, you can’t risk being misunderstood, because you’re fighting the good fight! You’ve got to be direct, so that people can’t FAIL to hear what you’re saying! Which, inevitably, results in increasingly dumber lyrics about increasingly less interesting subjects, all of which masquerade as “relevant” or “deep.”

I do not mean to turn this into a polemic against R.E.M. or Mr. Stipe, Mr. Buck, Mr. Mills, Mr. Berry or the various other musicians who have worked with them over the years. Just because I find some of their later works worthy of eye-rolling does not mean that I am happy to hear that they’re breaking up. It has been one of my greatest wishes to see them in concert since I started listening to them heavily four years ago; whether or not it shows yet (and whether or not it will show) they’ve contributed more to Garage Raja than even I know, more than they could possibly know. I wish them the best of luck in whatever their future endeavors are and am nothing but pleased to hear that they ended on amicable terms. However, there comes a time where one passes one’s prime and starts heading into senility: R.E.M. has, sadly, been on that downward slope for the better part of two decades now. Every artist, in fact every person, should keep their wits about them and remain constantly questioning, afraid of praise or the complacence that comes with it. Sometimes it is best, really, to bow out, to gather up one’s dignity and lock the door behind you. I’m glad to hear that one of my favorite bands, then, has done as much, long a time as it took them to recognize this. I wish you nothing but the best of luck, gentlemen, and have nothing but the highest respect for you. God speed.

– Mr. Price