12 Months Of Murmur: November
R.E.M. released Murmur, their fizzy, aching full-length debut, in 1983. It became Rolling Stone’s top album of the year and helped propel the band in a steady climb to become one of the biggest in the world. Murmur has 12 songs — at least two are serious contenders for best in their catalog — and as you’ll recall, years have 12 months. This project, 12 Months of Murmur, is my attempt to match the songs on the album (via mood or sound or narrative, etc.) with how I lived the months of 2017. Each entry is posted on the last day of the given month. Next up: November.
“Pilgrimage”
Athens, Georgia has lately been on my mind. When I made plans to venture to northwest Florida for Thanksgiving this year, I considered flying to Atlanta with a half-day layover so I could rent a car and spend a few hours in Athens. I had visions of trekking to the old railroad trestle on Murmur’s back cover (as others have) and popping by the 40 Watt Club and the iconic steeple at the site where the band held its first-ever show in 1980. This never came to pass due to travel logistics, but it got me thinking that an R.E.M. pilgrimage simply must be in the cards sometime in my future.
The R.E.M. song “Pilgrimage” isn’t quite about this type of journey — one that lionizes land as consecrated because it’s been lived on by holy artists — but there are certain religious themes at play. “Speaking in tongues” are some of the clearest words sung on the moody, contemplative song, and later mentions of hate being “clipped and distant” evoke Holy Land strife more than they do a frivolous music trip like the kind I’d half-planned.
“Pilgrimage” check the appropriate boxes for an early R.E.M. song: spindly guitar noise, inscrutability, surging chorus melodies. But that its main-verse musicality originates around bright, sparse notes is almost anachronistic, typical of the early-’90s sound of the band instead. And that it blurs into view directly after “Radio Free Europe” is telling; the band wanted to change gears early on the album, which is likely why “Laughing” comes next and prolongs the rumination (before “Moral Kiosk” and “Sitting Still” revive the album with patented effervescence).
But when I listen to “Pilgrimage,” I hear the weird, almost mathematical sound of the mind wandering meditatively. The way my mind sounds when I consider what a trek to Athens might start to look like in practice — as Google Maps crawls me through the town and its outskirts and fan bibles help me discern my own torch-lit path — not just as an escapist daydream. “Pilgrimage has gained momentum,” Michael Stipe sings during the pre-chorus. It sounds better ever time I hear it. (This live version absolutely rips, too. Hard to do on a song this subdued.)
