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."