THE NAME OF THIS BAND IS R.E.M.

How four college-town scenesters became unlikely million-sellers and the center of the ’90s zeitgeist.

For most of its 30-year run, R.E.M. enjoyed a charmed life. Formed in Athens, Ga., in 1980, its four members (drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, singer Michael Stipe), pursued a slow but steady climb to national attention, getting early singles to the right critics, touring constantly, and landing on a major label while controlling their egos and maintaining their artistic integrity. Stipe’s gnomic, often-mumbled lyrics were hard to parse, but the band was expert at sly, jangly hooks; by the end of the decade they'd enjoyed hit singles and topped the album charts with 1991’s Out of Time. Music journalist Carlin ably chronicles the band’s climb and thoughtfully contextualizes it within larger social and political trends in the country. (He suggests that R.E.M., as vocal progressive activists and standard-bearers for Reagan-weary Gen Xers, helped deliver Bill Clinton to the presidency.) Charmed lives don’t always make for dramatic biographies, though. Perhaps because band members declined to be interviewed for the book (Buck confirmed some details), Carlin adheres to a straightforward narrative of the band moving from strength to strength. Bumps in the road—a brain aneurysm that sidelined Berry and his departure from the band, a sexual harassment accusation against the band’s longtime manager—are dealt with crisply and mainly as evidence of the band’s indomitability. To fill out the story, Carlin attempts to interpret Stipe’s lyrics, sometimes questionably. By the book’s end, the band still feels somewhat unknowable, and Carlin doesn’t explore their legacy following their (amicable) 2011 breakup. They started out strange and hard to interpret—and still are.

A well-researched but by-the-numbers biography.