Earworms: Strange Currencies by R.E.M.

I remember that Substack posts can be more than just short record reviews.

Here at Chez Pick we spent many recent nights watching the first two seasons of the TV series The Bear. Funny story about that – we had tried a month or so back to watch the first episode after so many friends and TV critics had raved about the show. But, that episode is so neurotic, so full of quick edits, close-ups, screaming, anger, and confusion, we just couldn’t handle it. It was clearly well done, but how in the world were we supposed to spend several hours in this sort of world?

Realizing eventually that we would have to try again, Cat and I were both quickly sucked in to the world of these messed up characters. Thankfully, only one other episode – season 2’s flashback episode 6 (if you saw it, you knew that already) – shared that level of intensity, and by then we were already pretty knowledgeable about the characters. By the end, I was convinced this was easily one of the strongest TV shows out there, a series wherein the characters strive for goals, improve in some ways, and yet remain blocked by traumas they barely know how to acknowledge. It’s funny, it’s brutal, it’s sometimes agonizing and sometimes beautiful.

And then there’s the music. I can’t imagine how much it cost to license so many songs. I don’t think the music person is as young as the characters in the show, because these 64-year-old ears were constantly being fed sweet memories from my past. Steve Earle, Squeeze, Lindsey Buckingham, the Replacements, Elvis Costello, Crowded House, Brian Eno & John Cale, the Pretenders, and R.E.M. were all given prominent spots across just Season 2. (Taylor Swift, Wilco, and Mavis Staples represented the 21^stCentury, and you know as well as I do that those last two aren’t exactly tight with the late 20s crowd.)

So, obviously, you can probably guess that the subject of today’s column played a role on this TV show. In fact, “Strange Currencies” turned up three times in season 2, which, as far as I can remember and the invaluable website dexerto.com can list, makes it the most prominent song of the season. It’s sort of the theme song for main character Carmen’s budding romance with his childhood friend Claire. This makes sense, as Michael Stipe, R.E.M.’s frontman who wrote the lyrics, said the song was about “when somebody actually thinks that, through words, they're going to be able to convince somebody that they are their one and only.” (that’s quoted on the Wikipedia page for the song.)  Carmen has no idea how to express himself that way, though inevitably, he does know how to use words to shoot himself in the foot.

Let’s think back to 1994 for a minute. “Strange Currencies” was on R.E.M.’s 9^th album, Monster, the follow-up to what was probably their best-selling record, Automatic For the People. After two albums filled with ballads, acoustic instruments, and gentler sounds, R.E.M. decided to make a record that fit with the times, and the times were grunge. This is not a grunge record, but it is filled with distorted guitars, simpler song structures, and a louder, harder, more aggressive approach.

“Strange Currencies” benefits from that incredible hot guitar tone Peter Buck achieved for this album – the power chords crunch, the arpeggios rattle. But this song isn’t so in your face as, say, “What’s the Frequency Kenneth” or “Bang and Blame.” Wikipedia says they worked hard to develop the song so it didn’t resemble “Everybody Hurts” but if it had been recorded that way, “Strange Currencies” could have been an obvious follow-up single.

Let me interject my own mood in September, 1994 when I was about five months removed from the second major break-up of the last two years, and was about three months away from finally finding my life’s person. I was emotionally ready for a song that could touch that loneliness, that desire for connection, that quiet hurt that churned inside me at frequent intervals. Just the sound of this song – Buck’s intro, two major chord arpeggios grounding a flirtatious feedback before Stipe starts to sing; the richness of Mike Mills’ bass, the sturdiness of Bill Berry’s drums; the plunking of what sounds like a toy piano doubling the arpeggios, the long held chords of a synthesizer; Buck’s immense feedback-edging power chords – is enough to take my breath away.

But more, this song is one of my all-time favorite Michael Stipe performances. He sounds so confused, so hungry, so urgent. “I don’t know why you’re mean to me / When I call you on the telephone,” he begins. I knew that feeling, even if it hadn’t exactly happened to me that way. “And I don’t know what you mean to me / But I want to turn you on / Turn you up, figure you out / I want to take you on.” First, there’s the word play with “mean,” then there’s the complexity of “turn you on” tied to “take you on.” But mostly, there’s the yearning, the dream that this time something might happen, that he can make this one work out. I didn’t have anybody in mind in September of that year, but I could still feel the mixed up emotions of possibility he nails here.

Stipe delivers these words with a mixture of fear and confidence. The double time spatter of “But I want to turn you on / Turn you up, figure you out” is the first indication that he is trying to take agency here. By the last verse, he is trying his best to talk himself past all difficulty, to work things out through nothing more than conviction. He shoots out the following lines in the space originally designed for far fewer words: “I need a chance, a second chance, a third chance / A fourth chance, a word, a signal / A nod, a little breath / Just to fool myself, to catch myself / To make it real, real.” The band is playing with all the strength they can muster, and Stipe is wanting this connection so badly. The song sounds like a love song, rocks like a monster, and hurts like a missed opportunity. No wonder I always squirmed a little when Carmen and Clair were tied to “Strange Currencies.”