Automatic For The People

Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.52) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone (10/29/92, p.68) - 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..." Spin (9/99, p.140) - Ranked #40 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s." Entertainment Weekly (10/16/92, p.74) - "...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 (12/99, p.74) - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s." Q (10/01, p.102) - Ranked #6 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime" Q (1/93, p.68) - Included in Q's list of the 50 Best Albums Of 1992. Q (11/92, p.117) - 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?'..." Uncut (pp.110-111) - 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..." 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..." Musician (10/92, p.102) - "...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..." Village Voice (3/2/93, p.5) - Ranked #3 in the Village Voice's list of the 40 Best Albums Of 1992. Mojo (Publisher) (p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 - "With '92's AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE, R.E.M. reached their creative peak." NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #23 in NME's list of the `Greatest Albums Of All Time.' NME (Magazine) (8/12/00, p.28) - Ranked #11 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums" NME (Magazine) (10/3/92, p.36) - 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..." Blender (Magazine) (p.106) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]heir dreamiest. Here, they pair melancholic folk-rock apparitions with hopeful strings." Paste (magazine) - "[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."