Looking back four decades, it’s hardly a coincidence that Fables of the Reconstruction (released 6/10/85), is just as murky as its predecessors, if not more so. With sessions taking place in London under the supervision of producer Joe Boyd (Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention), this first album R.E.M. recorded outside of the U.S. is shrouded by a cloudy atmosphere that’s only partially dispelled by guitarist Peter Buck’s vivid essay in the liner notes for the 25th Anniversary Edition.
But the third full-length release by Athens, GA’s favorite sons remains a whole lot darker than its predecessors, the impenetrable nature of the material accentuated through the use of instrumentation beyond the core quartet. Strings and horns (plus banjo on “Wendell G”) foreshadow the eclectic arrangements and production values of 1991’s Out Of Time.
“Maps And Legends” thus belies its implicit promise of a revelatory sense of direction (‘..maybe they’ve been misunderstood…). True to its title’s implicit linkage to post-Civil War Southern lore, Fables of the Reconstruction represents the first inkling of R.E.M.’s restless reimagining of its future, that is, the quartet’s wilful sacrifice of a sound that had become synonymous, not just with R.E.M., but a whole genre of nouveau Eighties rock called ‘jangle pop’.
Elements of that style appear unencumbered here in the form of “Green Grow the Rushes” and even more so in “Driver 8.” But much more often, the music is as borderline inaccessible as “Feeling Gravity’s Pull:” the discordant guitar, shadowy strings, and out-of-phase drumming make for an ideal introduction to this often disorienting thirty-nine-plus minutes.
Hearing the demo recordings in the Fables 25th Anniversary Edition is thus a revelation. There’s a clarity to the musicianship and performances, not to mention the audio itself, that effectively turns the early prep work into an altogether different record.
This collection of recordings, done in the group’s hometown before the formal studio efforts, sounds perfectly comparable to Murmur or Reckoning. These long players immediately preceded it, as well as Life’s Rich Pageant, which immediately followed.
Such continuity, plus the contrast between the two sets of recordings that followed, is all the more evident in the juxtaposition of the nervous “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” with the dream-like float of “Good Advices.” Shadowy, elusive music such as the dream-like float of “Old Man Kensey” and, with its busy, muffled horns “Can’t Get There From Here,” likewise sounds everything like R.E.M. and nothing like what they’d done before.
Minus the instrumental decorations, the aforementioned parallel version of the LP (all its eventual songs in a different running order, plus some recorded later and others never to be released) reveals the mechanics of the band. During “Life And How To Live It,” for instance, Mike Mills’ bassplaying and Bill Berry’s drumming orbit around each other, allowing Buck’s fretboard chording to ricochet off their patterns.
Meanwhile, the vocals of Michael Stipe insinuate themselves throughout the instrumentals. It’s remarkable that, without a voice to speak of, he nevertheless developed his own readily recognizable yet unpredictable method(s) of delivery and phrasing: this song’s title phrase is the only clear enunciation the latter’s singing allows on that cut.
Forty years of retrospect on this effort of the alternative icons also reminds of the independence that R.E.M. made fashionable in the Eighties and Nineties. Such redoubtable qualities correlate to a collective eccentricity that, in the case of this record, extends to its title and its mirror-image cover graphics (reflecting the overall gestation of the LP?).
In the end, Fables of the Reconstruction makes just as much sense as Reconstruction of the Fables.
