Twenty-five years ago when Murmur was released, R.E.M. sewed the seeds that would grow into indie rock. At the time, it was an anomalous recording with loose ties to the Winston-Salem and Hoboken underground pop scenes, but private lyrics sung by a singer with an uneasy relationship with the spotlight set in arrangements that reveal a simultaneous love and distrust for rock ’n’ roll would become the all-purpose description for dozens of early ’90s bands.

I haven’t heard the album in the last 20 years, and the remastered version makes the album stranger than I remember it seeming. There’s more space in the mix, so pianos, strings and unusually deep echoes stand out and underscore how non-naturalistic the production of the guitar/bass/drums band really is—far more so than it initially seemed.

It’s also clearer in retrospect how important the Gang of Four were to R.E.M. The initial fascination with Peter Buck’s then-novel chiming Rickenbacker guitar drew attention away from echoes of the British post-punk band that can be heard in the angular dance rock of “Moral Kiosk,” “9-9” and “West of the Fields” to name a few. They were hardly alone in their debt to the Gang of Four, nor were the Gang of Four their primary influence. R.E.M.’s ability to synthesize an army of influences into lyrically vague, elliptical songs that drew you into a world was their gift; they’d grow into musicianship later.

One of those influences was the Velvet Underground, and they cover the Velvets’ “There She Goes Again” on the second disc, a live show from 1983 in Toronto at Larry’s Hideaway. I was at the show and am audible on the disc yelling for an encore. At the time, I walked away slightly disappointed because the first time I saw them—in London, Ontario opening for the English Beat the day
Murmur was released, when they blew me away—but now I’m impressed. The show leans heavily on Murmur, but it also draws on Chronic Town and previews songs from Reckoning and Life’s Rich Pageant, and the versions are consistently direct, propulsive without racing. Aside from the shaky harmony vocals that naturally emerge from young band playing through punk club PA.s., the only thing that dates the set is “There She Goes Again.” In the early 1980s, that song was everywhere.