Released in September 1987, R.E.M.'s fifth album, Document, contained something no one ever expected to hear from the Athens band. It wasn't the Wire cover or Steve Berlin's saxophone skronking through "Fireplace". It wasn't Michael Stipe singing what purported to be a love song, which he had sworn at one point never to do. The record packed an even bigger surprise: an actual radio hit. Before the year was over, "The One I Love" had peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard singles chart, and this was back when that meant something. It was R.E.M.'s first foray into a mainstream crowded with hair metal bands, mall-pop acts, and AOR interchangeables. Few of these acts would survive the decade, but this unlikely smash signaled only the start of the group's prolonged ascent.
How did this Southern rock band, who had more in common with Wire than with then-popular Peach Staters Georgia Satellites, find a spot in the public consciousness alongside U2, Guns N' Roses, and George Michael, who all more or less owned 1987? R.E.M. cultivated an air of mystery that extended from their music (the obscure lyrics, the refusal to lip sync in videos) to the packaging (mismatched tracklists, head-scratching instructions to "File Under Fire"). And "The One I Love" was an odd choice for a hit: Peter Buck's guitar possesses a rich, strange grain that charges the song with vague menace, especially when he unspools that psych-rock solo, and the mosaic hook itself is split between Stipe shouting "Fire!" in an empty theater and Mike Mills adding a descending countermelody. Lyrically, the song is one contradiction twisting into another: "This one goes out to the one I love/ A simple prop to occupy my time." Twenty-five years later, it remains nearly impossible to parse the implications of that particular couplet; on the other hand, 25 years later, it's still worth trying, as the latest in Capitol Records' reissue series proves.
If 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction was their most self-consciously Southern record to date and 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant their most overtly political, Document maintained both their regional self-definition as well as their indirect social engagement, even going so far as to sample Joseph Welch reprimanding Joseph McCarthy. ("At long last, have you left no sense of decency?") The album is a prolonged meditation on the idea of labor, opening with "Finest Worksong" before teasing out the implications on "Welcome to the Occupation". The defiantly chipper "Exhuming McCarthy" opens with the clack of Stipe's typewriter, connecting the work of the band with that of the journalist, and even "Fireplace" is less about the dance party than the preparations for it: "Hang up your chairs to better sweep, clear the floor to dance," Stipe sings, twisting his lines with each repetition until the entire building has been dismantled in an act of constructive destruction.
And yet, R.E.M. never sound openly angry or at all condescending here. They may not have had day jobs by then, but they saw their art as labor and their labor as art. Engaging with politics and social issues in their music emboldened and arguably ennobled them, although this lyrical mission didn't alter their general approach to their work. The band's democracy was not only a professional strategy but a musical one as well: R.E.M. always worked best when the four members had equal representation in the songs, and producer Scott Litt helps them find the right balance. Bill Berry is still the backbone, a one-man rhythm section that allows Mills to play ingeniously melodic basslines. Stipe continues his trajectory toward extroversion, bending his voice into a reedy sneer on "Lightnin' Hopkins" and rattling off a weird history of the 20th century on "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". That may be his best vocal performance, spirited and goofy and ecstatic. The album's most direct line-- "I'm addressing the realpolitik," from "Exhuming McCarthy"-- may also be his funniest; this was, after all, the man who made a virtue out of mumbly obscurity.
But Document is Buck's album, from the chiming fanfare that opens "Finest Worksong" to the sludgy trudge that closes "Oddfellows Local 151". He sounds intent on summing up more than three decades of rock guitar in these 40 minutes. Jangle was only the base from which to venture into surf, post-punk, country rock, even a little rockabilly. This is R.E.M. at their most rock: more targeted than Green but less self-conscious than Monster. Still, despite the thematic throughline, Buck's heroics, and a predictably excellent remastering job on the reissue, Document still sounds like the band's least satisfying I.R.S. album (says the Fables apologist), with an especially ragtag second side that starts almost perfectly but drifts off as it proceeds. As covers go, Wire's "Strange" proves less revelatory than the Clique's "Superman" on Lifes Rich Pageant, and the moody "King of Birds" and "Oddfellows Local 151" leave the album tattered at the ends.
However, saying Document is their weakest indie-label release is like saying Mothra was the least of Godzilla's foes: That big bug could still level Tokyo. Even five albums into their career, R.E.M. managed to sound both confident and unsettled, always pushing into new territory but galvanized by what they could do together. Whether they knew it at the time, Document represents a band readying itself for the spotlight as though preparing for a fight. That much is apparent on the bonus disc, which-- like the reissues for Murmur and Reckoning-- documents the band's live show and emphasizes the life of the song rather than the creation. The band wrangled them into new shapes every night, whether by adding new space and momentum to "Oddfellows" or appending "Exhuming McCarthy" with Mills' new vocal line: "Meet me at the book burning!" Recorded during a European tour, the live disc ends not with a Document number, but with a lovely, hymnlike performance of "So. Central Rain" featuring only Buck's guitar and vocals by Stipe and Mills. It's a moment fraught with tension and precariousness, especially when Stipe rolls in a few lines from "Time After Time (Annelise)". Some might find the absence of Berry on the song eerily prescient, but truly it shows a band fearlessly embracing its own newfound success. "The time to rise," as Stipe sings on "Finest Worksong", "has been engaged."
