Guest Essay by Michael Justin Cummins:
Why I really, really, really like the REM song "Hope"

     In early 1999, REM released its tenth album, "Up". Taken as a whole, it is not among the band’s finer work. But track four, "Hope", is among the best songs of all time.
     Through its first sixteen years, REM was an unusually stable and consistently productive rock band. But the years just before the release of "Up" were chaotic and fallow. The greatest upset of this period was the departure of drummer Bill Berry. REM is, in terms of the creative process, far closer to an equal partnership than most rock bands. To replace Berry wholesale and still call the group "REM" was unthinkable.
     So there was a period in which REM intended to continue on as a band, but use – mostly – programmed electronic percussion. ‘Live’ drummer Joey Waronker’s almost constant presence on "Up" tells that the techno/electronica phase was brief. "Hope" sounds to be a precious survivor, a strange artifact in the REM songbook.
     "Hope" opens with a synthesized keyboard in either channel, set against clattering, bodiless electric tom-toms. The keyboard tracks, poised for a duel, function instead in complete sympathy.
     When Michael Stipe’s passive yet deeply affecting vocals kick in, the listener joins him in a deathbed vigil, in media res. The singer’s friend, the listener infers, is dying of AIDS. Through a disjointed dementia, the dying man clings to a futile hope.
     The vocal pattern is an homage to Leonard Cohen’s "Suzanne" (Cohen gets co-writer’s credit in the liners). There is relatively little shift in pitch throughout the vocal phrases. The repetition of notes is becoming of Stipe’s rich, deep voice. As the verse cycles through, the synth interplay becomes more complex. One of the channels bursts out of its pattern to punctuate the vocals with an ecstatic, slippery upper-range riff. Incongruous, coruscant gurgles obtrude.
     There is a heavy spirituality in the overall sound. The programmed instrumental parts have a soaring, ascendant feel. The lyrics are rife with direct references to the hereafter. But there is something spiritual, or at least strikingly emotional, in even the morbid and/or basely descriptive lyrical turns. Stipe at one point relays the subject’s anticipation of a last-ditch medical procedure. But, Stipe observes, "they did the same to Matthew and he bled till Sunday night." Chilling. In his delirium, the subject observes the doctors "saying don’t be frightened and … killing alligators." The piercing of rough alligator skin. The blood. The hopelessness.
     Even the tinny computer claps take their evocative turn imagery. Under Stipe’s, "You’re trying to see through it and it doesn’t make sense," the percussion devolves to a single, evenly spaced beat. It brings to mind the childhood toy, the maniacally grinning, cymbal-snapping monkey. The maddening, insensate disease is like the monkey, clanging relentlessly, thoughtlessly. AIDS’s final ravages are not subject to reason, negotiation, or customary understanding. The claps start to clatter again, intensifying as the song moves forward. The noise they make becomes the noise of old-style, thick steel window blinds, the kind that still hang in many hospital rooms. The slats are being shuttered closed.
     After three verse cycles, "Hope" hits its ‘break’. The song in main comprises just two chords, two interchanging tonal movements. It’s a simple five-step pattern. At the break, the song hits a third, minor chord. The break is very brief, overlaid only by the quick line, "You want to climb the ladder, You want to see forever."
     It is at the tail end of the break that the listener realizes that there IS, in fact, one ‘live’ instrument in the mix. A bass guitar has been undulating beneath the surface all along; here, it bloops up in a sculpted bow before the verse pattern is rejoined with a cascade of keyboards.*
     The song moves to its denouement with the same delusive lyric it opened with, "You want to go out Friday, You want to go forever." There is then a sort of stall in the song’s movement. The ever more erratic, chiming piano loop is chopped into shorter bits as the listener is prepared for ascent. The instruments meld into each other. A funereal shriek accompanies the gathering crescendo. The tone lifts and lifts in growing urgency, converging upon what is sure to be a single point, where all of the sounds will perfectly merge. After such a slow, gradual build-up, the end is surprisingly sudden. There is no "A Day In The Life"-type resolution.
     And so there is not even the remotest hope left for our subject’s earthly life. He has departed; the rapture is complete. The elements of "Hope" have convened to transfer the surreal of purgatory to the listener. All of the disparate, even contradictory feelings in and around the deathbed are represented. Humans used to a high degree of control over their environment are "lost in the confusion" when confronted with their ultimate powerlessness over the great governing forces. The monkey always has his way in the end.

*See Portishead’s "Half Day Closing" for another brilliant juxtaposition of programmed instruments with a ‘live’ instrument (in "HDC", it is a drum set).

Click to hear a soundclip of "Hope" on the CDNow website.

Michael Justin Cummins is a singer/songwriter & founder of the band Berber and The Pomes.