Automatic For The People

1992年にリリースのオリジナル・アルバム8枚目。アメリカでは4×プラチナム・アルバムを獲得しヒット曲"Nightswimming"、"Man on the Moon"、そして'90代を代表するアンセム"Everybody Hurts."を収録。R.E.M.の人気をを決定づけた1枚。

Uncut - 5 stars out of 5 - "[T]he album found R.E.M. concentrating on their mature strengths: dignity, mandolins, somber brown textures, unblinking seriousness of intent..." Mojo - 4 stars out of 5 - "With '92's AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE, R.E.M. reached their creative peak." Q - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s." Village Voice - Ranked #3 in the Village Voice's list of the 40 Best Albums Of 1992. NME - 10 - Classic - "...They've created an LP you can gain a lot from in times of trouble....In their hands, music is no longer wallpaper, but a living, breathing organism as old as the hills..." Rolling Stone - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone - 5 Stars - Classic - "...R.E.M. has never made music more gorgeous....shimmers with new, complex beauty....musically irresistible....finds the band gaining a startling emotional directness..." Entertainment Weekly - "...deeply moving and entirely idiosyncratic....[the songs] tend to be rich and subdued, full of lush strings and deep feeling....show[s] the band moving into more personal territory than ever before....the band's greatest triumph..." - Rating: A Q - Ranked #6 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime" Spin - Ranked #40 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s." Q - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...a lively form of bliss is readily available from the sounds of AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE....Big emotions, big ideas....it's about life. Without embarrassment and via sundry dark metaphors, it enquires `What's it all about, if anything?'..." NME - Ranked #11 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums" NME - Ranked #23 in NME's list of the `Greatest Albums Of All Time.' Musician - "...These quiet songs, so sure of their honesty that they are unafraid of risking musical corniness, can be heard as an indictment of the Republican era, a lament for the AIDS years, or simply a consideration of roads not taken..." Q - Included in Q's list of the 50 Best Albums Of 1992. Blender - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]heir dreamiest. Here, they pair melancholic folk-rock apparitions with hopeful strings." Paste - "[T]he tone of AUTOMATIC is marked by doughy pressure and woozy beauty. The remastered version of the LP brings that to the fore as well as emphasizing the skin-tingling intimacy of Michael Stipe's vocals throughout." Magnet - "Beyond all the beautiful sadness, there's joyful nonsense, a noisy screed against the GOP and the most unabashedly erotic song R.E.M. had released up to that point..."

Turning away from the sweet pop of Out of Time, R.E.M. created a haunting, melancholy masterpiece with Automatic for the People. At its core, the album is a collection of folk songs about aging, death, and loss, but the music has a grand, epic sweep provided by layers of lush strings, interweaving acoustic instruments, and shimmering keyboards. Automatic for the People captures the group at a crossroads, as they moved from cult heroes to elder statesmen, and the album is a graceful transition into their new status. It is a reflective album, with frank discussions on mortality, but it is not a despairing record -- "Nightswimming," "Everybody Hurts," and "Sweetness Follows" have a comforting melancholy, while "Find the River" provides a positive sense of closure. R.E.M. have never been as emotionally direct as they are on Automatic for the People, nor have they ever created music quite as rich and timeless, and while the record is not an easy listen, it is the most rewarding record in their oeuvre. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine|