R.E.M.: Mike Mills (vocals, keyboards, bass); Michael Stipe (vocals); Peter Buck (guitar, mandolin); Bill Berry (drums).Additional personnel: Lonnie Ottzen, Denise Berginson-Smith, Jody Taylor, Sou-Chun Su, Sandy Salzinger, Patti Gouvas (violin); Paul Murphy, Reid Harris, Heidi Nitche (viola); Elizabeth Proctor Murphy, Kathleen Kee, Knox Chandler, Daniel Laufer (cello); Deborah Workman (oboe); Scott Litt (harmonica, Clavinet); Bertis Downs (keyboards).Recorded at Bearsville Studio, Bearsville, New York; Criteria Recording Studios, Miami, Florida; John Keane Studio, Athens, Georgia; Kingsway Studio, New Orleans, Louisiana; Bosstown Recording Studios, Atlanta, Georgia.AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE was nominated for 1994 Grammy Awards for Album Of The Year and Best Alternative Music Album.AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE is a true classic of rock in the 1990s. Released shortly after the successful OUT OF TIME, it finds R.E.M. on a creative roll with no shortage of original ideas; yet it also shows the band embracing even further the darker aesthetic shadings hinted at on "Losing My Religion." Bold songs such as the ominous "Drive" and the empathetic "Everybody Hurts" demonstrated that the band were not reluctant to experiment, while "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" and the elegiac Andy Kaufman tribute "Man On The Moon" displayed all of the intelligent pop savvy on which the band's reputation was first built. However, it is on songs such as "Sweetness Follows," "Nightswimming," and "Find the River" that a haunting melancholy emerges that is unlike anything the band previously attained. The songs are sparse yet full of deep emotion and conjure a Southern gothic emotionality that one mind find in amidst the pages of Flannery O'Connor's most redemptive work. AUTOMATIC is not R.E.M.'s most upbeat record, but it is unquestionably one of its most rewarding.
