Customer Reviews

R.E.M.'s Murmur (33 1/3)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I really didn't expect much when a friend guided me to this book. All he mentioned was the track by track analysis of instrumentation and arrangement. But the amazing part of this book is the latter section dealing with language and the effectiveness of non-linear, yet familiar lyrics in evoking feelings beyond logic and language. I became consciously aware of an intuitive process through the shared experience of the record and the author's thoughtful considerations. Quite a bargain for the price!

This book on Murmur is a great read. I am glad i stumbled on it at the check out counter of my favorite record store.
Mr. Niimi captured the record's weird and intangible magic, not
an easy feat. He did a particularly good job examining Bill Berry's
unusual playing style and incalculable contribution to not
only R.E.M.'s sound but compositions. Even though Niimi himself is a drummer, he explains things in a manner any non-musician will appreciate.
He also got some great quotes out of producers Don Dixon and Mitch
Easter as he delved into the details of the making of the record. Along the way he tells the terrific story of R.E.M.s rapid rise from Athens bar band to architects of the college rock, indie rock explosion of the '80s.
I followed R.E.M. very closely in this time frame and the author captures the feeling and emotional impact that R.E.M. had on its fans quite well. The book brought back many good memories. I highly recommend it to both the casual and serious R.E.M. fan.

I'm a big fan of the 33 1/3 Series from Continuum Books and J Niimi's MURMUR is a fine addition. One problem I have with books of this ilk is the tendency to emphasize studio craft and the technical aspect of the making of a record over the content and emotional effect of the music. Mr Niimi avoids this nicely- although all the studio tricks are exposed in their entirety! Its also a great look back at the times and trends that produced this fine record.
After reading the book I put the record on and, after wading through the inevitable waves of nostalgia, rediscovered a great band and record that I haven't listened to for far too long.

There are so many things that I like about MURMUR, J. Niimi's recent book on R.E.M.'s legendary 1983 album of the same name, that I scarcely know where to begin.

On one hand, there's the crisp organization. This compact book is broken into four chapters that provide in efficient succession (1) crucial background information on the band and the album, especially the technical aspects of the latter's production; (2) a song-by-song and line-by-line perspective on an album whose expressionistic and often absurdist lyrics are famously difficult to understand and/or to ascertain; (3) a reading of (and, perhaps more importantly, "a listening to") the album that emphasizes ideas of the sublime and positions this work of musical art as an instance of the Southern Gothic impulse as filtered through the ephemera of the 1980s; and (4) a second reading of the album that accents the semiotic and the linguistic, examining MURMUR and its lyrics through, among other things, the lens of Walker Percy's essay "Metaphor as Mistake." There is also a very useful appendix in which Mr. Niimi supplies and in some cases reconstructs the album's lyrics. If you like the album, this appendix is worth the cost of the book.

I have little patience for baggy monsters and loose piles of crud prefaced by a title page and, less often, a preface. Mr. Niimi's organization is, happily, nothing if not tight and craftmanlike--no bags, no monsters, no crud. But what is most admirable about Mr. Niimi's structure is that it acts as a control on the very best aspect of the author's book, i.e., its free-flowing and always highly accessible intellectual manner, which combines personal reminiscence with a variable prose style and with cultural allusions that are at once wide-ranging and intensely specific to the world about which Mr. Niimi writes. (The author has a great deal of first- and second-hand knowledge of said world as a musician, engineer, and critic.)

What I am trying to say, and taking much too long to do it, is that gee whiz, Mr. Niimi can really write. A uniquely satisfying (and often quite droll) combination of the readerly and the writerly is what is most immediately appealing about MURMUR, yet it is the book's structure that finally moves the reader along and disciplines the author's ideas, restricting any flight into the ether of fundamentally idiosyncratic intellectual reference and cultural critique.

If you need further convincing, just leaf through the start of the third chapter, which is one of my favorite parts of the book. Before moving smoothly into an impressive examination of the album's cover art, this chapter begins with a glib and accurate passage that contemplates the abject history of the cassette tape, which Mr. Niimi describes as the "the worst existing way" of listening to music-not to mention a musical mode that has colored his memory as well as that of an entire era. Being of the same "passing generation" as the author, I know exactly what Mr. Niimi means here and elsewhere. The author's glibness, like his style in general, acts as a vehicle to understanding. Such is not usually the case, in my view. Not in any book.

If there is one drawback for me, it is the book's tendency to romanticize its object. Mr. Niimi fights against this tendency in several salient ways. For example, he foregrounds the subjectivity of his own responses to the album; he emphasizes the importance that R.E.M., especially Stipe, ascribes to linguistic and existential indeterminacy; he discusses theories of art and language that coalesce around postmodern ideas of decenteredness and subjectivity; and he highlights the album's straightforward flirtations with romanticism. Yet on a number of occasions, Mr. Niimi seems to forget all that and say, in effect, it really is great Art. I'm of the opinion that this impulse is always to be resisted, problematized, mocked. Yet I also know that this impulse is very seductive--and that an inevitable surrender to it is in a sense built into our language and its aggregate customs. This "deficiency" is, in other words, an inescapable one--especially in a project like Mr. Niimi's, which is uniquely susceptible to essentialist attributions of aesthetic value. On the whole, then, readers should thank the author for having resisted homage in all the ways outlined above.

I've said more than enough. Here's the point: MURMUR is well structured and well written. It is, moreover, informative, intelligent, and very lively. Buy it.

Even twenty plus years on, Murmur is still as hauntingly evocative as it was on its release. The novelty of the sound has diminished with the passage of time, but the details still compel -- the subdued, echoing vocals at the beginning of Pilgrimage, the backwards guitar in Perfect Circle, the strange instrumental bit between Shaking Through and We Walk, even the eerie images on the album cover. Niimi's book is a unique in-depth look at the the Murmur recording sessions, and the environment that gave birth to it. It is utterly indispensable reading for anyone touched by the album, or the band.

Niimi is at home in the recording studio, and provides a blow by blow account of the production details. I'd recommend reading it as you listen to the album - details buried in the song will emerge that you hadn't notice before. Throughout, we get a sense of the band's breathtaking originality and willingness to take risks. Buck and Stipe's contributions are well-known, but Niimi highlights the unique contributions of less obvious figures. Mitch Easter's production flourishes are all over the album, and are responsible for much of its unique, timeless quality; Easter and Don Dixon's song sequencing gives the album a strong, novelistic flow; and Bill Berry emerges as the unsuing genius of R.E.M., as composer and multi-instrumentalist.

I've read a number of books in the 33 1/3 series, and to my mind they should all be like this one. When you love an album, you want to get into it as deeply as you can. Niimi's meticulously-researched, vividly written work says all that needs to be said about the album and its unique place in rock history.

"Murmur" was extremely important to me when it was released and over the past 20+ years, so I avoided this volume of the exquisite 33 1/3 series for a while. I wasn't familiar with Niimi's writing at the time, and had too many passionate feelings of my own about the album's psychogeography and visionary expressionism to tolerate someone so much younger doing a hack job. After skimming over the excellent lyrical analysis and the origin of kudzu as 'background' for the musical milieu behind the record's imagery, I knew I had to own this 33 1/3 as well. It turned out to be a must re-read last year, just as "Murmur" itself was placed time and time again on my turntable the hot summer it was released in the mid-80s. I kept Niimi's sweet tome in the pockets of my baggy pants for weeks, his creative extrapolations of the album's content and musical statements roiling around in my mind at bus stops covered in debris and fauna, skimmed again and again before sets bands played at clubs. A perfect read for a perfect album -- I actually think new copies of "Murmur" should be sold with the book inside the cellophane.

This is one of the best books on contemporary music I've ever read. Murmur 33 1/3 explores the band [REM] and most impressively, the historical and cultural context in which the music was recorded. Niimi deconstructs Murmur with surgical precision while leaving ample room for your subjective interpretation. If you like REM, you will absolutely love this book. Highly recommended!

The definitive book about R.E.M. happens to be Murmur, by J. Niimi, from the learned and much lauded 33 1/3 series of slim volumes about great albums, printed by Continuum Books. Some books in this series get bogged down in needless play-by-play parsing of chord structures and shameless fawning (The book on OK Computer comes to mind), but this one is a gem.
Murmur is ostensibly about THE Murmur, generally regarded as the most preternaturally brilliant debut album ever (Never Mind The Bollocks aside...) While it allows painstaking and fascinating detail about the process of creating the record, Murmur is also an analysis of the particular moment in history, musical and otherwise, that brought the boys from Athens into the limelight.
We needed R.E.M., Niimi tells us, for respite from our Reagan-era bloated synth-coma, and from personal experience, I can tell you he is right on the money. We get a scholarly review of Michael's lyrics/sounds/animae, and a fuller understanding of how the atmosphere of the Deep South forged the band. But, mostly, we get recognition of just how conceptually advanced R.E.M. were for their milieu of radio-friendly rock, circa 1983. No wonder so many still look to them now, for some understanding of where we have wound up, politically and otherwise. R.E.M. are a touchstone, well-worn and well proven.

I recently stumbled across the 33 1/3 series and have since read about a dozen different ones. Niimi's take on Murmur is by far may favorite. I was a teenager living near Athens when Murmur came out and Niimi's account of the band and Athens at the time brought back great memories. The account is well written and explores the actual recording of the record and the songs in a way I wish every book in the series did. I have actually read the book several times because I it gave a new perspective on an old familiar favorite. The interpretation of the famously inscrutable lyrics is terrific. The meaning of those lyrics remain for me inpenetrable, but Niimi has admirably and seemingly correctly deciphered the actual words and included them in the book. The comparison of those words to the ones I had heard in my mind over the years alone was worth the investment. I have found myself listening to the record again and again with lyrics sheet in hand. Just as enjoyable was the account of the impact of the record on Niimi as a teenager at the time. If you grew up loving R.E.M., you will treasure this account of the record and its time.

This supernaturally readable little book starts with the idea that Murmur is a valuable record and then explores the hows and whys. Even if you hate REM, there's much to be gleaned about how people relate to pop records in general. Plus, it's packed with great stories. I strongly recommended it to anyone who wants to know more about how Great records are made, both in the physical and cultural sense.