REM vocalist Michael Stipe still feels the music after all these years. Several times here his face clenches as arrows of truth and excellence pierce him. He’s old and appears a little stern on camera, but he can still live inside a song and emote when lyrics and melody connect.
He’s still the voice of Automatic for the People and Monster— time can’t take those away from him– and therefore the unimpeachably etched cantor of October 5, 1992 until Kurt Cobain’s suicide—- and the communal soul searching which followed— for a certain generation.
“Remember me?” he (figuratively) seems to ask, “You trusted me once before when the center wasn’t holding. Will you trust me again?” He still understands the moment. He can read the room, so to speak, even when science and government allow him no rooms to sing in.
Every element of this song is a perfect soundtrack builder for the worldwide plague of 2020. The lo-fi click track screams “improvised DIY lockdown morale builder.” Stipe’s sotto voce gravitas– unchanged by the passage of decades– whispered close to the unseen computer mike suggests a conspiratorial one-on-one between artist and each of the thousands of internet listeners.
Stipe visually frames his quirky mien at an angle in green, wooden, residential architecture. COVID has left everyone off kilter, that we know. Green? It’s the title of an REM album, the color of photosynthetic life and springtime regeneration. As for (dancing about) architecture? Well, without out it how would we know he’s staying home and living in a substantial southern house of a bygone era? “Stand in the place where you live…”
“No Time for Love Like Now” bespeaks urgent latter-day poetry, statements of concerned kindness from a wise lyricist uncertain of the future. He broaches the ugly name “lockdown,” forever time-stamping the song. The rest is a prayer to love, light, freedom and peace. Items in short supply, all.
And finally his timid smile at the end almost summons the reassuring puppy dog of happiness feeling we all crave, especially now.
God bless you Mr. Michael Stipe and keep you healthy. For your sake and ours.
