Consumer Guide Album

R.E.M.: Chronic Town [I.R.S. EP, 1982]
This headlong tumble proves them the wittiest and most joyful of the postgarage sound-over-sense bands, probably because they make so little sense that their sound has to be articulate indeed. Physically incomprehensible lyrics make them harder to parse than somebody else's mystical experience, but every so often a chaotic undertow suggests there's more to their romanticism than Spanish moss. A-