Description
Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, R.E.M.’s debut EP CHRONIC
TOWN will be released for the first time ever as a standalone CD with extensive liner notes by the
original producer Mitch Easter (Let’s Active).
Featuring such adored classics in the band’s repertoire as “Gardening At Night”, “Wolves, Lower” and
“1,000,000,” the five song EP, as Rolling Stone noted, “served notice that R.E.M. was an outfit to watch.”
As a debut release, R.E.M.’s Chronic Town was an anomaly… a record that didn’t quite fit into the
constraints of what was played on the radio. So instead of trying to fit into a genre, R.E.M. helped
create their own: College Rock. The follow-up to their breakthrough single “Radio Free Europe” which
was released in 1981, Chronic Town served as the entry point to what would become one of Alternative
Rock’s biggest bands. “One might fancifully say that Chronic Town was the sound of an expedition,
ready for anything, setting forth,” says Easter fondly about the EP. “If R.E.M. ‘Radio Free Europe’ single
was a signpost, the Chronic Town EP was the atlas.”
Introducing their arpeggiated guitar playing, cryptic and often indecipherable lyrics, and radiant
choruses that would soon emerge as signatures of the classic R.E.M. sound, Chronic Town is the sound
of a restless band, chock full of ideas, operating on a post-collegiate budget. Charmingly ragged and
refreshingly immediate, it established the band indelibly upon impact. “Wolves, Lower” opens the EP
with Michael Stipe’s trademark impressionistic and idiosyncratic lyrics, while Mike Mills’ rubbery bass
lines and Peter Buck’s jangly Rickenbacker keeps Bill Berry’s unpredictable drumming in check. It’s this
combination that would not only fuel the band for subsequent decades but make them equally as
dependable as songsmiths. Serving as a template for ‘80s college jangle pop, “Gardening At Night”
forged a style that combined heartily strummed rhythm guitars with a meandering bass line that proved
to be a solid blueprint for college bands to come.
Critically hailed both upon release and in retrospect, Chronic Town heralded “a great band planting their
flag in the ground, an historic landmark that portended great things that actually came” (Stereogum).
The Stranger praised “everything about the EP, from its gnomic, blue-tinted cover art, to its restlessly
discursive music, to the fact that the two sides both had their own titles (‘Chronic Town’ and ‘Poster
Torn’), was not only good on its own merits, but an excellent influence in favor of obscurantism and
understatement.” Chronic Town’s impact and influence on the future of alternative music is uncontested
and described by Magnet Magazine as “essentially a template for the entire indie-rock movement.”
Side A
1. Wolves, Lower
2. Gardening At Night
3. Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)
Side B
1. 1,000,000
2. Stumble
