R.e.m.

Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), provides provocative discussions of R.E.M.'s albums from Chronic Town (�every so often a chaotic undertow suggests there's more to their romanticism than Spanish moss�) to Green. Christgau struggles with the lack of literary specificity in the band's lyrics, promotes some understanding of their Southern origins, slightly underrates Fables of the Reconstruction while noting that the album �clinches it: their formal frame of reference is folk-rock,� and uses the crucial word to explain R.E.M.'s appeal for a certain sort of rock-based fan and commentator: �reassuring.� Patricia Romanowski, Holly George-Warren, and Jon Pareles (eds.), The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock