SUMMER ALBUM ROUNDUP : HOT & COOL SUMMER SOUNDS : * * * * Great Balls of Fire * * * Good Vibrations * * Maybe Baby * Running on Empty :

By CHRIS WILLMAN

Aug. 30, 1987 12 AM PT

* * * 1/2 “DOCUMENT.” R.E.M. I.R.S.

Singer Michael Stipe sounds like he got up on the wrong side of the bed on much of R.E.M.’s sixth album. No longer is he the withdrawn poet, eyes closed in deep thought behind droopy bangs, mumbling what for all anyone knew could be mystical incantations. The bangs are cut, the eyes are open, the lyrics are--for the first time--just about entirely intelligible, and mild-mannered Stipe sounds downright ornery at times.

As do other members of R.E.M., for “Document” is a tougher, meaner, leaner record than its immediate predecessors--replacing the jangly, sprightly, romantic sound the band became known for with a far more hard-edged guitar sound, as well as tenser rock rhythms. It’s predictably cryptic indeed at times, but the opaque mystery that was so enticingly R.E.M. has been largely replaced here with something more definite and immediately tangible.

After getting up on the wrong side of the bed, R.E.M. goes to work--which, apparently, is the album’s intended theme. Stipe sounds a little surly in “Finest Worksong” and “Oddfellows Local 151,” the Velvet-y bookends that are the record’s rawest material. Stipe waxes more sensitive, however, in the surprisingly sweet “The One I Love,” which has him pining for a faraway lover from the p.o.v. of a bored musician out on the road.

Side trips--political, psychedelic or otherwise--are plentiful. “Welcome to the Occupation” turns out to have less to do with job occupations than military occupations. “Exhuming McCarthy” is less self-explanatory than it sounds, but you get the point nonetheless. The unabashedly fun and catchy “Subterranean Homesick Blues”-style rave-up, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” may well prove the record’s most enduringly popular track.

But right now, it’s up to the more traditionally R.E.M.-ish and folksy-rock single, “The One I Love”--the most simple and direct tune ever from one of rock’s more indirect and roundabout bands--to carry the burden of proving whether the Byrds can still fly on Top 40 radio in 1987. If the record promotion men live up to their end of the work ethic, it’ll probably happen.