Document was the album that helped elevate R.E.M. from kings of college radio to the mainstream. Buoyed by the catchy (and misunderstood) song "The One I Love", Document hit number 10 on the album charts. That's not too bad for an album made up of some highly political songs and some very non-commercial ones. "Finest Worksong" & "Welcome To The Occupation" open the album on a politically charged and powerful note. "Exhuming McCarthy" starts off with the sounds of a typewriter and then slides into pounding Bill Berry drumbeat and jangling Peter Buck guitar. "Disturbance At The Heron House" has a fine Michael Stipe vocal while "Strange" is an abbreviated number that has some good backup singing from Mike Mills in an almost doo wop style. "King Of Birds" has a deep south, r&b feel to it. "Lightnin' Hopkins" and "Oddfellows Local 151" are the strangest songs on the album with the later being drenched in feedback. "The One I Love" became the first song by the band to gain major radio-play and actually peaked at number 9 on the charts. On the surface, the song seems like a love song, but it is really a barbed attack. "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" is the centerpiece of the album though. Michael Stipe sings at a breakneck speed and the song is one of the best of the 80's. Many ardent R.E.M. fans dismiss this album as the band selling-out, but that is hardly the case. R.E.M. remained true to their roots and actually released a typically non-commercial album that became a commercial success due to people finally realizing the greatness and talent of the band. They show that you can become superstars on your own terms.

[NOTE: other reviews of this release may be from the 2005 DualDisc/SACD release, NOT the 2012 box set.]

This album's reissue presumably represents the finale in the REM-IRS reissue series, and it's arguably the most important album in their catalog and one of the most far-fetched albums in what would no longer be called punk rock. REM arrived at the tail end of punk's old guard, when labels like SST and Frontier were in their final heyday, and steered punk toward a provincial, folksy simplicity. Compare their first two albums to Dream Syndicate, Minutemen, and Green on Red, and you get a nice trajectory. But by 1987, things were very different: punk's tentative adulthood had to contend with MTV and "Joshua Tree" bombast, and REM knew to evolve. "Document" was a punk album with a shiny, energetic surface - but underneath, it was stranger, darker, and heavier than anything they had dared do before.

The key is not to make too much of the strong MTV-fueled singles, stellar and designer-simple as they are, and instead focus on the weird pieces elsewhere. "Disturbance at the Heron House", "King of Birds", and "Fireplace" are lyrically and musically so far off the map it's hard to imagine any band ever playing such music. By the time "King of Birds" devolves into a wind-blown dirge, you can hear shades of the emotional intimacy they would later pursue on post-Warners stuff like "Automatic for the People" and "Up" - mood music, heavy and deep and thoughtful and distant. "Document" beyond the hit singles is the sound of REM growing up, confident.

The extra CD here is just ridiculously good. A live show from the Netherlands that seethes with energy and power, this recording shows REM in their final IRS years as a live band with no equal, throwing songs off a cliff with ease. Listen to the way they twist "Exhuming McCarthy" and "Finest Worksong" into massive, hammering punishments. The singles are almost too much to bear in this context, Pete Buck going completely haywire like a seer discovering the full power of an unknown gift. At this point in their careers, REM was about to send punk rock on its way and embrace something bigger and more self-challenging.

And what a send-off it was. REM had taken punk rock from its hidden beginnings to a different place, and beyond that there was uncertainty and fame. But "Document" remains the "finest hour" (to quote a screeching lyric of imminent arrival), an album that really can't be measured against their earlier classics but one that stands in between the freer, Econoline van-tour era of their Athens origins and a worldly stage of big-message authority.

Sorry. I know that probably isn't the real lyric. Sadly for me, I don't occupy the mind (or the time) of Michael Stipe. Which is unlike the majority of reviewers who have taken the time to review this album. Magically, most everybody knows the secret hidden meanings behind songs such as "The One I Love" and "Oddfellows Local 151." How is everyone so in the know? What do I have to do to get in this vaunted group? I'm dying to know. Perhaps could it be many are merely regurgitating what they read in music magazines, see on TV, hear from friends, etc.,etc. Newsflash 2000: REM song "One I Love", not really love song. Story at 11.

But I digress. I don't think I can interpret Stipe's lyrics anyway. So I won't bother to try. I never was much of one to listen to a song and understand all the lyrics. Often, years go by while I'm making up my own words until someone catches me singing (badly) the wrong words and laughs and makes fun of me until I cry.

But that's neither here nor there. To me, REM strives at what most of the other alternative bands were likewise reaching for. A place beyond ordinary rock music. It might sound a bit silly to say, but transcendence. Be that in the form of a political message, a social message, or a spiritual message. It's the same reason why this band and U2 and precious few others survived the early 90's barrage of alt rock music. Because ultimately, we want to hear music that actually has a message and means something to not only the audience but also the performer. At least, I believe some of us do. Which doesn't help to explain Limp Bizkit. Maybe there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Maybe from time to time we need a pile of redundant stupidity to keep us in check.

In the end everyone finds their own meaning in songs. I'm not going to tell you this song means exactly this and only this and that song means exactly that and only that. I could tell you what it means to me. But really, what good is that? I can't persuade anyone to like it because I tell them to. You have to find out for yourself what it means to you. Isn't that what art is all about? It's the same reason you can tell a masterpiece from an advertisement. Both are pictures. It's the same with this album and the rest of the trash that's out there today. Both contain songs. Or at least screaming and maniacal ranting.

What made Document different from all the preceding R.E.M. albums? Well, first of all, you could understand the lyrics. No more trying to decipher Michael Stipe's vocals as he flung his imagery out there in a stream-of-consciousness manner (with, of course, the obvious exception of "It's The End of the World...")

Second, it actually spawned a hit single. Ironically (or maybe not so ironically), "The One I Love" is the song with the simplest message and the lyrics to go along with it. Since it's just a repeated verse, there is no great stretch to find the meaning behind it. I guess that meant it was okay for mass consumption, but I think it also meant that R.E.M. weren't tentative about jumping into the public eye beyond college radio.

Last of all, it's their last album on I.R.S. records before they jumped to the major labels with Green. It may not seem like much of a point in terms of what makes an album good, but if you listen to Document and Green back-to-back you get a definite sense that something has changed, whether it be subject matter, production values, or whatnot.

I may be in the minority in that Green and Document are my favorite R.E.M. albums, but I think the songs, particulary on Document, convey a great blend of affairs both political and of the heart. "Exhuming McCarthy" and "Disturbance at the Heron House" in particular catch you with their music and force you to pay attention to what they are saying. It's unusual to be able to trace a band's progression as artists so clearly as one can with R.E.M. albums. Whereas Green was the diving board that they used to plunge into the mainstream and Out of Time was the vessel that took them there permanently, Document was the ladder taking them up to make their leap.

This album is flawless from songwriting to tune to performance. This REM album set a high water mark which has only been approached by "Automatic for the People."

"Document" slightly surpasses the excellent early REM albums, but the real reason for that is that the band is one of the most obvious example of musical evolution. REM as a band has been in a state of flux since its formation, and the early albums, though fine work on their own, seem to be striving towards this fully realized album. (We won't go into the subsequent REM albums and the thought that evolution is not always moving foreward, sometimes it is just moving...)

The biggest reason this album is perfection is its coherence. Many albums have no unifying concept or theory, so they are a collection of songs. Which is OK. But this album is more than that. It is an artistic piece which holds together as a thematic meditation as well as a bunch of awesome pop/rock songs. For evidence of this, just take a listen. (My praise of "Automatic" largely rests upon the same theory.)

But despite all the mastery REM shows here, you can still put this CD on at a party and people will be thrilled. Songs like "It's the End of the World...(etc.)" are crowd pleasers without being trite or beat-heavy.

REM changed the direction of music, I think, and this album is a good reason why. Buy it and be very very satisfied.