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R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

Artist: R.E.M.

Author: Sarah

Date: 04/24/2026 (originally written around August 2022)

Listen: Apple Music | Spotify

Most of the time, you come to love albums because of what they mean to you. But this album holds a unique place in my heart, as one I love because of what I once thought it would later mean to me.

I first heard Fables of the Reconstruction late in my senior year of high school, about six months before I left my hometown to attend a university in the Deep South. During those six months (and especially during the summer), I would listen to this album, and assume that the Southern homesick longing of "Good Advices" would perfectly soundtrack lonely days in my dorm room. That never actually happened: my freshman year I actually put effort into trying to make new friendships, and never really had time to feel homesick like I expected. Instead, it ended up accentuating the Southernness of my occasional drives down the backroads.

In particular, it's "Maps and Legends" that I associate with those afternoon drives. That's the one that would usually be playing as I drove through the last stoplight between me and the middle of nowhere, and it always gave me the feeling of the country opening up before me. Songs like "Old Man Kensey" or "Wendell Gee" would take on a sort of tragic quality if I heard them while passing through half-deserted small towns, but mostly it was farmland rushing past complemented by songs like "Green Grow the Rushes" or "Driver 8". To this day, I won't listen to this album any other way. Not while sitting at my desk, not while out in the city, not even driving down the highway. It simply must be heard on the dustiest state (or even better, county) road you can find, passing through boarded up towns and imagining the lives that were spent behind those rotting shutters.