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Murmur

LP, Reissued, Extra Tracks, Remastered

R.E.M. Format: Vinyl
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 738 ratings
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Track Listings

Disc: 1

1 Radio Free Europe 4:03
2 Pilgrimage 4:25
3 Laughing 3:52
4 Talk About the Passion 3:22
5 Moral Kiosk 3:32
6 Perfect Circle 3:23

Disc: 2

1 Catapult 3:54
2 Sitting Still 3:07
3 9 - 9 3:02
4 Shaking Through 4:00
5 We Walk 3:04
6 West Of The Fields 3:15

Editorial Reviews

Murmur is the debut studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1983 on I.R.S. Records. Murmur drew critical acclaim upon it's release for it's sound, defined by singer Michael Stipe's cryptic lyrics, guitarist Peter Buck's jangly guitar style, and bassist Mike Mills' melodic basslines.

Product details

  • Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.68 x 12.68 x 0.04 inches; 10.72 ounces
  • Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ A&M
  • Item model number ‏ : ‎ 1301501
  • Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2009
  • Date First Available ‏ : ‎ May 9, 2009
  • Label ‏ : ‎ A&M
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002984AKM
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 738 ratings

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
738 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

D.R. Peak
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic swampy alt-rock
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2015
Verified Purchase
R.E.M. -- Murmur. Released April 1983. Produced by Don Dixon and Mitch Easter.

Many, many moons ago I wrote a novel. No, it's never been published, and only a handful of folks have ever read it. What's it about? Well, there's this girl, Vickie, who plays in a band and the book is about her struggles with playing music in a small town in the 1990s. In one chapter she has some down time between gigs and rehearsals so she decides to listen to some music. Here's a short excerpt:

"Vickie turned on her stereo, an old solid-state Pioneer that Scott had found at a yard sale for her, and glanced through her collection of record albums for something appropriate. She pulled out her copy of R.E.M.'s Murmur and slapped it down on the turntable. She didn't care much for the newer stuff by R.E.M. but loved both Murmur and Chronic Town, and could tolerate Reckoning if she was in a certain mood.

But Murmur was still her favorite. Whenever she put it on in the middle of a hot summer night, it became a thing unto itself, separated from all the other music that came either before or after. As if mad monks exiled from the world for years, perhaps in the hills of Appalachia, were given electric guitars and old scratchy copies of long dead bluesmen and Chuck Berry b-sides and then asked to make a pilgrimage to Graceland; playing in every bar and whiskey joint on the way, and then going back home to record on a mobile-unit set up in the monastery's sanctuary. Or even better--the wine cellar.

Back when Vickie was still in college, she would stay up all night long, studying and listening to Murmur. Listening to it now, many years after she first discovered it, never failed to bring up images of broken stained glass, smokey valleys, kudzu encrusted cemeteries, and damp, sweaty, rainy nights, all shot in grainy black-and-white, slightly out of focus and purposely, yet haphazardly, patched together in someone's basement."

That's Murmur to me, in a nutshell. Moodier and more atmospheric than their first release, their EP Chronic Town, more timeless than anything they released afterwards.

There's a handful of albums that come out timeless and fully realized. As if nothing before really mattered to it's crafting. New, magical, vaguely familiar in a haunting way, yet so fresh you could smell the earth from whence it crawled. Astral Weeks by Van Morrison is one of those, as is Dylan's John Wesley Harding, Elvis Presley's first singles, and perhaps Springsteen's Nebraska. R.E.M.'s Murmur is another.

Now, this could be just me. New to Jacksonville, away from all my friends, working an office job, trying to find the right band to play with--I was definitely in search of something. When you're a lonely teenager you tend to latch onto whatever you can that fills you with fulfillment whether it's books, music, or friends. I was also reading voraciously around this time, about a book a day, mostly classic science-fiction, but also history, science, music biographies, and music essays such as Greil Marcus's great read Mystery Train which I found in the downtown Jacksonville Public Library, checking it out many times over, highlighting certain passages and writing my own notes in the margin. Murmur seemed to me to fit in with the other stories in the book. Stories about musicians in America trying to make sense of the world they were in.

When you're young and in a band just how do you make any sense at all out of the world you're stuck with? I was grappling with this around the same time I heard Murmur. Their solution to this dilemma seemed to me to simply make your own rules. Don't worry as much about how others did things, find what works for you. Use your own voice. Why copy when you can create? That's what I hear, even thirty years later, when I hear this album. A punk D.I.Y. ethos for sure--why not apply it to music that would be definitely not classified as punk? There were already too many cookie-cutter bands out there.

Lots of attention is given to Stipe's mumble-singing and cut and paste, impressionistic lyrics, Peter Buck's chimey guitars, and Mike Mills excellent bass work, but I never hear enough about Bill Berry's drums on this album and that's unfortunate because his parts are exemplary. He's somewhere between backbeat and orchestral--very deliberate, very concise, yet rockin'. The kick drum throughout this album is clear and at the perfect volume. Not overloud like in a lot of modern music, it's very natural sounding, very real. Balance that with the snare which is crisp and cutting and--can I use the word natural again?--then yes, very natural, with a hint of tambourine here and there. He also utilizes rototoms as dynamic punches, shifting gears as he transitions from one section of a song into another. My favorite rototom parts are when he uses them as a way to emphasis the spaciousness of a song, to showcase the utter lack of density in the arrangement. The musicianship on this album is not what one would classify as seasoned or progressive, there are no meticulous guitar solos to gloat about, no stacked harmonies--every instrument serves the song, nothing is over-played or extravagant. This is musicians paying attention to what they're doing, being mindful, and working as a whole to bring something to life.

This is also true of the production. listen to the way the simple, close mic'd piano blends coherently with certain bass notes. There are spaces between the instruments as if they were recorded in the far corners of the room, as far away from one another as possible, but still playing as one. Background vocals that don't always support the lead vocal, but exist in their own space, obscured, yet tangible, like the kudzu on the album cover. Shadows.

R.E.M. would mostly abandon this type of production in subsequent albums, becoming more and more rock-like and that was wise of them. You can only stay in the shadows for so long.
12 people found this helpful
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Philip S. Wolf
5.0 out of 5 stars Ghosts Of Punch
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2008
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Not too many bands over the last forty years or so have come out of the gate with an introductory LP with such a lasting impact as: "Murmur".
This record created something entirely different in 1983, it was rock as much as it was pop, and it wasn't even close to anything else released during the early eighties. The biggest kicker to the whole deal was that R.E.M. came from a small town in Georgia.

How in the world, can an album fit in between Molly Hatchet & Thriller? How can mumbled/mixed down vocals and chiming Rickenbacker guitars hold their own next to moonwalking and 27 minute jams of: "Whipping Post?" Well, R.E.M. was about unknown to everyone north of Richmond, Virginia and south of Jacksonville, Florida in early 1983, when IRS thrust this force onto a world of folks that were dying to be freed from the onslaught of drum machines and synths and crummy white-bread R & B, that at the time, seemed endless and unrelenting.

I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time on the coast of Virginia when this storm surged right at us. "Radio Free Europe" was already all over the good radio staions in southlands, and this single was very...well, it was great! The "Chronic Town" EP was in record stores with that bored gargoyle on a cool blue record sleeve. Something really different was happening here, catchy songs and an air of freshness was blowing out the pomp and excesses of the 1970's.

Disc One: "Murmur"
The big issue here with the 1983 recording, will be of course the concern over the sound of this, the re-mastered edition of 2008. To my old ears, this version is not that much different from the original record. What is of notice, is the the bass guitar is punching and pounding at the woofers of my speakers. The bass drum is a force as well, {and I have always thought the drumming by Bill Berry, was about as great as it gets.} There is a bigger brightness and clarity to the guitars, and Michael has been brought up a little more forward out of the original mix. Yes, this is the same record that I listened to 25 years ago, but now it is a whole lot BIGGER.

Out of the 35 or so songs that the band brought to the studios to use for this project, they did indeed pick 12 unique and timeless pieces to present their music to an unsuspecting world. "Pilgrimage", "Laughing", "9-9", "Talk About The Passion" "West Of The Fields" and "Catapult" are timeless gems and mature works for a band of two and a half years running. There is an updated, and more fully formed version of: "Radio Free Europe" here that is a bit different from the original single version of two years earlier. This album comes alive in the new mix, as it has been rescued from a swampy kudzu landscape under a railroad trestle.

Disc Two: "Live In Toronto {1983}"
Between 1980 and 1983, R.E.M. spent more time on the road than they would ever attempt again. First near Athens, then into South & North Carolina and Tennessee. They performed in small towns that had never hosted a big-name rock band. Word spread quickly that this was a band to see perform live. Dates in California, New York and Boston followed over the next two years. By summer of 1983, R.E.M. entered Canada for the first time and played their first show in Toronto at Larry's Hideway.

There are 16 songs on the live CD and it clocks in at 57 minutes. This is taken from the 60 minute FM radio broadcast of the show. Over the past two and a half decades, bootlegs of this night have appeared in LP, cassette and CD formats. The set opener: "Wolves, Lower" isn't on here, this CD starts at the opening of: "Laughing" and there is no sign of "Moral Kiosk" on this as well. This was a good night, but the cover songs that normally comprise a big part of R.E.M.'s live work are not a part of this show, because the FM market was hearing strictly band composed material, a proper strategy to win over a new audience.

Live R.E.M. in the early eighties is a raw punk driven force of noise and frantic energy, that is very fun to be a part of. Getting to pogo infront of one of those low stages, in sweaty clubs and dancehalls with a few hundred other lucky souls, {my night was: Virginia Beach in The Pavilion, with the Dream Syndicate as openers, on a hot summer night in 1984.} was a concert highlight, that is very difficult to forget.

The live CD is great to have in much improved sound quality over the boots, but when you realize what was not included here, you will be begging for more complete shows from 1981-1985 to see the light of an official release. Most of: "Murmur" is here, as is most of: "Chronic Town" also included are: "Harborcoat" & "7 Chinese Bros." from the then unreleased second LP: "Reckoning". This is a fine document of one of hundreds of nights on the road from the band's early days together, but I could go for listening to tapes of about 99 more shows from the first five years, and be very happy indeed!

This record was one of the very best released in the eighties {as was: "Reckoning" & "Fables Of The Reconstruction."} A bunch of groups that came after R.E.M. owe them a lot of thank's, for all those miles they traveled on back roads throughout the south with Jefferson at the wheel of that old station wagon. We got lucky here with this great band in 1983, this is what got a lot of us through the eighties...real music!
FIVE STARS!!!
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Mauricio Romero
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb album
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2024
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One of the best R.E.M albums ever!
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Dei lugosi
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente
Reviewed in Mexico on July 21, 2023
Verified Purchase
Excelente entrega, lo recibí antes de lo anunciado. Temía que me llegara la edición deluxe o la de IRS years, pero para los interesados...no se preocupen. Es la edición estándar.
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Ricardo A. Filho
4.0 out of 5 stars Um álbum fenomenal em uma edição excelente
Reviewed in Brazil on August 4, 2022
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Murmur foi o álbum de estréia do R.E.M. e compõe o que chamo de quinteto impecável de álbuns na IRS. Sobre a edição em si, é 180g, foi lançado em 2009 e, do ponto de vista de mastering e cutting, é de longe a melhor versão que já escutei do álbum. Ele corrige a falha do CD original, que acelerou as faixas, e tem nenhum chiado de fundo.
A estrela negativa é que o álbum veio com riscos superficiais nítidos de fábrica, o que significa que vc corre um risco (ha) de ficar com um erro desses sem perceber.
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Allen W in Regina, SK
5.0 out of 5 stars Grows On You
Reviewed in Canada on September 28, 2021
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At first I just wanted to add some REM to my vinyl collection and was a much bigger fan of their mid-later ‘80s work, but all but one of these songs (of the ones I didn’t know) really grew on me. Catapult annoys me, but the rest are great. We Walk & Shaking Through being two that really grabbed me. Now, I got this new for $19 from Amazon, I don’t normally buy my records from here but I liked that price a lot. If you’re not saving money or at least time here, buy it local!
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Fabrizio
5.0 out of 5 stars Ottimo
Reviewed in Italy on March 30, 2024
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Per gli amanti dei REM , questo disco va assolutamente acquistato.
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Rainer Warnke
5.0 out of 5 stars Ich bin begeistert !
Reviewed in Germany on May 2, 2021
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Das Album hat schon den später so typischen REM-Sound.
liegt auch am Gesang von Michael Stipe.
Laut dem Rolling Stone Grundstein des Alternative Rock
Gehört in jede gut sortierte Rock-Sammlung
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