R.E.M.
(Warner Bros.)
In a musical milieu of high stakes and high concepts, every high profile album must have a storyline, and so it is with the new R.E.M. release: Having soldiered on after the departure of their drummer, the band eventually wobbles off onto a keyboard-heavy, somewhat mushy adult-contemporary tangent culminating with 2004 snoozeathon Around the Sun only to finally acknowledge they’d lost touch not only with their muse but with each other as well, and proceed to hunker down in a Dublin studio, crank the amps, and rediscover their inner Rock Band™. Ergo: Accelerate, born of those Dublin sessions (and of some crucial live woodshedding while visiting the Emerald Isle), and indeed, a platter that goes to the proverbial “11”. Waking up from their post-millennial nap, the boys stomp the pedal and redline it.
Clocking in at a tidy 34:39, the album’s the most focused—but, despite the label-dispensed “all guitars/all the time” advance hype, not single-minded—R.E.M. effort in eons, harkening in places to 1994’s glammy Monster but more often than not channeling the youthful spirit of 1986’s Life’s Rich Pageant. All the usual Michael Stipe vocal tics (bleating asides, exaggerated pronunciations, etc.) and lyrical obsessions (politics, oblique personal dissections, the discombobulation of society, etc.) are present, and against a backdrop of swirling, churning, crazysexycool nonstop riffage, he sounds utterly energized. Mike Mills’ keyboards are present, but returned to their early textural status, while as one of rock’s oft-underrated bassists, Mills provides a deliciously elastic bottom end, dense and droning one moment, punchy and funky the next. And Pete “I’ve got a fuzzbox and I’m gonna use it” Buck revels in electric shit like this: you can practically see vest and shirtsleeves flapping in the air as he chops and flails at his axe.
Among the key tracks: “Hollow Man,” and not to worry, the gentle piano motif that opens it won’t send you circling Around the Sun, for despite a confessional tone both lyrically and melodically—instantly hummable, with a hint of wistful jangle—it’s still cut from classic midtempo-anthemic cloth in the tradition of “Fall On Me” or “Harborcoat”; “Accelerate,” wherein Stipe sings, through gritted teeth, “Where is the rip cord, the trap door, the key?” as if he’s hurtling towards a future he’s not altogether certain he wants to be a part of, with the minor chords and in-the-red distortion perfectly mirroring his paranoia and desperation; and “I’m Gonna DJ,” which with a thuggishly thrumming punk-funk beat, glam guitars that practically sneer in your face, and snarky-apocalyptic lyrics about DJing at the end of the world (and Stipe feels fine, natch) less sung as they are barked in manifesto fashion, R.E.M. discover their inner Iggys and Ziggys. (Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!)
While it’s no secret that even the most avid R.E.M. fans were underwhelmed by the group’s recent studio output, the collective yawn that met the initial announcement for Accelerate was still surprising. One not-untypical blog headline read thusly: “R.E.M. Prepares to Disappoint Us for the Fourth Album in a Row.” Ouch. Certainly by now Mssrs. Stipe, Buck and Mills have learned to ignore the gaseous emissions of pop pundits, but before-the-fact blanket dismissals like that still have to hurt at least a little. With the earwax-cleaning Accelerate notching solid reviews, though, the guys just might have the last laugh. To paraphrase one of their own song titles, living long is the best revenge.
Standout Tracks: “Hollow Man,” “I’m Gonna DJ” FRED MILLS
