October 21, 1987 (vol. 98, iss. 30) • Page Image 77
…EBET ROBERTS 'We are thrilled and terrified': With 'Document,'R.KM. confronts success Obscure to Oblique Sure, you can make out the words on the new R.E.M. album, but what do they actually mean? MUSIC in a rock-and-roll montage. Images, puns and narrative chunks often don't fit togeth- er cleanly. It's then up to the listener to create explicit meaning, if possible. Some- times the wordplay comes together power- fully, as with "Oddfellows Loc...…