Andy Mckay, a regular, hugely valued contributor to this blog, urges everyone, during this era of huge global uncertainty, to revisit an LP by one of Athens, Georgia’s finest: REM.
They’re all at it. A couple of years ago, Blur got some mileage from The Ballad of Darren, from turning Wembley into someone’s living room, from doing the documentary. See also Oasis. And Pulp. And Puressence. The Chameleons. Even Radiohead joined the fray, going out again for the first time in seven years and invoking a frenzy among a certain demographic, proving to be a rush akin to ketamine or catnip. (Spacemen 3 are you reading this? – Editor.)
But there is one band that the world misses, that the world is crying out for. That the world once clasped to its collective bosom and wouldn’t let go. A band that somehow managed to confirm the humanity so deeply buried within us, while being the acceptable side of alt. Being the weirdo it was OK to like. Being the outsiders on the inside. The ones that really hold up the mirrors and direct the spotlights towards the parts of ourselves we collectively choose to (at best) ignore.
Andy Mckay
Andy Mckay is a lifelong prisoner of music and is one of Chelmsford’s old guard, having been in The Prodigal Sons, Apple Creation and The White Gospel. Currently with post-punk gaze band, Snakes, he continues to obsess and enthuse over music, film and writing.
Snakes’ latest lp, Expo, is out now.
REM: not so Shiny Happy People
REM. And why, do you ask, are you dragging up a band that split up eons ago, that are now a distant memory, a moment in time while being out of time, in tune with the times yet sat firmly outside of the mainstream while dictating where the mainstream goes? Confused? So are the times. REM released Document in October 1987. It was the last of their albums for IRS before they made the jump and signed with Warners. An album of peculiar vision, it is perhaps the band’s most nuanced observation on US’s political landscape, joining the dots from the end of WWII to the Reaganism of the 80s.
However, such is the state of the world, the replays, the here we go agains, the why can’t we fucking well learn from the past that Document seems to work very well as a commentary on the shit show we find ourselves in now. “All you have to do is turn on the TV and you’re inundated by complete lies from people who are supposed to be running this country,” said Peter Buck. In 1987.
It’s the end of the world as we know it?
Buck recalled that Document, musically, was the result of a series of “real discordant Gang of Four-remeets-Wire-meets-Sonic Youth stuff” that the band was developing, music that fitted the lyrical content like a fist in a glove. Stipe and co had an intrinsic understanding of the US’s duality. For everyone living the dream, there are hundreds existing in the nightmare of zero hours contracts and minimum wage. For every Ivy Leaguer, there is someone drowning in a sea of disappointment. Document covers the entire political landscape of America from an almost impressionist perspective, landing a series of bullseyes as it succinctly takes aim at the state of play: “The followers of chaos out of control.”
Final thoughts
Tell me that doesn’t ring true today during Trump’s latest dismantling of all that is good Stateside while Farage stirs up the dregs of the far right over here. Perhaps reassuring in that Document and REM show us we’ve been here to some extent before. Sickening that in 2026 humanity isn’t getting better. Worth a revisit then. And as Stipe once wrote, “We are hope, despite the times.”
