So I’ll be back tomorrow with a regular edition of the Stumble Top 10 full of new singles, albums and live reviews, but for today, we push the present to one side, and reflect on the career of R.E.M.

I won’t lie, this list is subjective as hell, it represents everything about R.E.M. that has inspired me, so if I leave out your favourite track or album, it’s no snub, there’s nothing definitive about this list, as always it’s the 10 items that most thoroughly captured my imagination.

1.    Murmur & “Radio Free Europe” – 1983

R.E.M may appear like family friendly FM radio rockers today, but over the course of a storied career they’ve divided opinion and alienated listeners with astonishing frequency. The R.E.M. of “Drive” couldn’t be further removed from the enigmatic and impenetrable young songwriters who penned the daring and delicious “Radio Free Europe”.

The band’s opening gambit, and Murmur’s initial offering remains cloaked in mystery, an indie-pop stalwart, it’s so inviting, it’s a tease, you want to uncover it’s hidden depths, but no matter how long you study, and no matter what mental gymnastics you employ, “Radio Free Europe” and Murmur remain utterly impenetrable, but entirely loveable. It’s an album that not so demands, but evokes warmhearted obsession. The guitars tinker and chime, and Stipes’ delivery is so flat and wimpish, that you cannot help but feel soft pangs of sympathy as he guides you through a series of unsettlingly boyoant soundscapes.

Murmur is like a well-worn film reel: stretched, inordinately bright and yet oddly faded and sun-soaked with a receding, deteriorating quality, it’s original purpose obscured your left with brief glimmers of clarity (“In A Room, Lock The Door, Latch The Room”, “Not Everyone Can Carry The Weight Of World”), and somehow those fleetingly snapshots possess more resonance than a million carefully crafted sentences.

Murmur: a masterpiece, an art pop classic, and one of the finest debut albums ever penned.

2.    Life’s Rich Pageant – 1986

If Murmur was the thrilling debut that captured the undergrounds attention then Life’s Rich Pageant was the first sure sign that R.E.M. were destined for more than just art house kudos.

Few records are more thrilling, Life’s Rich Pageant fires out of the gate with a run of bigger, crunchier, and more expansive efforts. Effortlessly evolving the chiming speedster pop of the bands past, “These Days” reached out from within the record, it was far from broad-brush strokes songwriting, but it grabbed the listener by the scruff of his neck through sheer force of melody, while “Fall On Me” rained down from a great height inducing great nasal cries from Mr. Stipe.

A little riotous, a little unnerving, and entirely captivating Life’s Rich Pageant was a move towards a more conventional but no less lucid form of songwriting, who’s resonance would prove universal. “Flowers Of Guatemala” and “Begin The Begin” marked the first tentative steps from the clubs into the arenas.

3.    “Nightswimming” & “Dry The River” – 1992

In 1992 R.E.M. turned from the wild abandon of carefree pop to produce a lavish album, rich with sweeping portentous strings and sweet subdued folk melodies, that would capture the world’s imagination. It’s themes were bleak, reflections on death and aging allowed a sense of terrifying tranquility to grip Automatic For The People. Stipe is meek, his voice is often dampened, and when he choose to exude personality and burst out, his voices cracks, falters and settles into a gentle tones of weary acceptance.

“Nightswimming” and “Dry The River” are beautiful companion pieces that find solace in a befuddled lack of clarity, celebrating the rankers of the journey and the poignancy of the moment rather than the over arching meaning or the grand solution. These tracks are born of conflict; fear and relaxation, a miserable present and a beautiful memory, grandeur and insignificant, ardour and effortlessness. They sound glorious and uplifting in the exact moments where they break your heart and snuff out hope. “Nightswimming” and “Dry The Driver” are beautiful anthems that inspire unsettled conflicted queasiness in us all.

4.    Reckoning – 1984

As soon as they’d thrilled the art house and the underground R.E.M. waved them goodbye with the unflinching pop of Reckoning. That being said, Reckoning could never be described as bubble gum, even if it’s jangle and shudder guitar work is utterly intoxicating. Stipe is far more to the point here than he was on Murmur, the lyrics are more penetrably, and they’re delivered with a coy shaky charm.

“Harborcoat” is the type of track that sounds so fresh that it could be released today, that may be a cliché but it’s true, the needling guitar work remains entirely of the moment. Even when distilling their experimental tendencies R.E.M. still throw more tricks and quirks at the listener than any of their contemporaries would have dared. Reckoner sounds both bolder with age and more familiar as its basslines and riffs have filtrated every corner of indie rock.

5.    “Orange Crush” – 1988

So you’ve left your independent label (I.R.S.) and you’ve made the jump to the majors, back when such a move was actually a big deal, and while R.E.M. where about to start raking in some serious Green, the album of the same name was anything but a concession.

Preachy and powerful, R.E.M. may have sounded like a slick stadium outfit in the making, but shiny inoffensive pop was not their game, “Stand” Or No “Stand”, “Orange Crush” was a vital, finger pointing, sardonic anthem. With a mocking reference to “Agent Orange”, Stipe snarls and satirizes the warped logic that allows the armed forces to take the moral high ground when marching off to war. Stipe rallies the troops, sarcastically gleaming and encouraging young men to thoughtlessly follow him for the supposed greater good. The main riff is mammoth, a match for anything The Edge had to offer, and the sliced in mock quotes of a devoted recruit intent on give his services give the crack and haunting ghostly air.

“Orange Crush” is pop and politics done right.

6.    “E-Bow The Letter” – 1996

A letter to a friend spiraling into a pitiless abyss of detachment, isolation and addiction, “E-Bow The Letter” is one of the most ghostly and wrenchingly morbid tracks R.E.M. have ever penned. Patti Smith provided the perfect creaking backing vocal, raspily ushering the line “I Take You Over” into your ear lobes, while Michael Stipe is at his most theatrical and dynamic. His timing is impeccable, occupying the crux of frustration, he appears to teeter on the edge of a unleashing a philibusting finale but reticence and reflection take hold, and he withdraws, offering sympathy, aid and stewardship instead. It’s majestic, it doesn’t so much pull at your heartstrings, as it physically jerks and paws at your rib stage.

7.    “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” & “The One That I Love” – 1987

Life’s Rich Pageant was the sign of the what was to come, but it was the scattered and more challenging Document that provided the band’s commercial breakthrough. Two tracks, back to back, formed the spine of the album, and formed the basis for the stadium conquering, festival headlining, dominance that was to come.

One was a stream of consciousness quasi-rant that challenged every man, woman and child to wrap their head’s around and memorize its free wheeling rhymes and left field references. The other was a stadium sized juggernaut, a behemoth, a simple sentiment, and a simple thought, a minimal intimate sentiment, stripped down to it’s barest lyrical essentials, and then blown up to mammoth resounding proportions, How could the world resist?

8.    “Driver 8” – 1985

With a thundering riff and a powerful sense of impetus “Driver 8” arrives urgently enough, but Stipe soon nips that propulsive prowess in the bud with a delightful piece of juxtaposition. His daydream narrative is a delight, offering an escape from the mundanity of the 9 to 5 he slithers away to a sleepier, more enticing plane where the minor details of life are cherished like tightly clasped postcards.

The entire track is illusive, and as such seductive, it slips away from ominous riffage to a fantastically barmy rootsy mid-section, and to this day I still can’t get a grip on “Driver 8” emotionally. It draws a wry smile, it warms the heart, and it gets me all misty eyed. I’m a mess, it’s a mess, and I love it.

9.     “Oh My Heart” – 2011

Going out on a high, after the abysmal Around The Sun, and the tentative footstep towards credibility that was Accelerate, R.E.M. finally hit a home run with Collapse Into Now. It wasn’t a perfect album, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was an album that had enough positives to satisfy fans old and new, and at its core lay a beautiful ballad. “Oh My Heart” was Michael Stipe’s response to Hurricane Katrina, it had the gravitas of Automatic For The People, some of the grace of “Nightswimming” and the blunt plain faced simplicity of “Everybody Hurts”. It will never rank among R.E.M’s classic tracks, but it is a sublime endnote, and a gracious sign off.

10. “Stand” – 1988

This was a tough call. I resolved to pick one of the big R.E.M pop songs that captured my imagination during in my youth.

I preoccupied myself through many a tiresome car journey by bellowing “Losing My Religion”, “The Great Beyond” and “Man On The Moon”, while “What’s The Frequency Kenneth?” and “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” proved the epitome of irrepressibility in my school year’s, they simply couldn’t be denied. “Imitation Of Life” was another was another favourite, possibly because the rather mundane hit pinched its chord progressions from “Driver 8”, but that isn’t the track I’ve opted for.

“Stand” is a tribute to the wide-eyed stupidity and fun of R.E.M., answering his own challenge to pen a track so inane it would rival The Monkees, Stipe wrote this gloriously morose three-minute masterpiece. Sometimes the best things in life are entirely idiotic.