The R.E.M. That Never Fully Was

In anticipation of summer, Muzzle of Bees posted a clip of R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming," a heavenly track from the band's 1992 masterwork Automatic for the People, an oddity in the band's canyon now seen as a precursor to the current chamber-folk movement. "It's increasingly difficult to hear the album without imagining that its songs have somehow always existed in the world," Fluxblog founder� Matthew Perpetua mused in an essay for Stereogum's 15th anniversary tribute to the record. "Whereas most other rock bands at the time either embraced the aggressive, self-destructive angst of grunge or the brainy, aloof irony of indie rock, the Athens quartet presented something far more singular and timeless in the form of a tightly composed, occasionally baroque song cycle obsessed with mortality and the passage of time."