Fables of the Reconstruction by R.E.M.

Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M.'s third album, came out on I.R.S. on June 10, 1985, and it was the first time the band had made a record outside the US: they went to Livingston Studios in London to work with producer Joe Boyd. You can feel the distance. It's a darker, murkier record than the first two, soaked in the Southern Gothic, full of strange characters and half-told stories.

Michael Stipe's vocals swim deep in the mix, Peter Buck's guitar chimes and drones, Mike Mills adds bass, keyboards and those crucial harmonies, and Bill Berry's drums hold the fog in place. Strings, brass and banjo creep into the corners. "Can't Get There from Here" is a funky, cockeyed stomp, "Driver 8" rolls along like a slow freight with a lovely ache, and "Feeling Gravity's Pull", "Maps and Legends" and "Life and How to Live It" are as mysterious as their titles.

Critics were kind, picking up on the folk and the gloom, and in hindsight it plays like a bridge between the band's early murk and the acoustic adventures still to come. It climbed into the US top 30, only the second R.E.M. album to get that far, and became their first to crack the UK top 40, and it went gold in 1991. None of the singles caught fire on the pop charts, but "Driver 8" has turned into one of the best-known and most covered songs of their early years.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.