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r.e.m. - NIGHTSWIMMING
From Pitchfork’s Best 200 Songs of the 1990’s. I completely agree with this well-worded write up but i do not agree whatsoever with it’s placement at 72. It should be higher. Then again, there have been a lot of tracks listed that i felt this way about, and many others that i felt didn’t belong at all. It’s a great read nonetheless.
“The mumble. The relentless touring. The staunch ethics. R.E.M.’s early years are the stuff of indie-rock legend, but you don’t need to be invested in any of that to love 1992’s Automatic for the People, an album of antebellum melancholy from an era of angst. Almost two decades later, there have been many tender paeans to lost innocence, but “Nightswimming” stands out for its simplicity and restraint: Mike Mills’ rotating piano part, Michael Stipe’s gently creaking understatement, John Paul Jones’ (!) elegiac string arrangement, Deborah Workman’s sweetly aching oboe. The little details here are specific enough to be the narrator’s alone— a dashboard photograph reflected in the windshield by passing streetlights, a shirt “forgotten” at water’s edge— but the wistful feeling of autumn approaching belongs to all of us. “I’m not sure all these people understand,” Stipe sings. It’s not a question of understanding: If you feel it, you feel it. And there stands R.E.M.” —Marc Hogan
