Track Listing

1. Radio Free Europe
2. Pilgrimage
3. Laughing
4. Talk About The Passion - Don A. Dixon, Mitch Easter, R.E.M.
5. Moral Kiosk
6. Perfect Circle
7. Catapult
8. Sitting Still
9. 9-9
10. Shaking Through
11. We Walk
12. West Of The Fields

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31432 in Music
• Released on: 1991-03-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 44 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
As huge as they are now, R.E.M. started out with a small cult that this first album inspired; Peter Buck's chinging guitar, Michael Stipe's impassioned but incomprehensible singing, and the band's unpretentious interaction with its audience were genuinely revolutionary at the time. Stipe's famous mumbling of words, obscuring them in the mix, was less about creating a mystery than about creating an aesthetic of pure sound--without focusing on what he was singing about, you had to listen to the way his supple, distinctive voice mingled with the instruments. Murmur ends with a remake of their first single, "Radio Free Europe", as joyful a song as they've ever recorded, and a song that in a very real way created "alternative rock". --Douglas Wolk

CD Description
R.E.M.'s full-length debut is a landmark album that set thestandard for the next 10 years of indie rock. The Athens quartet combined Byrdsy, folk-rock guitar jangle with obscurantist lyrics and a post-punk compositional sensibility to create a vibrant new sound that would soon be imitated by everyhigh-school poet with a Rickenbacker guitar. R.E.M. was also one of the first bands to make the long, hard journey fromcollege radio (when it was still college radio) to mainstream acceptance, and managed the difficult task of maintainingits integrity at every step along the way.
MURMUR, far from an embryonic debut, shows a fully-formed unit with a strong artistic vision. (It was preceded by two legendary underground releases: The "Radio Free Europe" single--which was re-recorded for MURMUR--and the CHRONIC TOWN EP.) Producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon's lofty reputations would have remained intact even if they had never worked on another recordafter this one. The gentle-but-insistent arrangements and glorious pop hooks of songs like "Catapult" and "Talk About The Passion" provide the perfect contrast to Michael Stipe's earnest, moody vocal style. Drummer Bill Berry's breathless effervescence provides the perfect backdrop for this album of jumpy, intellectual pop.

Customer Reviews

R.E.M.'s classic 1983 debut album still stands up today
One of the problems with "Eponymous," the 1988 album that is a collection of singles from the first five R.E.M. released on I.R.S., is that it stops a lot of people who jumped on the bandwagon when the Athens group switched to Warner and made it to the top of the music world with their hit "Losing My Religion" from going back and listening to those earlier albums. That would be a mistake, because that would mean missing out on "Murmur," the 1983 album that created R.E.M.'s distinctive sound and which, in retrospect, can be seen as an important album in the history of music as representing the move from post-punk to alternative music. "Murmur" only made it to #178 on the Billboard 200 chart (#36 for the Pop Album version), but this is clearly a case where the tree in the forest most definitely makes a sound, regardless of the number of people there to hear it. Remember that "Rolling Stone" named "Murmur" the best album of 1983, which was the year of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and the Police's "Synchronicity."

R.E.M. was formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980, originally playing under the name Twisted Kite and performing garage rock covers and original folk-rock songs. "Radio Free Europe," their first single, was recorded in 1981, released on the tiny Hib Tone label, and showed that all of the pieces that would becoming familiar, the jangle pop sound and cryptic lyrics, were already in place: you cannot help singing along with the chorus even if you have no clue what the rest of Michael Stipe's lyrics are saying. The single topped the "Village Voice" poll for Best Independent Single, and landed the group the I.R.S. contract. After an EP, "Chronic Town," the full-length "Murmur" constituted the group's debut album. While there is not another track as solid as "Radio Free Europe" on the album, the rest of the songs are clearly in that vein.

The songs on "Murmur" have an atmospheric quality that is quite distinctive, although you can certainly see strong folk-rock, post-punk, and garage-rock elements throughout, although what R.E.M. does with those elements is unique as well. "Talk About the Passion" is the other signature song from the album, and a prime example of how Stipe's lyrics attain great depth by refusing to be pinned down (although having some lyrics in French is adding insult to injury for those of us who always have trouble understanding what exactly he is singing). "Catapult" is a good example of what a pop song sounds like in R.E.M.'s hands (and the effective way in which bassist Mike Mills often responds to Stipe's vocals in the chorus), with "Pilgrimage" and "Perfect Circle" showing their expanding musical range. This is not to say all of these songs hold up; "Moral Kiosk" sounds rather dated as the exception to the rule. But overall this is a landmark album should end up being one of your favorite R.E.M. albums.

R.E.M.'s classic 1983 debut album still stands up today
One of the problems with "Eponymous," the 1988 album that is a collection of singles from the first five R.E.M. released on I.R.S., is that it stops a lot of people who jumped on the bandwagon when the Athens group switched to Warner and made it to the top of the music world with their hit "Losing My Religion" from going back and listening to those earlier albums. That would be a mistake, because that would mean missing out on "Murmur," the 1983 album that created R.E.M.'s distinctive sound and which, in retrospect, can be seen as an important album in the history of music as representing the move from post-punk to alternative music. "Murmur" only made it to #178 on the Billboard 200 chart (#36 for the Pop Album version), but this is clearly a case where the tree in the forest most definitely makes a sound, regardless of the number of people there to hear it. Remember that "Rolling Stone" named "Murmur" the best album of 1983, which was the year of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and the Police's "Synchronicity."

R.E.M. was formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980, originally playing under the name Twisted Kite and performing garage rock covers and original folk-rock songs. "Radio Free Europe," their first single, was recorded in 1981, released on the tiny Hib Tone label, and showed that all of the pieces that would becoming familiar, the jangle pop sound and cryptic lyrics, were already in place: you cannot help singing along with the chorus even if you have no clue what the rest of Michael Stipe's lyrics are saying. The single topped the "Village Voice" poll for Best Independent Single, and landed the group the I.R.S. contract. After an EP, "Chronic Town," the full-length "Murmur" constituted the group's debut album. While there is not another track as solid as "Radio Free Europe" on the album, the rest of the songs are clearly in that vein.

The songs on "Murmur" have an atmospheric quality that is quite distinctive, although you can certainly see strong folk-rock, post-punk, and garage-rock elements throughout, although what R.E.M. does with those elements is unique as well. "Talk About the Passion" is the other signature song from the album, and a prime example of how Stipe's lyrics attain great depth by refusing to be pinned down (although having some lyrics in French is adding insult to injury for those of us who always have trouble understanding what exactly he is singing). "Catapult" is a good example of what a pop song sounds like in R.E.M.'s hands (and the effective way in which bassist Mike Mills often responds to Stipe's vocals in the chorus), with "Pilgrimage" and "Perfect Circle" showing their expanding musical range. This is not to say all of these songs hold up; "Moral Kiosk" sounds rather dated as the exception to the rule. But overall this is a landmark album should end up being one of your favorite R.E.M. albums.

Cuts to the core of what REM are about.
If I were forced to choose just one REM album to take with me to some island it would be this one. AFTP is great, so are Document and Life's Rich Pageant, but this one just has it all, boiled down to the essentials. Great tunes, simply done with the passion, energy and exuberance of a band really just starting out.

More than that though it has a fantastic atmosphere and lightness of touch that I think is sometimes lacking in their more recent albums. To deny the classic status of this album is to deny your own humanity (probably).