R.E.M. Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of “Chronic Town”

Available For The First Time As A Standalone CD
via  I.R.S. / UMe With Extensive Liner Notes
By Producer MITCH EASTER
Also Available In Picture Disc And Cassette Editions

Celebrating its 40 ^th  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 ).  It will be released in three different formats: CD, Picture Disc, and Cassette on August 19, 2022  via  I.R.S./UMe and can be preordered  here .

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  became 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, a 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.”