"How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us" (R.E.M.)

Ask many of my peers to name an album that was the defining soundtrack of their pre-teen/teenage years, and they'll point to something by R.E.M.
Although I personally never worshipped at the altar of Michael Stipe, I did/do like R.E.M.  I respected their ability to stay relevant while never chasing any other band/sound/trend out there.  As a matter of fact, it always amused me how the boys made running from the mainstream a sport.  If rock seemed to be making a right turn, R.E.M. not only turned left, but they torched the beat-up Chevy Nova they were riding in and hitched a ride on a mule cart with a wobbly front wheel, destination: elsewhere.  
Even still, their fans followed.  For awhile anyway.
In 1995, the band was touring in support of its blistering rawk album Monster (1994) and attempting to write/record music for a new album during soundchecks and between shows.  As lead guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Peter Buck told MTV interviewers in 1996, "Our whole goal was to get on the road (and) write a body of work that kind of reflects what the touring experience is like without necessarily being about, like, Holiday Inns."  
The tour ended up being the last time the four founding members of the band would tour and record together again.  While on stage in Switzerland, drummer Bill Berry collapsed from a ruptured brain aneurysm.  Although he survived and recovered, the tour and the eventual New Adventures in Hi-fi (1996) were essentially his last hurrah with R.E.M., as he decided to retire from music and enjoy a life of farming in rural Georgia.
Although Berry's exit didn't officially happen until 1997, I remember hearing New Adventures in Hi-fi and thinking, "This sounds like a band that's saying 'farewell'."
The song that struck me the most was "How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us."  Its decidedly lo-fi, Spaghetti Western sound is in direct contrast to the fizzy title of the record.  In fact, it opens the album on a decidedly melancholy note.  On the surface, it's a song about Manifest Destiny and pushing westward.  But just under that layer of fine desert silt is a song about a broken band--a band that had been the darling of critics and fans that skyrocketed to mega-stardom, and then, almost as quickly, was facing acerbic criticism from many of those same critics/fans for supposedly losing their compass.  
What's more, on that rocket ride, their drummer nearly died.
It's asking the hypothetical question, "Was it worth it?"
It's one of my favorite R.E.M. tracks because it is so evocative of a mood and sense of place--or, rather, lack of place.  Berry's nearly downtempo drums, Buck's grunting bass, and Mills's angular piano create a loping groove, setting the desolate backdrop for Stipe's lyrics, which are not so much sung but whispered like a sinner in a confessional.  
It's the band at its most vulnerable and yet, ironically, at its strongest.