R.E.M.’s 1992 album, Automatic for the People, is one such record. Its 25thanniversary reissue (Craft Recordings) shows a band at the height of their creative prowess, producing a movingly contemplative record that feels as bathetic and human today as it did then.

The demos, live versions and Dolby Atmos remix contained in this reissue does nothing but retain that emotive awe; not many other bands’ eighth album manages to be so compelling.

Released at the height of their popularity, Automatic followed 1990’s Out of Time, the record that happened to contain “Losing My Religion,” the mandolin-driven megahit that propelled R.E.M. — which broke up in 2011 — from a popular underground act into one of the world’s biggest bands. (Seriously, even in Indonesia, the song, with its unsettling music video, felt inescapable.)

Originally conceived to be a big rock record, Automatic was supposed to be far different than its acoustic-heavy predecessor. Instead, attempts to write fast, electric guitar driven by guitarist Peter Buck, bass player Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry pretty much faltered.

Only less than half a dozen such “rock” songs were written, and most of the 30-something demo songs that the band recorded prior to production were enveloped in more acoustic instruments, with a mood that was particularly solemn.

Though his characteristic impressionist wordplay was still present, vocalist Michael Stipe wrote some of his most straightforward lyrics here — the kind that somewhat ironically made the gray-nuanced Automatic one of the band’s most genuinely inviting records.

The album cover — a somewhat abstract and starkly gray photo of star-shaped ornament taken near Criteria Studios, where most of the album was recorded — conveyed that saturnine sense of gravity.

Many of the songs were enveloped in themes of mortality and the passage of time — issues that the band members, who were then approaching their 30s, were increasingly consumed with. While the glam-rock of 1995’s Monster continued and expanded with this theme in character-heavy form, Automatic’s prowess comes from how undramatic and benevolent it was in evoking its theme. Its solemn maturity was a welcoming one.

Consider “Everybody Hurts,” which in Indonesia at least, has become one of the band’s most ubiquitous songs. Sure, its music video, featuring gridlock traffic, may give it the push that Indonesians (certainly Jakartans) now painfully identify with, but it is the song’s empathic lyrics, wrapped effectively in its title, that resonates.

Like “Losing Your Religion,” “Everybody Hurts” was such a big hit that not only may people who know the lyrics not know the band that recorded it, but also its sentiment may be seen by mainstream listeners as tagged-on generic lyricism, the kind of “touching” sentiment found in many popular songs.

But of course this wasn’t the case; its straightforwardness was intended to reach teenagers during some of their toughest times in life. Amidst all this, it’s easy to forget how embracingly effective the lyrics are in their directness: When your day is long/And the night, the night is yours alone/When you’re sure you’ve had enough/Of this life, well hang on.

This heaviness pervades throughout the record, both directly and indirectly. “Sweetness Follows” adorns its organ-acoustic guitar elegiac nuance with fitting words: Readying to bury your father and your mother/What did you think when you lost another?/I used to wonder why did you bother/Distanced from one, blind to the other? before ending with a hopeful Live your life filled with joy and thunder.

Elsewhere, Stipe’s words paint pointed observations from a dimming, adult perspective. Witness the self-awareness of first single, the slow-lurching “Drive,” one of the band’s strongest works: Hey kids, rock and roll/Nobody tells you where to go, baby, or “Try Not to Breathe” with its gloom shudders: “Try Not To Breathe:” I will try not to worry you/I have seen things that you will never see/Leave it to memory me/I shudder to breathe.

Then there’s the alterna-punk of “Ignoreland,” which tragically remains more relevant as ever today: These bastards stole their power from the victims of the Us v. Them years/Wrecking all things virtuous and true/The undermining social democratic downhill slide into abysmal,” Stipe spits out.

Unlike a lot of bonus tracks on similar reissues, the demos and song drafts here work wonders in painting a full picture of how R.E.M. worked as a unit at the height of their prowess. There’s an organic feel to these demos that’s wonderful to listen to.

There’s “C to D Slide,” named after the chord progression, which would eventually become the masterful “Man on the Moon,” and has Stipe mumbling lines of melodies into an already-shaped instrumentation. “Wake Her Up” would eventually turn into “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” and shows how solid R.E.M. was even without the production.

Similarly, there is a collection of live songs taken from the 40 Watt Club, which finds Stipe announcing playfully that the band was under-rehearsed. Unsurprisingly, the set remains beautifully solid, showing how effortless they were at this time.

Not too many reissues feel as essential as this. But even aside from the additional tracks and remixes, it is a wonderful reminder of days when emotional front-to-back-strong records like Automatic for the People felt possible.

There is still much great music being made today, but it’s hard to believe that it would still prevail with the same sense of urgency it did the day it first appeared.

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